Apparently, the market did not like this report maybe due to the increased losses and lower EBITA - Net loss was up QoQ from $18.9 million to $35.7 million, Adjusted EBITA was down QoQ from $20.4 million to $10.5 million. They did raise full-year guidance. Stock Down 32.9% today. I just started a 1.5% position yesterday and am just starting to get to know the company - looks like a good opportunity to buy after this haircut. Thoughts anyone?
Active customers increased to 5.4 million, from 3.8 million, up 42%.
Net add of 1.6 million new customers was a record high!
Send volume increased to $10.2 billion, from $7.5 billion, up 36%.
Revenue totaled $241.6 million, compared to $169.3 million, up 43%, beats by $2.43M
Net loss was $35.7 million, compared to a net loss of $33.1 million.
Adjusted EBITDA was $10.5 million, compared to $(3.7) million.
*Q3 GAAP EPS -$.20 misses by $.04, GAAP Net Loss ($36M)
“We are pleased with our third quarter results which reflect the continued strong execution by our global teams and the resilience and trust our customers have placed in us,” said Matt Oppenheimer, co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, Remitly. “We are in a very strong position to deliver robust long term growth rates at compelling unit economics, sustain targeted high return generating investments for long term value creation and to deliver operating leverage. We expect to close the year strongly and are increasing our revenue and Adjusted EBITDA outlook for 2023.”
Outlook for FY2023
Total revenue in the range of $935 million to $943 million, representing a growth rate of 43% to 44% year over year. This outlook reflects an increase from our prior outlook of $915 million to $925 million.
To remain in a GAAP net loss position for 2023 and for Adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $36 million to $41 million. This outlook reflects an increase from our prior Adjusted EBITDA outlook of $33 million to $40 million.
There might be no more dangerous words than, “I think the market has this one wrong.” But that’s exactly what I believe about Remitly. The way I see it, the market is not interested in future profits right now. And Remitly is absolutely a future profits story. You have to believe the CEO knows what he’s doing, and that the unit economics work out as managemnt says they do. But what do you get in the meantime? Well, almost a billion dollars of (pretty much recurring) revenue, growing at 40%+. Alos, 5.4 million customers, growing at 40%+. And a price that frankly says, “We (the market) don’t believe in this business.”
Right now the market cap is below $3.5b. If you don’t believe in the business, that could be an opportunity to throw away $3.5b. But I think this is a real business and I think they are executing on a big opportunity. I’m adding.
I added this morning as well, now up from a 1.5% position to 4.5%. With the big drop, the P/S ratio is now roughly 4.2, which is incredibly reasonable for a company growing at 40%+. Most fintech companies are able to benefit from operating leverage over time and I’m bullish that Remitly fits that model as well. As their volumes grow, they will continue to renegotiate lower variable costs and spread their fixed costs over a much larger customer base.
Also, the addressable market is huge: The company is competing in a total addressable market of remittances valued at $1.6 trillion and a serviceable addressable market of $589 billion based on remittance flows to low- and middle-income countries.
Remitly is focused and looks to be delivering best in class digital performance. It is the top-rated app in the remittance category on both iOS and Android platforms.
According to a recent seeking alpha article “Remitly’s greatest strength lies in their unwavering focus on global digital cross-border remittances for migrants. For nearly every other competitor, digital remittances are just one facet of a broader array of services. Companies like Western Union (within their digital division), Xoom, and Ria all operate under a larger umbrella, which doesn’t afford them the same level of focus, vision, and execution as Remitly.”
I posted this yesterday and it got deleted, but I’m going to try again and see if I can word it in a way that won’t flag the “off-topic” police.
There is a technology available today that allows the transfer of value peer-to-peer without any intermediary. You can instantly transfer value to any person in the world for pennies per transaction.
This technology is well known, but not widely used at this time. The use of this technology has had a lot of friction until recently. New tools have been launched in the last year that now make it very easy to use.
If this new technology becomes more widely accepted and used, it will dramatically alter the business models for companies whose primary business is related to charging money for remittances. I encourage you to research this if you are investing in Remitly.
I am not promoting investment in, or discussion of, the unnamed technology. Please do not reply to this message, and hopefully it won’t be deleted.
Thanks
I certainly think your post is worthy and I would hope it’s not deleted. You point out that this technology is not widely used…a quick search shows that maybe 2.5% or generously 5% of people in the world have even dabbled in it, and of course some of them use it for investing/trading/speculating but not to actually transact. This may change…maybe within a few years, twice as many people will use it. That would be 5% or maybe 10% of the world’s population.
I guess if Remitly can target the other 90% of the world’s population, that works for me.
I also added to my small Remitly position today. Not a lot but significantly.
To me a threat that “might” occur 5 years from now is an irrelevant consideration and not worth even considering. If it started happening we’d have years of warning and plenty of time to get out. It’s the inverse of buying a company because they “might” have good news 5 years from now. We invest for what is happening now, not for what we can imagine might happen some time in the future. But that’s just my opinion.
The biggest obstacle to getting this tech to be widely used is even getting the underlying payment item in the first place. It is NOT easy, still, to get a stake, find a place to store it, remember all the access steps through third party authenticators and then to even decide HOW to move it around from those ‘wallets’.
I have worked it out, but I am at a pretty ok standard of living and standard of education. I have spent my whole life in tech and even today I am still an IT PM. It was difficult for me to stick through to the point where I have a very experimental ~$500 in that tech.
The audience for Remitly is not going to be doing that amount of discovery, or getting all the appropriate set up to even deal with it. When your only tech is your cell phone, and your only paycheck is in local currency…the hoops to get to that other tech are WAY WAY WAY out of reach of most.
OK, I won’t comment on the not-to-be-mentioned technology. But I will comment on the fact that you got your curves mixed up. Adoption is usually depicted as and “S” curve. ROI is often shown as a hockey stick.
I’m sorry Analog, but your repeated pitches don’t seem to really have anything to do with Remitly but seem to be pitches for Bitcoin. This is not a subject for our board and I am going to delete at least your last and maybe more.
Like dlbuffy, I too bought $500 worth of bitcoin three or four years ago because of all the hype that it was going to take over the world. I pretty much never looked at it again. It went nowhere and didn’t take over the world as promised. You are giving us the same pitch now.
Saul,
I was refuting incorrect information and providing correct information. I’m not sure how else to do that other than to share what was in my replies. I will give up and move on at this point.
I’m just getting to review the earnings report now. I was expecting a way worse report based off the market reaction, and just reading through the report it sounds largely positive besides the GAAP earnings and sequential EBITDA.
I would have figured the record customer adds and raised guidance would have balanced out with the lower bottom line numbers, also a bit baffled by the 30% price drop here. I’m holding for now.
The competition in this space is largely coming from legacy players like Western Union, Paypal, and a couple others. The point of this business is to get cash in hand to someone quickly. A typical user case is sending to a family member overseas for things like groceries, or in a case of an emergency. Remitly is providing “channels” or a variety of options for the receiver to get this money. This gives the flexibility of the receiver to pick up cash from some place like 7-11, or get a bank transfer.
Crypto is not a viable competitor in this space or anything close to it at the moment and there are many obvious reasons. The transaction costs sky rocket during peak usage. Receiving requires maintaining a wallet or taking money at an exchange. The average person who needs a few hundred dollars overseas simply isn’t maintaining a wallet like that.
Assuming they did have a wallet, I’m not sure what the expectation would be for them to convert that to cash. They’d have to transfer to an exchange, then pay a fee for trading to sell, and go through a potentially cumbersome KYC process. Then cash out only to a bank account, but what if they don’t have a bank account? That’s a huge portion of Remitly’s customer base.
Then factor in the biggest major exchanges go under frequently like Mt. Gox or FTX. It’s just not well thought out to think that crypto would be a viable competitor for this business model.
Ah! Thank you wpr101 for the part I missed. There would have to be two people that are fully set up for transferring in a closed system.
I can tell you all that there is no way I could send crypto to my mother if she needed to pay bills.
To stay on topic, I added a very small position last week based on the discussion here. I have to see what other stocks do in next couple of weeks, but it could become one of my third (out of four) tier stocks depending.
You are incorrect. I would take the time to rebut your statements, but my reply would just get deleted and I would be accused of “pitching” an off topic asset. Apparently, it’s ok to post negative content about the asset class that shall not be named, but it’s not acceptable to reply with corrected information.
I would like to hear how your view how crypto is an actual competitor to Remitly.
As for your “corrected information” you earlier wrote,
How about two years ago when it costs $300 in gas fees to trade an NFT? Or the multiple times it’s cost over $50 to get Bitcoin sent in the next block or be potentially stuck for over 24 hours.
I have spent at least 1,000 hours listening to podcasts and researching this topic over the last 4 years. I have ~ 15% of my net worth in the asset class that shall not be named. I could answer all these questions, but I have been told not to. I don’t want to get kicked out, so I’m not going to reply further.
It’s funny you see my responses as posting “negative content” about crypto. I just don’t see it as a viable competitor to Remitly and it’s as simple as that.
You claim to be an expert, but somehow you are blissfully unaware of the transaction fees issues that come up all the time?
If you have used the technology at all, you would be well aware of the gut wrenching feeling when you send money using said technology and it doesn’t show up, and the ensuing panic with that when you are not sure if it was sent to the right address or something else went wrong. Usually later only to find out your fee wasn’t high enough and the money is stuck until activity on the network calms down.
Just a word of caution to everyone investing in this firm who thinks they have something unique. The US has a number of competitors who have fantastic product, low fees and broad reach. I’ve personally used many of them and prefer Wise which has instant cash availability in every single country I ever needed to send money to and I’ve sent to many. Check them out, they are listed in the UK and since their IPO the stock has not done well. I know a number of people who regularly send money back home to their parents and they would absolutely never pay 8% fee which is what Remitly claims to be the average transaction cost. Why would they, even Western Union, the most expensive of them does not charge anything close to that. Many countries like Mexico, Thailand and the Philippines have local competitors that specifically target their expat communities with incredibly competitive rates and fees that even Wise cannot match. Remitly may have cracked some secret code and will capture huge share of the market but I’d be highly skeptical that they will. Also note that this business does very much play the interest rate differential and their results may be influenced by that. I haven’t looked into their results to understand them better but I’m certain it is a factor and perhaps a significant one. As rates change, so may their results.
I agree. I added a little to RELY to make it to a starting position, but it’s mostly speculative for me at this point.
I use Western Union and Wise to send small amounts of money overseas. Low (flat) fees and competitive exchange rates. And Wise carries a wallet, which I don’t think WU does (I use them only as a broker to do direct deposits to a foreign bank account). Wise transfers are instant, if you use their wallet.
