Maybe neobanks will break even after all

The Exchange is back after its brief hiatus. Anna and I have some really neat stuff planned, so stick with us every morning this week. — Alex

Building a consumer-facing fintech company is expensive. And if you want to build one in a sector crowded by both incumbent companies and richly funded startups, it can be super expensive.

That was the lesson we learned in late 2020 by examining operating results from a number of neobanks.

Neobanks are essentially software layers atop banking infrastructure, offering consumers digital-first, mobile-friendly and often lower-fee banking services. The push to rethink consumer banking is a global effort, with neobanks cropping up in essentially every market you can think of. Private investors have shown up in droves to fund competing neobanks because they have the potential to secure users — customers — that generate revenues for long periods of time.

The Exchange explores startups, markets and money. Read it every morning on Extra Crunch or get The Exchange newsletter every Saturday.

Investors have proven more than willing to fund huge investments in growth and product at many neobanks, leading to steeply negative operating results at the unicorns. In short, while American consumer fintech Chime has disclosed positive EBITDA — an adjusted profitability metric — many neobanks that we’ve seen numbers from have demonstrated a stark inability to paint a path to profitability.

That could be changing.

Recent results from Revolut that TechCrunch covered earlier this morning show that the company had a deeply unprofitable 2020. But if we dig into its quarterly results, there’s good news to be found. Neobanks could be maturing into their cost structure at last.

So today we’ll parse the key Revolut financial results and look at what we can dig up from Starling and Monzo. Perhaps the somewhat good financial news from Revolut is not merely to be found at just one neobank?

Revolut’s 2020

Our own Romain Dillet has a broad look at Revolut’s business here, if you would like a wider lens. We only care about its raw financial results at the moment.

Here are the big numbers:

• 57% revenue growth from £166 million in 2019 to £261 million in 2020
• Gross profit growth of £123 million in 2020, up 215% from 2019
• Gross margin of 49% in 2020, what Revolut described as nearly a doubling
• 2020 operating loss of £122 million from £98 million in 2019
• Total loss of £168 million in 2020, up from £107 million in 2019

The gist of these figures is that the company’s revenue growth was solid, but improving gross margins allowed its gross profit to spike in 2020.