Kaspi.kz's Q2 Earnings: Slower Profit Growth, a Bigger Dividend, and a Stock That's Statistically Cheap (My personal pick)
Numbers below are current as of August 25, 2026, about two weeks after the August 10 earnings call. Kaspi reported before market open that day, shares rose roughly 3.4% initially, and the stock has climbed further since.
What Is This Article About
Kaspi.kz, the Kazakhstan-based payments, e-commerce, and fintech super app, reported its second quarter 2026 earnings on August 10. I'll cover what was said on the call, what went right, what went wrong, then do the math on the valuation. I'll end with my own take on whether it's worth buying. This is not financial advice, just my own reading of the numbers.
What Was Discussed on the Call
Here are the numbers, all figures approximate US dollar equivalents of the reported Kazakhstani tenge results:
- Revenue: $2.3 billion. Up 15% year over year.
- Adjusted EBITDA: $826 million. Up 5% year over year.
- Net income: $539 million. Roughly flat year over year, and slightly below the $549 million analysts were modeling.
- Marketplace GMV: $4.8 billion, up 15% year over year. Marketplace revenue: $1.1 billion, up 11%. Marketplace adjusted EBITDA: $266 million, up 9%.
- e-Commerce GMV: $2.6 billion, up 28% year over year. e-Commerce revenue grew 35% to $820 million, with value-added services revenue up 49%.
- Payments TPV: $26.3 billion, up 13% year over year. Payments revenue: $351 million, up 5%. Payments adjusted EBITDA was roughly flat due to investment in the company's pay-by-palm rollout.
- Fintech revenue: $946 million, up 23% year over year, supported by an 18% increase in the average net loan portfolio. Fintech adjusted EBITDA: $356 million, up 6%.
Management also announced several other things on the call:
- The board proposed raising the quarterly dividend 18%, to KZT1,000 per ADS from KZT850.
- Kasper, a new AI shopping assistant, launched in July and is now available to all e-commerce consumers in Kazakhstan. About 20% of eligible consumers used it within the first month.
- Kaspi completed its acquisition of Rabobank A.Ş. in Türkiye in July, rebranding it Hepsi Bank, with plans to expand its fintech business there starting in 2027.
- In August, Kaspi cut the interest rate on its 3-month deposit product by 100 basis points, its first such cut in more than two years, a sign funding costs may be easing.
- Full-year 2026 guidance was reiterated, not raised or lowered.
What Are the Wins
- Revenue growth accelerated to 15% year over year, the fastest pace in several quarters.
- e-Commerce remains the main growth engine: GMV up 28%, revenue up 35%, and value-added services revenue up 49%, all in constant currency terms.
- e-Commerce engagement is strengthening: annualized purchases per consumer rose to 15.8, up from 11.6 a year ago.
- e-Commerce monetization is improving too: the third-party take rate rose 160 basis points to 16.1%.
- The dividend was raised 18%, a clear signal of management confidence.
- Return on equity: 44.78%. Return on invested capital: 81.96%. This is an extremely capital-efficient business.
- The balance sheet carries a net cash position and a current ratio of 6.52x.
- Early adoption of the Kasper AI assistant looks strong: about 80% of conversations produce a tailored recommendation, and 60% of those guide the customer to a specific product.
- The Türkiye acquisition gives Kaspi a real foothold outside Kazakhstan for the first time, reducing single-country dependence over time.
What Are the Losses
- Net income was roughly flat year over year despite 15% revenue growth, as higher funding costs in Kazakhstan and investment spending in Türkiye ate into the bottom line.
- Net income of $539 million came in slightly below the roughly $549 million analysts expected, a modest miss.
- Adjusted EBITDA growth of 5% lagged well behind revenue growth of 15%, a sign profitability isn't scaling with the top line right now.
- Payments segment profitability was essentially stagnant, weighed down by investment in the pay-by-palm rollout.
- The stock has already run hard. It's up more than 30% from its 200-day moving average of $81.55, and its Relative Strength Index sits at 79.42, solidly in overbought territory.
- The average analyst price target, $102.29, is actually below where the stock trades today, meaning Wall Street on average sees limited near-term upside despite the "Buy" consensus rating.
- The business remains heavily concentrated in a single country. Kazakhstan is a relatively small, currency-exposed emerging market, and the new Türkiye venture is unproven.
Analysis
Trailing P/E:
- Trailing twelve-month EPS: $11.52.
- At the current price of $106.46, trailing P/E is about 9.25x.
Forward P/E:
- Forward P/E sits at about 7.55x based on analyst estimates for the next year.
- For comparison, that's a fraction of what AMD (roughly 63x forward) or SpaceX (roughly 190x forward) traded at after their most recent reports in this series, and well below even H&R Block's already-cheap 8.4x.
EV/EBITDA and profitability:
- Enterprise value: about $19.4 billion.
- Trailing EBITDA: $5.12 billion.
- EV/EBITDA: about 3.78x, unusually low for a business growing revenue in the mid-teens percentage range.
- Price-to-book: 3.72x, which looks more reasonable once you factor in a 44.78% return on equity.
Dividend and shareholder return:
- Dividend yield: 8.22%.
- Payout ratio: about 49%, leaving room for the dividend to keep growing.
- Total shareholder yield: 8.14%.
What would fair value look like?
Applying a more typical multiple for a high-quality, high-growth fintech or e-commerce platform, say 15x to 20x trailing earnings, to the $11.52 trailing EPS gives a fair value range of roughly $173 to $230 a share, well above today's $106.46. That gap is the real story here. The market isn't pricing Kaspi like a mediocre business, it's pricing in a real discount for the risks that come with being a Kazakhstan-concentrated company: tenge currency exposure, a small and less liquid float (just 38.35 million of the 190 million shares outstanding, with insiders holding nearly 69%), and the general risk premium investors demand for emerging and frontier markets. Whether that discount is too large, about right, or too small is really a judgment call on how much you trust Kazakhstan as a place to hold capital long-term, not a judgment on how well Kaspi itself is run.
For context on scale:
- Kazakhstan's population is about 21.1 million people.
- Kaspi has 15.7 million monthly active users, meaning roughly three out of every four people in the entire country use the app monthly.
- Daily active users sit at 10.7 million, a 68% DAU-to-MAU ratio, so most monthly users open the app every single day.
- Kaspi processes about 6.7 billion transactions a year, roughly 18 million a day.
- Kazakhstan's nominal GDP is around $360 billion. Kaspi's quarterly Marketplace GMV and Payments TPV combined already run into the tens of billions of dollars, a meaningful slice of the entire country's economic activity flowing through one company's app.
What Did I Understand From Today's Call
Growth is still real and broad-based, especially in e-commerce, but this was a "growth without matching profit growth" quarter rather than a clean beat and raise. Higher funding costs at home and fresh investment spending abroad are compressing margins for now.
- The core Kazakhstan business: still expanding fast, still dominant.
- The near-term cost pressure: real, and explains why EBITDA grew so much slower than revenue.
- The Türkiye expansion and Kasper AI rollout: both early-stage bets that could matter a lot in a few years, but neither is contributing much to today's numbers yet.
Is This a Good Company to Invest in Right Now
As a company, Kaspi is about as dominant as a business can get in its home market, deeply embedded in daily life for the vast majority of Kazakhstan's population, extremely capital-efficient, and now taking its first real steps outside its home country.
As a stock, this is close to the opposite situation from AMD or SpaceX in this series. Those two are priced for near-perfect execution. Kaspi is priced for meaningful risk, single-country concentration, currency exposure, and a thinner, less liquid trading float. The valuation is statistically cheap by almost any measure, but that cheapness exists for identifiable reasons, not because the market is asleep at the wheel.
Final Thoughts on Whether to Invest or Not
Personally, I have initiated my starter position in this company at avg price of $92.
If you already own this stock, the dividend hike and continued double-digit revenue growth support holding on, even with margins under some near-term pressure.
If you're thinking about buying in fresh, the math here is genuinely attractive on paper, a sub-10x trailing P/E, an 8%-plus dividend yield, and a business growing revenue in the mid-teens with return on equity north of 40%. That said, the stock has already had a strong run and sits above where the average analyst target implies, so you're not catching this cheap relative to recent momentum, only cheap relative to the underlying business quality.
Personally, I'd view this as a name worth owning for someone comfortable taking on Kazakhstan and emerging-market risk as a deliberate part of their portfolio, not as a substitute for a core holding. I'd want to watch how the Türkiye expansion actually performs and whether margins stabilize before adding aggressively, but the current valuation gives a real cushion that names like AMD and SpaceX in this series simply don't offer.
Disclaimer:
I am not a financial advisor. This article is based on publicly available earnings data and my own personal analysis and views. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research or talk to a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
(edited)Kaspi.kz's Q2 Earnings: Slower Profit Growth, a Bigger Dividend, and a Stock That's Statistically Cheap (My personal pick)
Numbers below are current as of August 25, 2026, about two weeks after the August 10 earnings call. Kaspi reported before market open that day, shares rose roughly 3.4% initially, and the stock has climbed further since.
What Is This Article About
Kaspi.kz, the Kazakhstan-based payments, e-commerce, and fintech super app, reported its second quarter 2026 earnings on August 10. I'll cover what was said on the call, what went right, what went wrong, then do the math on the valuation. I'll end with my own take on whether it's worth buying. This is not financial advice, just my own reading of the numbers.
What Was Discussed on the Call
Here are the numbers, all figures approximate US dollar equivalents of the reported Kazakhstani tenge results:
- Revenue: $2.3 billion. Up 15% year over year.
- Adjusted EBITDA: $826 million. Up 5% year over year.
- Net income: $539 million. Roughly flat year over year, and slightly below the $549 million analysts were modeling.
- Marketplace GMV: $4.8 billion, up 15% year over year. Marketplace revenue: $1.1 billion, up 11%. Marketplace adjusted EBITDA: $266 million, up 9%.
- e-Commerce GMV: $2.6 billion, up 28% year over year. e-Commerce revenue grew 35% to $820 million, with value-added services revenue up 49%.
- Payments TPV: $26.3 billion, up 13% year over year. Payments revenue: $351 million, up 5%. Payments adjusted EBITDA was roughly flat due to investment in the company's pay-by-palm rollout.
- Fintech revenue: $946 million, up 23% year over year, supported by an 18% increase in the average net loan portfolio. Fintech adjusted EBITDA: $356 million, up 6%.
Management also announced several other things on the call:
- The board proposed raising the quarterly dividend 18%, to KZT1,000 per ADS from KZT850.
- Kasper, a new AI shopping assistant, launched in July and is now available to all e-commerce consumers in Kazakhstan. About 20% of eligible consumers used it within the first month.
- Kaspi completed its acquisition of Rabobank A.Ş. in Türkiye in July, rebranding it Hepsi Bank, with plans to expand its fintech business there starting in 2027.
- In August, Kaspi cut the interest rate on its 3-month deposit product by 100 basis points, its first such cut in more than two years, a sign funding costs may be easing.
- Full-year 2026 guidance was reiterated, not raised or lowered.
What Are the Wins
- Revenue growth accelerated to 15% year over year, the fastest pace in several quarters.
- e-Commerce remains the main growth engine: GMV up 28%, revenue up 35%, and value-added services revenue up 49%, all in constant currency terms.
- e-Commerce engagement is strengthening: annualized purchases per consumer rose to 15.8, up from 11.6 a year ago.
- e-Commerce monetization is improving too: the third-party take rate rose 160 basis points to 16.1%.
- The dividend was raised 18%, a clear signal of management confidence.
- Return on equity: 44.78%. Return on invested capital: 81.96%. This is an extremely capital-efficient business.
- The balance sheet carries a net cash position and a current ratio of 6.52x.
- Early adoption of the Kasper AI assistant looks strong: about 80% of conversations produce a tailored recommendation, and 60% of those guide the customer to a specific product.
- The Türkiye acquisition gives Kaspi a real foothold outside Kazakhstan for the first time, reducing single-country dependence over time.
What Are the Losses
- Net income was roughly flat year over year despite 15% revenue growth, as higher funding costs in Kazakhstan and investment spending in Türkiye ate into the bottom line.
- Net income of $539 million came in slightly below the roughly $549 million analysts expected, a modest miss.
- Adjusted EBITDA growth of 5% lagged well behind revenue growth of 15%, a sign profitability isn't scaling with the top line right now.
- Payments segment profitability was essentially stagnant, weighed down by investment in the pay-by-palm rollout.
- The stock has already run hard. It's up more than 30% from its 200-day moving average of $81.55, and its Relative Strength Index sits at 79.42, solidly in overbought territory.
- The average analyst price target, $102.29, is actually below where the stock trades today, meaning Wall Street on average sees limited near-term upside despite the "Buy" consensus rating.
- The business remains heavily concentrated in a single country. Kazakhstan is a relatively small, currency-exposed emerging market, and the new Türkiye venture is unproven.
Analysis
Trailing P/E:
- Trailing twelve-month EPS: $11.52.
- At the current price of $106.46, trailing P/E is about 9.25x.
Forward P/E:
- Forward P/E sits at about 7.55x based on analyst estimates for the next year.
- For comparison, that's a fraction of what AMD (roughly 63x forward) or SpaceX (roughly 190x forward) traded at after their most recent reports in this series, and well below even H&R Block's already-cheap 8.4x.
EV/EBITDA and profitability:
- Enterprise value: about $19.4 billion.
- Trailing EBITDA: $5.12 billion.
- EV/EBITDA: about 3.78x, unusually low for a business growing revenue in the mid-teens percentage range.
- Price-to-book: 3.72x, which looks more reasonable once you factor in a 44.78% return on equity.
Dividend and shareholder return:
- Dividend yield: 8.22%.
- Payout ratio: about 49%, leaving room for the dividend to keep growing.
- Total shareholder yield: 8.14%.
What would fair value look like?
Applying a more typical multiple for a high-quality, high-growth fintech or e-commerce platform, say 15x to 20x trailing earnings, to the $11.52 trailing EPS gives a fair value range of roughly $173 to $230 a share, well above today's $106.46. That gap is the real story here. The market isn't pricing Kaspi like a mediocre business, it's pricing in a real discount for the risks that come with being a Kazakhstan-concentrated company: tenge currency exposure, a small and less liquid float (just 38.35 million of the 190 million shares outstanding, with insiders holding nearly 69%), and the general risk premium investors demand for emerging and frontier markets. Whether that discount is too large, about right, or too small is really a judgment call on how much you trust Kazakhstan as a place to hold capital long-term, not a judgment on how well Kaspi itself is run.
For context on scale:
- Kazakhstan's population is about 21.1 million people.
- Kaspi has 15.7 million monthly active users, meaning roughly three out of every four people in the entire country use the app monthly.
- Daily active users sit at 10.7 million, a 68% DAU-to-MAU ratio, so most monthly users open the app every single day.
- Kaspi processes about 6.7 billion transactions a year, roughly 18 million a day.
- Kazakhstan's nominal GDP is around $360 billion. Kaspi's quarterly Marketplace GMV and Payments TPV combined already run into the tens of billions of dollars, a meaningful slice of the entire country's economic activity flowing through one company's app.
What Did I Understand From Today's Call
Growth is still real and broad-based, especially in e-commerce, but this was a "growth without matching profit growth" quarter rather than a clean beat and raise. Higher funding costs at home and fresh investment spending abroad are compressing margins for now.
- The core Kazakhstan business: still expanding fast, still dominant.
- The near-term cost pressure: real, and explains why EBITDA grew so much slower than revenue.
- The Türkiye expansion and Kasper AI rollout: both early-stage bets that could matter a lot in a few years, but neither is contributing much to today's numbers yet.
Is This a Good Company to Invest in Right Now
As a company, Kaspi is about as dominant as a business can get in its home market, deeply embedded in daily life for the vast majority of Kazakhstan's population, extremely capital-efficient, and now taking its first real steps outside its home country.
As a stock, this is close to the opposite situation from AMD or SpaceX in this series. Those two are priced for near-perfect execution. Kaspi is priced for meaningful risk, single-country concentration, currency exposure, and a thinner, less liquid trading float. The valuation is statistically cheap by almost any measure, but that cheapness exists for identifiable reasons, not because the market is asleep at the wheel.
Final Thoughts on Whether to Invest or Not
Personally, I have initiated my starter position in this company at avg price of $92.
If you already own this stock, the dividend hike and continued double-digit revenue growth support holding on, even with margins under some near-term pressure.
If you're thinking about buying in fresh, the math here is genuinely attractive on paper, a sub-10x trailing P/E, an 8%-plus dividend yield, and a business growing revenue in the mid-teens with return on equity north of 40%. That said, the stock has already had a strong run and sits above where the average analyst target implies, so you're not catching this cheap relative to recent momentum, only cheap relative to the underlying business quality.
Personally, I'd view this as a name worth owning for someone comfortable taking on Kazakhstan and emerging-market risk as a deliberate part of their portfolio, not as a substitute for a core holding. I'd want to watch how the Türkiye expansion actually performs and whether margins stabilize before adding aggressively, but the current valuation gives a real cushion that names like AMD and SpaceX in this series simply don't offer.
Disclaimer:
I am not a financial advisor. This article is based on publicly available earnings data and my own personal analysis and views. It is not financial advice. Please do your own research or talk to a licensed financial advisor before making any investment decisions.
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