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WISE — Deck

Wise plc · WISE · LSE

Mission-capped fintech where £594M of interest income meets a 2036 founder-control sunset and a Nasdaq move

1,090.5p
Price (17 Apr 2026)
£11.2B
Market cap
27×
P/E (FY25)
£1.36B
Underlying income FY25
April rally +25% to top of 6-month range; H1 FY26 underlying margin already slipped to 16.3%; dual-class extended to 2036
1 · What this is

A cross-border payments network that earns from take rate today and float interest until rates fall.

  • Business model. Two engines fused into one account: a per-transaction take rate (52bps in H1 FY26, down from 67bps in FY24) on £145B of FY25 cross-border volume, plus £594M of interest income on £17.6B of safeguarded customer balances. Roughly half of statutory revenue is rate-cycle income.
  • Competitive position. Moat is regulatory and operational, not software: 70+ licences, six direct connections to domestic payment systems (UK FPS, SEPA, Singapore FAST, Hungary, Philippines InstaPay, Australia NPP) that cut payment cost roughly 8x and push 90%+ of transfers through instantly. Replicating it would take a competitor 5+ years and £2B before they acquired a customer.
  • What's changed recently. Wise Platform — the API/embedded business — has accelerated from a sideshow to the strategic story, with Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, Nubank, Itaú and Monzo now routing flow through Wise rails. Today it is ~5% of volume; management guides toward 50%+ long-term.
Two businesses inside one stock: a deliberately price-cutting payments network and a £17.6B deposit book whose yield is leaving.
2 · Money picture

Margins flatter at the headline, compress at the underlying — and the gap is closing.

£1.36B
Underlying income FY25 +15.8% YoY
20.7%
Underlying PBT margin (target band: 13–16%)
£417M
Net income FY25 +17.5%
£1.4B
Equity, no structural debt S&P BBB stable

The 47.8% statutory operating margin is a rate-cycle illusion: strip out interest above the first 1% of yield and underlying PBT margin is 20.7%, already drifting toward the company's self-imposed 13–16% cap. H1 FY26 was the first crack — underlying PBT fell from £147M to £122M (16.3% margin) as rates rolled over and US-listing costs landed. For FY26 to clear consensus, volume growth must stay above 20% while take-rate cuts continue funding share gains.

3 · Price picture

Six-month base broke open — stock is up 25% in three weeks into the US-listing window.

  • Trend. 1,090.5p on 17 Apr 2026, sitting at the top of the six-month range after a flat 810–900p base from Nov 2025 through March 2026. The breakout above 935p in early April carried the stock 17% in 11 trading days on rising volume.
  • Relative strength. Outperforming UK payments peers (Western Union flat, PayPal +4% trailing twelve months) and trading at a P/E premium (~27×) to legacy cross-border names (~9×) but a discount to Adyen (~30×). Citi sits on a Sell with a 750p target as of 14 Apr; the rally has run away from the bear desk.
  • Key levels. 1,090p is the GARP-anchored base case from a reversion-to-underlying-earnings DCF; 1,450p is the bull case (25× £600M FY27 underlying earnings); 700p is the bear case (18× £300M rate-normalised earnings). The stock is now pricing the upper end of the GARP range.
Fresh breakout into a binary catalyst — the next 60 days decide whether the rerating extends or unwinds.
4 · Who runs this

Founder-CEO with skin in the game and an FCA fine — independent board, untested ability to constrain him.

  • Ownership. Co-founder Kristo Käärmann holds 18.1% economics and 49.3% of votes via Class B 9-vote shares; co-founder Taavet Hinrikus holds 5.6% economics / 13.1% votes. The July 2025 vote bundled the US primary listing with extending the dual-class sunset from July 2026 to 2036 — passed 91% Class A / 85% Class B over Hinrikus's public objection.
  • Leadership. Käärmann (CEO since founding, on the board since Apr 2021) takes £208K total pay — no bonus, no LTIP, no cash incentive — and owns roughly £2B of stock. CFO Emmanuel Thomassin joined Oct 2024 from Delivery Hero after Matt Briers's medical leave; chair David Wells (ex-Netflix CFO) since Dec 2021. Six of nine directors independent.
  • Signal. The FCA personally fined Käärmann £350K in Oct 2024 for failing to notify HMRC of personal capital gains tax from a 2017 share sale — labelled 'careless,' not deliberate. Board reviewed his fitness, retained him. Combined with the dual-class extension, minority shareholders have no escalation path for the next decade.
5 · How it got here

From frustrated remitters to cross-border infrastructure — with two metric changes along the way.

The past: Founded 2010 in London as TransferWise — Estonian co-founders Käärmann and Hinrikus tired of bank FX fees. P2P matching engine, word-of-mouth growth, profitable from year 5. London's first direct listing in July 2021 valued the company at £8.75B; the Adjusted EBITDA line was the headline metric for every period.

The pivot: 2022–2024 rate-rise era turned the £17B customer float into a £594M interest engine. Management invented a new lead metric — 'Underlying PBT' — that strips out interest above the first 1% of yield, then reset the margin target from 'at or above 20%' to 13–16% underlying. The stock fell 14% on the FY24 guide, then management announced the US primary-listing pivot in mid-2025 and bundled it with a decade-long dual-class extension.

Today: A £11.2B cross-border infrastructure name on the cusp of becoming a Nasdaq-primary, USD-reporting, US-GAAP entity, with Wise Platform partner wins (Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, Itaú) finally giving the 'trillions' narrative something to point at. The next chapter answers a single question: when interest income normalises, can underlying margin defend the band the company chose for itself?

Same mission, three reframes — every one made just before the market would have asked harder questions.
6 · What's happening now

April rally is the market front-running the Nasdaq listing — fundamentals haven't moved.

  • Recent event. 14 Apr 2026 Q4 FY26 trading update: cross-border volumes +27% YoY, underlying income +24%, take rate at 52bps. Stock +5% on the print, then carried by speculation around the 11 May 2026 Nasdaq listing date — the trigger forcing UK passive funds to unwind and US passive to step in.
  • Market view. Citi reiterated Sell with a 750p target on 14 Apr 2026, flagging Revolut's full UK banking licence and stablecoin push against the ~20–25% of Wise revenue exposed to UK cross-border. New Street downgraded from Buy to Neutral. The April rally has run the stock more than 30% above the most cautious sell-side anchor.
  • Off-filing signal. Wise filed directly to the US OCC (July 2025) for a national trust-bank charter — would convert Wise from partner-bank-dependent remitter to standalone US payments utility. Decision window plausibly 2026; approval is a re-rating event, rejection is a narrative blow.
11 May Nasdaq date is a flow event, not a fundamentals event — the bigger test is the 12 June FY26 print.
7 · What's next

A listing, an earnings print and a regulatory decision — all in the next eight weeks.

  • 11 May 2026. Nasdaq dual listing effective. UK passive funds forced to unwind, US passive forced to buy; 5–10% daily volume swings plausible. The first chance to see whether the new US shareholder base reads underlying or statutory earnings.
  • 12 June 2026. FY2026 full-year results — first full year reported against the 13–16% underlying PBT margin band after H1 already printed 16.3%. If full-year underlying margin slips below 14% with rates still supportive, the bear path to 700p opens up.
  • H2 2026 (window). US OCC decision on Wise's national trust-bank charter and the next leg of BoE/Fed rate cuts — every 100bps off the base rate trims roughly £200M of pre-tax income from the interest line.
The June print is the one that matters: it is the first full year management has to defend the margin band it chose for itself.
8 · For & against

Lean cautious — the flywheel is real, but the rerating is already in the price and governance just got worse.

  • For. Flywheel survived a full rate cycle, a CEO scandal and a CFO departure: customers +21%, volume +23%, holdings +33% in FY25, with two-thirds of new customers still arriving via word-of-mouth at near-zero CAC. This is unit economics, not a macro trade.
  • For. Founder alignment is uniquely clean — Käärmann's £208K cash pay, zero bonus, zero LTIP, ~£2B of personal stock and zero shares sold since listing. Skin-in-the-game ratio (8/10 on the governance scorecard) is the strongest single positive in the file.
  • For. Wise Platform is under-narrated: Morgan Stanley, Standard Chartered, Nubank, Itaú, Monzo on the client list, ~5% of volume today with a credible path to 50%+. The market is still modelling a retail remitter; if Platform compounds faster than retail, unit economics improve structurally.
  • Against. H1 FY26 underlying PBT already fell from £147M to £122M (-17%) while reported revenue grew 11%. The bear-case math (700p, -36%) only requires underlying margin to drift to the bottom of the 13–16% band as rates fall another 150bps — and the June print gives management no forward cushion.
  • Against. Governance traded one protection for a decade. The July 2025 vote bundled the US listing with a dual-class extension to 2036, proxy advisers admitted afterwards they missed the bundling, and an incoming US investor buys ten more years of founder veto without UK minority-protection backstops.
  • Against. Cash conversion is roughly 55% of net income — H1 FY26 underlying FCF annualises to ~£220M against £417M reported. The 27× P/E becomes a roughly 50× multiple on underlying free cash, and Citi's 750p Sell flags Revolut's bank licence and stablecoin push against ~20–25% of Wise's revenue base.
My View — Lean cautious. The flywheel is real and the Nasdaq flow event is a near-term catalyst, but the stock is already pricing the upper-end GARP case after a 25% rally and the June print is binary. Flip constructive only if underlying PBT margin holds 16%+ in FY26 full-year results.

Watchlist to re-rate: Underlying PBT margin in the 12 June FY26 print (above 16% is bullish; sub-14% is bearish); Wise Platform volume share disclosure as a percentage of total (any move toward 8–10% is a tell); BoE base rate trajectory and the £594M interest-income line each half.