Pensionbee Group Aktie

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PensionBee Q2 Trading Update. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I would like to submit the following poll, and I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation. I'd now like to hand over to the team from PensionBee Romi, Christoph, good afternoon.

Good afternoon. I'm Romi Savova, the CEO of PensionBee. Welcome to our Q2 2026 results presentation. Today, we are pleased to share our progress over the quarter as we continue executing on our vision to build a global leader in the consumer retirement market. For those of you new to the PensionBee story, we exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement. We operate in the enormous defined contribution pension market, representing over $30 trillion in assets and more than 100 million consumers across the U.K. and U.S.

Our customer-centric offering helps consumers to feel retirement confident. We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online account. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings.

Our long-term ambition is to build lifelong relationships with our customers. This approach delivers value to them throughout their retirement journey while driving predictable, scalable revenue for our business and strong returns for our investors. At the end of the quarter, we reached GBP 8.6 billion, approximately $11 billion of AUA on behalf of 327,000 invested customers, reflecting 37% year-on-year growth in assets.

Annual run rate revenue reached GBP 56 million, up 40% year-on-year and quarterly net flows grew 30% year-on-year, keeping pace with increased marketing investment and demonstrating efficiency. In the U.K., prompted brand awareness reached a record 62% with partnerships and sports sponsorships reaching broad audiences. AI tools enhanced our productivity with Beebot now resolving over 50% of its live chat volume, contributing to productivity improvements while maintaining the quality of our customer service.

In the U.S., we advanced our dual channel strategy with business-to-business distribution growing through intermediaries and our direct-to-consumer business growing through optimized marketing activities. The U.K. was profitable for the quarter with a 15% U.K. LTM adjusted EBITDA margin, while the group was profitable on a last 12-month basis, reflecting strong operating leverage.

Turning now to the U.K. We continue to invest in marketing over the quarter, increasing spend by 34% year-on-year to GBP 4.6 million in order to capitalize on our U.K. growth opportunity. The investment drove gross inflows up 34% to GBP 463 million, supporting brand awareness that made PensionBee one of the most recognized pension providers in the country. Brand investment is a long-term endeavor, and we were pleased to see it converting into customer growth with 327,000 invested customers at the period end, representing 14% year-on-year growth.

Our industry-leading technology platform continues to scale effectively, driving operating leverage and the consistent delivery of excellent customer service. We delivered a 17% productivity improvement over the quarter with over 1,700 invested customers per staff member in the U.K., representing a compound annual growth rate of 20% since 2020.

Two AI engines built on our over a decade-long knowledge base are enhancing our productivity. Beetrix, our internal AI copilot continues to boost productivity across our support function. BeeBot, our external AI bot, enhances customer self-service and is now able to independently resolve over 50% of its live chats, freeing our team to handle more complex queries. As we continue to become even more efficient, we maintain our standards of customer service, reflected in our excellent Trustpilot rating of 4.6 stars and an invested customer retention rate of above 95%.

Looking ahead, we are focused on delivering our key U.K. growth and scalability initiatives for 2026. On customer growth, we continue to deploy increasing marketing investment through engaging multichannel activities, growing our brand awareness. We continue to broaden our reach through partnerships and new channels, including our Channel 4 weather sponsorship now live and the launch of a new brand campaign expected in August.

We continue to invest in product innovations, including through our new hybrid app aimed at delivering a seamless user experience and stronger customer engagement across devices live on Android with the iOS version launching imminently. We are expanding our AI and automation capabilities with plans for further AI expansion on e-mails and operational processing.

Turning now to the U.S. Our focus on building brand awareness remains a top priority. We are growing national brand channels at scale through a multichannel approach that combines digital and out-of-home advertising. Our social media following has continued to grow exponentially since we launched our app, representing broad national reach.

Over the quarter, we deployed a customer testimonial campaign featuring our U.S. customers alongside an out-of-home billboard campaign across New York and Chicago, building our presence in key U.S. cities. We're pleased to see prompted brand awareness in the U.S. registering at approximately 5% as we continue to build recognition in the market.

Over the quarter, we continued to build our automatic rollover IRA, which we offer to employers usually through adviser intermediaries and third-party administrators. It is competitively priced with a high-quality investment portfolio and personalized service for participants. Every year, an estimated $60 billion in 401(k) balances leave employer plans for automatic rollover IRAs, and our offering is built to capture this flow.

Small balance rollovers, where employers force out former employees with balances below $7,000 are recurring and represent a potential of $4.6 billion of inflows annually. Voluntary rollovers where employers ask us to serve former employees with balances above $7,000 form part of a $1 trillion annual market and plan terminations where an entire 401(k) plan winds up and its participants transferred to us are large at approximately $55 billion of potential inflows annually with individual transactions reaching $250 million.

We are building our distribution across this ecosystem, having reached recordkeepers, representing approximately 75% of the market, building towards 100 intermediary relationships that each deliver approximately $10 million in recurring annual inflows and with over 1,500 employers already [ engaged ]. Our progress is compounding as relationships established in 2025 generate further client referrals and recurring inflows. At scale, this supports our path to $1 billion of AUA.

Turning to our priorities for the U.S. in 2026. We are scaling our automatic rollover IRA, building distribution across the ecosystem as we work towards our medium-term goal of $1 billion of U.S. AUA and continuing to onboard employer clients from our actively referring intermediaries. We are growing our direct-to-consumer presence. The U.S. today resembles the U.K. in its early years at the start of a similar growth trajectory.

We continue to grow brand awareness and build a predictable conversion funnel supported by our 1% batch, which encourages consolidation and contributions while enhancing our retirement planning tools to grow average account sizes over time. We are building efficient foundations, strengthening our transfer protocols, including straight-through processing from certain recordkeepers and continuing to optimize our marketing and operational efficiency to build attractive customer unit economics over time.

I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, our Chief Financial Officer, who will cover the financial update for the quarter.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and welcome to everyone to the financial section of our Q2 2026 results. Turning to the financial overview, I would like to start with a summary of our performance for the quarter before diving into the details of PensionBee's core value driver.

For the second quarter of 2026, the U.K. delivered strong financial performance with 37% year-on-year growth in our AUA to GBP 8.6 billion and 40% year-on-year growth in ARR to approximately GBP 56 million. The U.K. revenue increased 42% to GBP 14.3 million and U.K. adjusted EBITDA expanded profitability to GBP 0.8 million for the quarter.

On the last 12 months basis, we delivered a 2-year CAGR on the revenue side of 34% while maintaining cost discipline with our cost base growing at a lower compounded annual growth rate of 20%. This resulted in a U.K. adjusted EBITDA of close to GBP 8 million on a last 12-month basis, expanding the U.K. adjusted EBITDA margin to 15%, up from 8% last year.

At the group level, top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to group profitability on the last 12 month basis with last 12 months adjusted EBITDA of GBP 2.7 million at a 5% group margin in comparison to around negative 1% a year ago. These continuous achievements are derived from the core value driver of our business, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability.

Furthermore, they are testaments to our ability to consistently and reliably execute against our public market guidance. I would next cover the 2 value drivers in turn. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration, a function of the assets of existing and new customers.

In the second quarter, we achieved a 37% year-on-year AUA growth to approximately GBP 8.6 billion. The vast majority of our AUA base is derived from existing customers, customers who remain with PensionBee for a long periods of time and continue to build up their pension savings with us, resulting in value generation for decades to come.

Our average customer is around 42 years of age, and they build up their pension savings with PensionBee, which means that cohorts on an underlying value basis before any impact on capital markets appreciation are resilient over time. This is reflected in our invested customer retention rate of above 95% and our value retention rate of approximately 100%. The AUA is also derived from new customers acquired through our proven cost discipline approach to customer acquisition. Over the quarter, we onboarded 12,000 new invested customers onto our technology platform.

New customers joining were slightly older than in the second quarter of 2025, aged approximately 40, which with a higher average transfer in value. As a result, the compounding AUA base is subsequently converted into our revenue growth, owing to our resilient gross revenue margin in the mid- to high 60s. In the second quarter of 2026, we saw a revenue margin of 68 basis points, which enabled us to convert the 37% year-on-year AUA growth into revenue growth of 43% for the quarter and annual run rate revenue of around 40%.

In conclusion, thanks to the compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we have generated predictable and recurring revenue, which represents PensionBee's first value driver. The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability due to the controllable nature of our cost base. The cost base has continued to decline as a proportion of revenue. This scalability dynamics of predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in operating margin.

On the last 12 months basis, the U.K. adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 15%, up from 8% a year ago. Furthermore, the operating margin pre-marketing, a measure of scalability for the U.K. reached 42%, reflecting the inherent strong scalability and margin potential of the business. Reflecting on our long-term track record, PensionBee has delivered revenue growth since our IPO at a compounded annual growth rate of 44% and strong margin expansion in the U.K. with an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement to positive 15% on the last 12-month basis and operating margin pre-marketing improved to positive 42%.

This underscores strong delivery against our growth and profitability margin objectives. PensionBee operates a proven and scalable growth model designed to consistently expand our fee-generated asset base. Asset growth is driven by the following mechanisms. From a marketing investment perspective, which you can see on the left-hand chart, we have accelerated our marketing expenditure while delivering profitable growth, a trajectory we intend to maintain.

Our conversion predictability, which you can see on the middle chart, demonstrates the reliable rate at which we're converting marketing spend into gross inflows per pound of marketing budget deployed, thanks to the strong correlation between customers' age and gross inflows. This makes our growth engine predictable. Subsequently, through increased deployment of marketing and converting it predictably into gross inflows, we continue to drive gross inflows over time.

In short, PensionBee operates a proven and predictable growth model where increased marketing investments yield growing gross inflows. With respect to our guidance, the framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined our medium- and long-term targets. In the medium term, by year-end 2029, we expect the group to generate revenue of above GBP 100 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets.

In the long term, by year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate above GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50%. Our circa GBP 31 million cash balance or approximately $41 million of cash balance puts PensionBee in a very strong position to scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity, continuing to execute on our long-term strategy and delivering on our public market guidance.

I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. We are very pleased with the quarter. We are looking forward to a successful remaining 2026, and we are delighted to engage with the investor community on your questions over the last 3 months.

That's great. Thank you, Romi, Christoph. Thank you for updating. [Operator Instructions] There will be a recording available and that should be about 15 to 20 minutes after the meeting has ended. Romi, Christoph, you've had a number of questions from investors and attendees today. Thank you, everybody, for your engagement. Perhaps I could start off with the first one. At what point do you expect the group to become consistently profitable on a quarterly basis?

Yes, happy to take this one. So as we have outlined in our profitability guidance on an annual basis, we have a 2029 guidance that say 20% adjusted EBITDA margin on at least GBP 100 million of revenue. So that means about GBP 20 million in that particular year. And then the second target thereafter we have in 2034.

So with regards to specifically around the quarterly results, we, as a management team, focus very much on an annual basis because when you look at our marketing deployment, we actually see that there is a higher marketing deployment usually at the first half of the year because this is usually when we see a very strong return, but also it positions the business very well for the second half of the year, given that we build up the top end of the funnel and then converting customers through.

That basically also means that some of the costs might occasionally be front-loaded to the first half. So it's a little bit difficult to say at what point it will be precisely on a quarterly basis because of that nuance in terms of doing the best for the business. But on an annual basis, again, we target more than GBP 100 million in revenue by 2029 with around a 20% adjusted EBITDA margin, which would be around the GBP 20 million mark.

That's great. I just to jump a couple of questions to Gautam. Gautam's got 3 questions. So let's start with the first one. You reached 75% recordkeeper coverage. U.S.A. AUA is at GBP 4.8 million on around 400 customers. What's the actual lag time you're seeing between signing a recordkeeper intermediary relationship and converting into meaningful rollover inflows? And can you provide a rough time line to getting to that USD 1 billion AUM?

Thank you for those excellent questions on the U.S. As you know, in the U.S., we have a dual channel model. We maintain our direct-to-consumer marketing approach. And here, we are really focused on optimizing the conversion funnel. The conversion funnel is different to the U.K. conversion funnel. There is a lower cost of marketing at the upper end of the funnel, which we've kind of stated numerous times.

And conversely, because the prevalence of accounts in the U.S. is lower than in the U.K., there is also a lower funding rate. We are now at the point where we feel we're well optimized on the upper end of the conversion funnel in terms of the marketing spend, and we are progressively working our way through the conversion of the accounts from a funding request to a funding actually occurring. And I say that because you know the total AUA volume and the number of customer accounts, and most of those are coming through our D2C kind of channel.

The question then turns towards the intermediary market, where we are using our automatic rollover IRA, and we are really distributing through intermediaries, which includes advisers, third-party administrators. We know recordkeepers because they are important gatekeepers for making that flow as smooth as possible. So the recordkeeper relationships here are really about how easy is it for an employer to use the PensionBee automatic rollover IRA.

And the 75% figure there that is referenced points to the fact that we now have really broad relationships established across the recordkeeper market. So if you wanted to use the PensionBee automatic rollover IRA as a Fidelity client or as an Empower client or an Alight client, we either have a direct integration with you or we have worked with you or we are in the process of working with you. And so that broad coverage around the recordkeeper market as gatekeepers is really important. And we continue to add new recordkeepers, and we'll be sharing more news on that in the coming quarters and in the coming year to increase the ease of throughput through that B2B channel.

The intermediaries themselves are typically advisers or third-party administrators, who have strong working relationships with the employers. As we have stated in the release, we are targeting 100 intermediary relationships over the medium term, and that USD 1 billion AUM goal is a medium-term goal as we have previously stated. What we've given you here is really the inputs into the USD 1 billion AUM. The inputs are, of course, the B2B line. We've spelled out that we believe 100 intermediaries with $10 million of annual recurring inflow from those intermediaries, and I'm happy to go into more detail in terms of how that's generated. We see that getting us to $1 billion of AUA, but we also see it being substantially recurring.

And then similarly, on the D2C side, we've given you some of the ingredients around the funnel. We continue to establish the funnel. It's getting really well optimized on the marketing side, and we are continuing to push through on the conversion side through more automations and more kind of pushing of the transfers to get them [ through ] the system.

Just turning around to U.K. marketing spend. The question reads as follows: that U.K. marketing spend rose 34%, whilst gross inflows -- sorry, whilst gross inflows rose 34% new customers were 12,000 versus 11,000 with growth increasing coming from higher transfer in values from older cohorts average 40 versus 39. Should we read this as a shift in strategy towards wallet share over customer acquisition? And is that sustainable given the GBP 250 CPIC target?

Great question this time on U.K. marketing and the approach there. We remain very committed to our 1 million invested customer goal for the U.K. We see ourselves well on track for that. We are onboarding more new invested customers every year. And as you noted, we are increasing our marketing spend to be able to increase the rate at which the new invested customers are being onboarded.

As you also know, we make money on AUA. And so there is, of course, a priority to continue driving higher account sizes. We've been very transparent around that. And you can see that reflected in the average balances that are coming through on the PensionBee platform. So yes is the short answer, very much committed to growing towards the 1 million invested U.K. customers with a focus on optimizing flows per pound of marketing spend.

And the GBP 250 CPIC is, of course, very important. It's a key driver of our LTV, so kind of long-term returns from customer acquisition activities. However, we will always expect to see an increase in CPIC, especially because we are increasing marketing spend, and there's always a lag between marketing spend and the customers transfer actually completing. So very much on track for our long-term goals there. And hopefully, everyone will be very pleased with the growth in those gross inflows.

Indeed. And maybe just one other point to comment on the growth engine because it is really important for us as a business is that our growth engine is really predictable, and let me tease out a few additional points on this one. But before maybe also quickly on the CPIC target, yes, very committed to it. You did see that we have indeed accelerated marketing investment this year and CPIC has come up a bit. But also we have already -- we have seen this in the past as well. So when you go back actually to 2022, you see actually a similar CPIC level at the time where we also increased that marketing spend and on the back of that had really accelerated customer acquisition.

So we usually look at CPIC target by year-end and the main reason is the acceleration in marketing. But I think the second point that we want to tease out is which is also new that we -- in our presentation on Page 18, which is the strong metric around gross inflows per pound of marketing spend. And that's quite important because as Romi just said, ultimately, we are making -- we're generating revenue based on the assets, on the fee-based assets. So we see marketing as just a growth vector, a growth driver.

And therefore, it's very important if we invest marketing that, that translates into gross inflows and therefore, drives revenue. And so therefore, we monitor gross inflows per marketing deployed. And you can see on Page 18 that there's a strong correlation with age in particular. And I think we are really happy about delivering a gross inflow per marketing spend that is in line with last year.

Yes, customers were a little bit older, but also we spend a little bit more towards the back end of this first half. And so that means given that there's always a little bit of a lag effect that when we deploy marketing until customers come into the door and customers are -- the ports are transferred in, there's always a little bit of a lag effect. So that means closer to you to deploy towards the end of the quarter, if you will, the more is actually pushed -- the value is pushed into the next quarter.

So I think despite that really strong gross inflows per marketing spend, and it basically highlights Page 18 in particular, that the growth engine is really, really predictable and reliable because we have provided data back from 2022 to 2026, and it shows a strong correlation we spend marketing. We have a certain marketing strategy that translates into gross inflows.

That's great. Just changing the subject, the final point of the question here around margins. U.K. LTM EBITDA margin hit 15%, already closing in on the group's 2029 target of circa 20% for the whole business. Does that imply that margins alone need to run well ahead of 20% to offset ongoing U.S. losses?

Yes. Very good question. And the short answer is yes. So I think the U.K. will -- given that the U.K. is much further down its growth trajectory, will contribute much, much more strongly to the medium-term guidance by 2029. So that means that on a group level, we target around 20%. We probably expect the U.K. to be at or above 20% at around that time and the U.S. to be around breakeven levels. So I think your suggestion is correct. And I think that's a reasonable understanding.

That's great. Question from Jude at RBC. Again, a number of questions here. On the Channel 4 weather sponsorship, it's great to see PensionBee on the TV in the evenings. What's the rationale for this booking this particular slot? And is it replacing something else that PensionBee used to sponsor?

Great question, focused on the U.K. marketing strategy and particularly around building brand awareness. And Jude, I am so pleased to hear you commenting on the visibility of the brand. We are really focused on becoming an even better known household brand in the U.K., and we think the Channel 4 weather sponsorship will contribute significantly to that. It's a very repetitive format. And so we expect consumers to see us multiple times a day. And it greatly enhances, we believe, the visibility of the brand and also the long-term trust that we are seeking to establish.

We have some exciting pending product-related activities that will feed in nicely with this brand sponsorship. So pleased to keep watching. And in terms of what it is replacing, we have concluded our sponsorship of Brentford. It's been a wonderful relationship, and we really feel proud of everything that has been achieved over that 5 years working with Brentford.

Over that period of time, we saw brand awareness growing significantly. We have previously stated that brand awareness grew significantly amongst male audiences. And therefore, we believe that the football sponsorship was really effective in driving that given the audience representation around that sport. And so with a lot of that having delivered significant value, we are turning our attention to slightly different and perhaps broader audiences, including around the Channel 4 sponsorship.

We have more sponsorships that will be announced very soon, some of which have been in the live environment already. And we believe that the combination of the repetitive Channel 4 sponsorship and a slightly deeper brand-related sponsorship, again, on the sporting front, will enable us to continue to reach a broad section of the audience, while maintaining the diversity of the sponsorship mix.

Thanks, Romi. Moving on, I think in the past, this is from Jude. You said around 30% of existing customers contribute new assets. Can you remind where that stands now? And is there any color you can add on how different cohorts behave in this respect? For example, do customers starting contributing more the longer they have been with the group?

Nothing particularly new to report here. The numbers remain broadly in line with what we've previously discussed. We believe that consumers contribute as and when they can. And of course, pension tax relief remains one of the important ways that personal finances can be optimized in the U.K.

In terms of cohorts, we believe that contributions are more prevalent where affordability is greater. And so of course, the mix of customers that we have, we have customers with GBP 1 or GBP 100 in their pensions with PensionBee and we have customers with GBP 1 million and beyond. And so we do tend to see contributions at the higher end of the affordability curve, and that's probably kind of quite expected as well.

That's great. Just a question from Matt. Are you seeing any change in customer contribution behavior beyond pension transfers?

So I believe we just answered that one. However, what I would add and what is really interesting for us to see is that we are seeing a very similar contributing behavior emerging in our U.S. customer base. Obviously, the U.S. customer base is still significantly smaller than the U.K. customer base.

But nevertheless, we see that around 20% of the U.S. customers are contributing. And so that very much validates our hypothesis that consumers around the world are looking for good, usable easy retirement solutions that are also high quality. And it's great to see that contributing behavior making itself known across the pond too.

We've got a number of questions from William. William, thank you very much for your questions. The first is you've added 22,000 U.K. customers in H1. Should H2 be higher as marketing momentum builds? Or is there still likely a seasonal dip H2 versus H1 as the tax year impact fades?

We think that the marketing buildup has been particularly strong. You can see that in the gross inflows, and we can certainly see that in the transfer request too -- so we think that the pipeline remains strong, and we expect to continue optimizing that in the second half.

Second part of his question, you seem to enjoy much higher inflows per new customer this quarter. If I'm right, what was the driver? And does it influence our view about the outlook? It seems to be the 42-year-old higher average age?

Well, we're certainly looking to grow inflows per pound of marketing spend, and we have been for a while. We are also looking to grow the invested customer base, and we have our 1 million invested customer target for the long term for the U.K. So yes, we are enjoying higher inflows per new customer, and we intend to continue on that route. We see the opportunity for engaging customers with slightly bigger accounts as being a marketing and a product initiative.

So you can definitely expect to see more from us on that point certainly in the second half, but also next year. And generally speaking, U.K. account sizes are increasing across the board because automatic enrollment is becoming so embedded. And the typical 35-year-old has more in their account in the U.K. than the typical 35-year-old did 10 years ago. So there is also a kind of broader market effect that you would expect to see in our numbers.

And the final question, turning back to the Channel 4 weather sponsorship. Is this a relationship that you hinted in the Q1 call? Or is there something else also in the pipeline?

This was definitely hinted at in the Q1 call, and we have more in the pipeline, too. So please be patient.

That's great. And then there was one final question. I think you might have touched on it, but just in case there was any further color, but marketing investment increased quite significantly. And really where were you seeing the highest returns?

As you know, we're big believers in the diversified approach to marketing. That includes paid channels. That includes, of course, search, organic and paid across various devices, but also in brand and making sure that we are top of mind when customers think about their pension. So very much continue to deploy that diversified marketing mix. It's been critical to our growth and will continue to be so.

Thank you very much indeed. And Romi, Christoph, that takes care of all the questions from attendees today. Thank you to everybody for your engagement. As usual, Romi, I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their feedback. But before doing so, if I may just ask you for a couple of closing comments.

Thank you very much for joining us today, and we look forward to continuing the conversation.

That's great. Romi and Christoph, thanks once again. That concludes today's presentation, ladies and gentlemen. We will now redirect you for your feedback. Thank you for your time.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PensionBee Q1 2026 Results Presentation.[Operator's Instructions] Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll, and please do give that your kind attention. And I'd now like to hand over to the management team from PensionBee. Christoph, Romi, good afternoon.

Good afternoon, and welcome to PensionBee's Q1 2026 Results Announcement covering trading for the period ending 31 March 2026. I'm Romi Savova, the CEO of PensionBee Group. For those of you who are new to the PensionBee story, we are creating a global leader in the consumer retirement market. We exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement. We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online plan. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings.

Our aspiration is to build a lifetime relationship with our customers, generating predictable and scalable revenue for our company and for our investors. Over the first quarter of 2026, we continued to record strong year-on-year growth in assets under administration, revenue and invested customers as we executed on our long-term strategy.

Turning now to our individual country segments. In the United Kingdom, we closed the quarter with assets under administration of GBP 7.5 billion, representing 29% year-on-year growth, annual run rate revenue of GBP 52 million, representing 43% year-on-year growth and 315,000 invested customers. This growth was achieved despite the well-publicized global economic turbulence over the past few months. Over the first quarter, we onboarded approximately 10,000 net new invested customers through our effective advertising approach. New customer growth reflected a healthy balance of brand and organic activity, paid channels and partnerships. Heading into the second quarter, we continue to execute on our strategy to reach 1 million invested customers.

To that end, we will continue accelerating our marketing spend with a focus on new brand opportunities to reach new audiences and a growing investment in our partnerships. We will, of course, keep a watchful eye on economic volatility. We continue to invest in productivity, introducing BeeBot to our customers following successful internal testing. BeeBot is currently resolving 30% to 50% of our chat volume, and we have clear next steps to grow the resolution rate to 65%. Overall, we generated a productivity improvement of 23% year-on-year with each staff member supporting close to 1,700 invested customers. The U.K. business was profitable for the quarter and delivered a 15% adjusted EBITDA margin on a last 12 months basis. Turning to the United States. Over the first quarter of 2026, we have been broadening and deepening the foundations for long-term growth.

In line with our State Street partnership, we continue to build brand awareness and drive customer acquisition in the large U.S. retirement savings market. We recently reintroduced our out-of-home advertising campaign across New York City and Chicago, while continued investment in our product won us the best retirement management platform at the Fintech Breakthrough Awards for a second consecutive year. Early customer cohorts demonstrated strong engagement with product features, including IRA rollovers and the 1% match on contributions and transfers. The brand awareness the company is building also directly supports its B2B distribution strategy, which targets two distinct but related opportunities, recurring small balance rollovers, where employers periodically force out former employees with retirement balances below $7,000 occurring continuously as part of normal workforce turnover and plan terminations, where a 401(k) plan is wound up entirely through bankruptcy or M&A, a structural event affecting a significant portion of the market annually.

The combined addressable market represents approximately $60 billion across 3.9 million participants annually. Our proposition addresses a critical gap in the market, employers and administrators seeking streamlined administration, reduced fiduciary risks and lower costs, whilst employees benefit from the same high-quality investments, competitive fees and personalized service that define PensionBee's direct-to-consumer offering. The company is building its pipeline through RFPs and advisory relationships with existing contracts validating the market opportunity and positioning PensionBee to capture market share.

Looking ahead, PensionBee remains focused on converting brand awareness into customer growth across both channels. The company will continue to be disciplined with spend while continuing to invest in product-led growth, enhancing the customer experience through new features and capabilities that drive organic customer acquisition and retention. And I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, PensionBee Group's CFO, who will cover the financial update.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and a warm welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to cover the financial section of our Q1 2026 trading update. In Q1, PensionBee had a strong financial performance despite macroeconomic environment and associated volatility, showcasing the resilience of our business model. The U.K. delivered strong financial performance with 29% year-on-year growth in our AUA base to GBP 7.5 billion and 43% year-on-year growth in ARR to approximately GBP 52 million. U.K. adjusted EBITDA profitability for Q1 was close to GBP 1 million at 5% margin in comparison to negative 11% in Q1 2025.

At a group level, top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to breakeven EBITDA position. Those continuous achievements are further testament of our consistent and reliable execution against our public market guidance and is ultimately derived from the business core value drivers, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration and is derived from the assets of existing and new customers. In Q1, we have seen a 29% year-on-year AUA growth to circa GBP 7.5 billion.

The vast majority of our AUA base is derived from existing customers, customers who remain with PensionBee for a long period of time and continue to build up their pension saving with us, resulting in value generation for decades to come. This is because our average customer is around 42 years old, and they build up their pension savings with PensionBee, which means that cohorts on an underlying value basis, i.e., before any capital market appreciation are very resilient. Next, AUA is also derived from new customer acquired through our proven approach to cost disciplined new customer acquisition.

Over Q1 2026, we added circa 10,000 new invested customers on to our technology platform. Joining customers had higher average incoming balances in Q1 this year compared to Q1 last year. For the remainder of the year, we expect the total number of invested customers to continue to growing strongly and with a slightly older average age profile on the back of a larger expected marketing budget for 2026 compared to 2025. As it is customary in the industry, pension assets are invested in capital markets. Similar to what we have observed in past periods of volatility, we recorded strong underlying KPIs on retention rates and net flows, underscoring PensionBee's strength, resilience and predictability despite external volatility. The compounding AUA base is subsequently converted into our revenue base owing to our resilient gross revenue margin.

In Q1 2026, we have seen the revenue margin of 67 basis points, which enabled us to convert the 29% year-on-year AUA growth into the LTM monthly group revenue growth of 32%. In conclusion, owing to our compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we are driving predictable and recurring revenue, which is PensionBee's first value driver. The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability, owing to our controllability of the cost base, which is thereby continuing to decline as a proportion of revenue. For the United Kingdom, those scalability dynamics and predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in adjusted EBITDA margin to positive 5% in Q1 2026 compared to negative 11% in Q1 2025, an improvement by close to GBP 2 million in adjusted EBITDA while simultaneously investing into growth and increasing our marketing budget by 15% year-on-year. With respect to our guidance framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined our short, medium and long-term targets.

In the short to medium term, so by year-end 2029, we expect the group to generate revenue of above GBP 100 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% by end of 2029, with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets. In the long term, so by year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate above GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50% by year-end 2034. Our roughly GBP 32 million in cash balance puts PensionBee in a strong position to further scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity to continue executing our long-term strategy and delivering on our public market guidance. I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. We are pleased to move into the investor Q&A section and to engage with investors. And I already see some questions coming through.

That's great, Romi, Christoph, thank you very much indeed for updating investors. Okay. Let's jump straight into it. A number of questions, as you say. Thank you to everybody for your engagement thus far. Let's kick off with, how are you driving additional contributions from existing customers?

Fantastic question. PensionBee, of course, exists to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement and contributing into accounts is, of course, a key priority to grow the retirement savings of a particular person. We, of course, recently wrapped up the tax year-end. And what we saw was a very strong performance from customers contributing into their accounts. We saw contributions increasing in aggregate terms around 25%. So very much in line with the kind of growth that we see across our AUA base in general. We believe that customers continue to prioritize pension savings, and we are, of course, there for them when they do that.

In terms of how we do it, well, we, of course, focus a lot on making the journey for our customers as easy as possible. So when they want to contribute, they can do so through easy bank transfer in 60 seconds or less. They can learn about contributions and the benefits of contributions and use our retirement planning tools to see the value of their contributions over a long period of time. And so we were very happy to support our customers through the tax year-end. It was a successful tax year-end, and we're pleased to see that our tools and our education enabled our customers to grow their retirement accounts with us.

A question -- a number of questions from William. Thank you for your questions, William. Let's kick off with, what do you expect -- sorry, what do you expect the GBP 4.7 million U.K. marketing spend to be by full year? And is the allocation by quarter likely to be similar to last year? What new brand opportunities do you have in mind for the U.K.?

Yes, I'm happy to take the first part of the question. So with regards to the full marketing budget for this year, we have been guiding pretty much since last year that we will aim to increase that marketing budget over the next few years. So that means that this year, we target to have a higher marketing budget compared to last year. I think we would target a number that is around the mid-teens million pounds for the full year. And then with regards to your phasing question, so we usually have a very similar phasing of how we deploy our marketing budget across the year, and I think that will be very similar to this year as well. I hand over to Romi with regards to the new brand opportunities.

Yes, absolutely. You may have seen that we are broadening our sports sponsorship activities with a recently announced sponsorship of the Saracens on the rugby front, which is new for us. It enables us to access an audience at a slightly deeper level and more will be revealed about the partnership in due course, but we feel very confident that the demographics of the partnership will align very closely with the demographics that we are, of course, targeting, which are consumers in the mass market and those with pension savings that are looking for a home for their pension accounts. In addition to the depth that we expect to deliver with that partnership, we will very soon be announcing additional sponsorship opportunities that will enable us to really expand our reach and also the frequency with which we interact with our customers. And I will leave it at that for now because it's a very exciting opportunity, and I don't want to front-run our marketing team's inevitable success with it.

Great. U.K. net customers in Q1 2026 were 10,000, which was the same as Q1 '25. Is this implying that the total customer acquisition will be flat at 40,000 by full year? Or do you expect more of a takeoff from here?

I'm very happy to comment on that and continue the dialogue. A lot of what we usually see reflected in Q1 is the pipeline that we had built in the previous year. And so 10,000 net new invested customers is, of course, very consistent with the pipeline that we built last year because, of course, the net new customer figure in 2025 was around 40,000 net new invested customers.

Over the course of the first quarter of this year, we have, of course, been increasing our marketing spend and the $4.7 million total spend has been discussed already, which is an increase from the roughly $4.1 million that we had last year in the first quarter. And so we expect to see a continued growth in the new customer pipeline through those Q1 activities. And we do indeed see that growth in the pipeline, not only in registrations, but also in new customers requesting transfers and then individual transfers themselves. And so the pipeline that we are currently sitting on and that we've built in Q1 is bigger than the pipeline that we had built in Q1 of last year, and we expect that growth in the pipeline to materialize over the course of this year and beyond and also, frankly, to continue growing as we increase the marketing budget overall relative to last year.

I guess the final part of William's question, net flows per new U.K. customer seemed around GBP 10,000. That is about the same as Q1, but down from full year. Is this just a repeat of last year's seasonality, so later quarters have more flow per customer? Or could the run rate be lower this year?

Happy to take this one. So it is a very predictable actually development that we usually see. So the flows per customer for Q1 is usually a little bit lower in Q1 compared to Q2, Q3. And therefore, it actually ramps up. This is because, as Romi said, we are building the pipeline. Customers may come in with one pot and then adding another one later on. So as you alluded to, we have net flows from new customers of around GBP 13,500 this year compared to GBP 13,200. So we have slightly increased it given the increase in age. And then we ended the year last year at around GBP 17,400. And it's a very similar dynamic that we have seen in previous years. It's actually very predictable that we start a little bit lower on net flows per new customers and then actually it ramps up in subsequent. So yes, we do expect a ramp-up over the next few quarters.

Okay. Great. Thank you. Question here from Matt. Thank you. How is competition evolving in the U.K. digital pensions? Are you seeing pricing pressure at all? Are incumbents or Fintechs responding, I guess, a little bit more aggressively?

This is a great question on the competitive environment. And as you know, we have long been advocates for a diversified pension landscape within the U.K. We believe that the acute problem within the U.K. landscape is that not enough individuals are aware of their retirement accounts and what they can do with their retirement accounts and how to take control of them and manage them. And so in general, we tend to welcome a broadening of the market. I would say that Q1 has been very exciting in terms of pricing moves from various different companies within the pension space.

The view that we take on pricing is that the diversity of the pricing within the market should really mirror the diversity of the services being offered within the market. And consequently, fees in the U.K. for pensions range all the way from kind of 0% to 3% and beyond. And within the context of available services, we are very much on the lower end of the pricing schedule. And so we do believe that consumers actually look at what they're buying. If you are sometimes acquiring a product and you need support and service, you might choose a financial adviser. If you are very happy to do a lot of trading by yourself, you might choose a completely different kind of platform.

We believe that our service is appropriately priced for the mass market. It reflects the excellent customer service that we offer to customers who have all the way from GBP 100 to beyond GBP 1 million within their retirement accounts with us. We're very proud of the service that we offer. And so the pricing that we have, of course, reflects the service that we make available. And we think it's really important, of course, that fees are also compared on a like-for-like basis. At the moment, we do see quite a lot of fee positioning from providers that doesn't include all of the costs, including investment costs.

We are very proud to have one fee for our customers, which includes the whole service that we offer and also the underlying investments, and we continue to offer excellent value on that service. So in response to your question, no, we don't really see pricing pressure. We see that our marketing expenditure is attracting a very high level of net new invested customers with more in the pipeline. And so we continue to believe that customers value our service as it's being priced.

A short question from Thomas. Can you substantially and sustainably fund U.S. expansion?

Yes. The short answer is yes. We have specifically, if you may recall, in October 2024, raised GBP 20 million, specifically allocated to the U.S. expansion. So that means we have a very full cash reserves allocated to the U.S., and that is funding, of course, the ramp-up there. And the U.K. is self-funding as well. And as the U.K. is more and more generating profitability, that profit is then reinvested into growth in the U.K. So we have -- the U.S. is well funded. We have a very strong cash position to then fund -- continuously fund the expansion. Now if you look at the U.S. profitability number for Q1, it was an investment of GBP 1.2 million. So if you then actually look at the cumulative profitability pretty much since when we started, that is about GBP 7.6 million.

However, not all of that is actually cash investment. There's intercompany transfer pricing involved. That means value that is coming from the U.K. to the U.S. So you actually look at the cash investment that we have done, that number is much lower. It's like GBP 4.6 million. What that basically means is that we are very cash conscious when it comes to U.S. expansion to position us really strongly to continue building out the foundation, position us as strongly as we can for future growth. So again, the short answer is, yes, we have sufficient cash. And the long answer is if you look at the cumulative data that substantiates the claim as well.

Thank you, Christoph. Maybe sticking with you here, I don't know. But can you explain the minimal increase in annual recurring revenue from GBP 50.6 million at the end of full year '25 to GBP 51.6 million at the end of Q1 2026. I see that ARR actually declined between the same periods of the previous financial year. So is Q1 weaker consistently than other quarters?

Yes, I'm happy to take this one. Not consistently, no. However, the last two years, it happened to be that both of early April dates are the capital markets was down. So we have a significant allocation to U.S. equities. If you look at the S&P 500 as a proxy, and you may recall last year at the first -- sorry, at the 2nd of April, there was the liberation day, which caused market volatility, which impacted our revenue base. So that was the explanation from last year. This year, it coincided that actually around the same time, there was market volatility. Again, if you look at the S&P 500 year-to-date chart, you see that dip. So it's not consistent, but it actually happens to be last year and this year. And that particular time is important because ARR is monthly revenue times 12 for March 2026 and March 2025, respectively. And so that has been impacted by that particular volatility. But as you have also seen, the S&P 500 has since recovered and is actually up year-to-date 3.8%

Okay. A couple of questions from Jude at RBC. Thanks, Jude. U.K. pot sizes. It looks like the pot sizes from new customers are slightly higher this year than in Q1 2025. Can you offer any color on the drivers for that and whether we should expect that trend to continue?

Happy to take this one. It's a very simple answer because the model is very predictable. That answer is the age profile of consumers that we acquired this year. We target a slightly older demographic compared to last year. So the incoming age of the consumer this year was 39.6 compared to 39.3 last year. And we see this very consistently the age profile dictates and also the incoming pension pot because they benefited from more contribution in their accumulation journey. So that is the explanation. And yes, we do expect that to continue because our target for this year is generally a higher age profile compared to last year.

Thanks, Christoph. And Jude has a further question around U.S. marketing. You spent around GBP 900,000 this quarter in the U.S., which you say was substantially refunded by SSGA. Are you able to clarify how much of that was refunded this quarter and whether we should expect PensionBee to make incremental contributions towards the U.S. marketing going forward?

Yes. What we mean with substantially, it's the vast majority. So it's more than 90%. So considerably refunded well above more than 95%, frankly. And yes, if we see opportunities, we would top it up, but we have an established relationship with a long trusted partner that supports in that endeavor to build the brand and position us well for growth.

Great. And actually, Jude, sorry, I didn't see the follow-on, but Christoph, if you've covered this, great. But if not, it's just a replacement question. You've got a touch above GBP 250 CPIC threshold this quarter, and we're guiding for the budget to increase over the rest of the year. Do you expect further quarters you could see spend above GBP 250? And if so, how should we think about the returns on this higher marketing investment?

Yes. So usually, we see a higher CPIC at the beginning quarters. So we will -- because as Romi said earlier, we will build up that pipeline and then consumers convert through the funnel. So the return on the back of it is quite strong. I may remind listeners that our lifetime value over CAC as expressed as a multiple is quite strong to mid-single digits of 5x to 7x. So we do generate very strong returns on it, also with very strong payback period of around 2 to 3 years, depending on the age profile of the consumers. And another point that is also worth noting is, yes, looking at it from a CPIC perspective, the number was GBP 258.

However, if you actually be mindful and factor in the gross CPIC or the gross number of customers we acquired, the number becomes lower because there's obviously a natural -- there's some attrition as well, less than 5%. And that obviously is a proportion of the overall book. So that needs to be considered as well. And if you actually look at the gross number that we acquired in Q1, it actually is a really strong and actually quite consistent metric when you compare this to previous years over the same quarter.

Thank you, Christoph. Three questions from Gautam at Peel Hunt. indeed. I think you touched on one. But can you remind us of your quarterly seasonality, Q1 tends to be strong inflows given the tax year-end.

Yes, that is correct. So there is some seasonality that is driven by the marketing budget and how we build the funnel, if you will. So as we -- usually the flow works, we spend a heightened amount in marketing. That means you build up the top end of the funnel. Consumers then convert through the funnel and then as they convert to the funnel, bring in their pension pots and then as the customer contribute. So usually, the first quarter from a new customer perspective is a very strong start. But then what we have also seen historically that actually the subsequent quarters are usually quite strong as well. So usually, we actually see a higher net flow from new customers in Q2 compared to Q1. So there's some seasonality in there. It's actually very predictable when you look at historical trends and it has to do with how we deploy marketing. And that is obviously a function always on tax year end and other windows that allow themselves for marketing to be deployed at some heightened scale.

Follow-on regarding around the U.S. Is the U.S. business tracking to your plan? Has the recent geopolitical situation impacted you in any way? And should we expect you to report revenues from U.S. in '26?

The interesting thing about the current geopolitical situation is that the U.S., in particular, seems to be somewhat more insulated than many other countries despite, of course, being front and center of the geopolitics around the world. And so what we tend to see within the U.S. economy is some level of insulation from the geopolitical situation. And certainly, we can see that there continues to be strong appetite for online services for financial products. And therefore, we don't actually see a marked impact from the geopolitical environment other than the volatility, which we, of course, discussed earlier.

In terms of the U.S. progress, the U.K. at a similar time in its development was tracking at around GBP 20 million to GBP 100 million of AUA over the kind of 2- to 3-year period following its establishment. At the moment, the U.S. is tracking very closely and especially looking at our pipeline within the direct-to-consumer, but also on the B2B side, we feel quite good about the growth that is embedded now within the U.S. We are very much building a snowball as we were back in 2014 and '15, '16, '17 and '18, the early days of the U.K. And we expect that snowball to continue because we believe that we offer a better product for consumers and easier product for the mass market. And certainly, on the B2B side, we know that we offer a much more competitively priced product that is really appealing to advisers and to employers.

I would say what is different about the U.S. relative to the U.K. at this stage of the U.K.'s journey back then is that our B2B business in the U.S. is going to be substantially lumpier with high levels of inflows kind of occurring around B2B successes more on a kind of one-off basis when we look at 401(k) plan terminations -- on the B2B side, automatic rollovers for small balances tend to be recurring. And so employers will engage in force out and automatic rollovers every single year. So there is a slightly different dynamic because of the profile of the business in the U.S. But overall, it's looking very familiar. And when we analyze the growth in assets or in invested customers, it's demonstrating the first shape of the curve that we have come to know and love. And so yes, we would expect the U.S. to continue delivering over the course of the year.

Thank you. And it won't be the same without some questions around AI, and you've disclosed some productivity gains. Is there room for this to improve? And do you envisage usage of AI in your tech platform to develop new products?

Yes, absolutely. We are very excited about the AI initiatives that we have going on across the business. You will recall that our AI journey really began with Beetrix, which is our internal copilot. And through developing Beetrix, we built the foundations to develop BeeBot, which serves our customers directly. BeeBot is currently resolving 30% to 50% of all of the live chats that our U.K. customer service team is receiving. And we see, one, huge scope to increase the resolution rate of BeeBot up to kind of 65% in the short term. We also see, two, more scope to defer more of the customer communications that are coming into us via e-mail currently back into BeeBot where customers would get a more instantaneous reply, which we're confident they would value. And then three, to deploy BeeBot onto our e-mail comms as well. And therefore, we do expect to see continued great automation within customer service, but always with the caveat that if a customer at any time wants to speak to their personal beeKeeper in line with our customer service commitment that, that beeKeeper is available, whether they want to speak on live chat or whether they want to speak on the phone. And so BeeBot has combined really well with our existing customer service model and provides the foundation for us to continue growing productivity at these really rapid rates.

I think you can see that reflected in the headcount figures that we released quite recently in our annual report, our headcount has basically stayed flat, while our invested customers have been growing at around 15% every single year. And our AUA and our revenue has been growing at around kind of 25% to 45%, depending on the metrics that you look at. So we do see huge scope for continued AI and customer service, particularly. And then beyond customer service, we are seeing a lot of use cases within our technology department. We are developing and launching features to customers more quickly than we ever have before. And so that should continue. And then finally, we are building AI features within the product set where it makes sense to do so. And so you can expect to see a little bit more from us on that front coming soon. We want to make sure that we're always using AI when it faces our customers in a thoughtful way and not just spinning out agents for the sake of it. So you can expect to see quite a lot more from us on that front in a way that makes our customers happy.

Thank you, Romi. A question from Michael. Thank you, Michael. Can you provide more detail on U.S. marketing and returns on this? I've seen advertisements on subways and billboards on major roadways. I assume this marketing is directed to public rather than RIAs.

Thank you for this excellent question. And I'm glad that you've seen our billboards. They are live again in New York and Chicago. And I think a key kind of observation on our end is that billboards will be a fundamental feature of the marketing mix that we employ within the United States. Currently, of course, live in significant hubs on the East Coast with more hubs to be introduced over the course of the year. The billboards are absolutely leading to increased incoming customer volume and an increasing pipeline of 401(k) rollovers and IRA transfers. So we feel quite good about the billboards. And what we really like about the billboards is that they're driving brand awareness within our B2B segment as well.

RIAs are, of course, people who drive on the highway or take the subway, and they are very much exposed to our branding as are the employers that we are ultimately signing contracts with. And we believe that continuing to make consumers, RIAs, employers aware of our service and then supplementing that service with an excellent product will generate the returns that we're looking for over the long term. I have numerous e-mails from advisers and business partners and customers confirming that they too are seeing the billboard. So we're very confident that they're working as expected.

Well, great. Thank you to everybody for engagement. Romi, Christoph, that's all the questions for today. Thank you to everybody for your engagement. I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts, their expectations, their feedback. But before doing so, Romi, perhaps I could just ask you for a couple of closing comments. And then as I say, I'll redirect those to give you feedback.

Absolutely. Well, thank you very much for taking the time today to join us for the Q1 results. We're looking forward to another successful quarter in Q2, and we hope that you will join us for the next progress update.

That's great. Christoph, Romi, thank you once again for updating investors. If I could please ask those on the call not to close this session. We redirect you for your feedback. We'd be most grateful if you give that your kind consideration. On behalf of the management team at PensionBee, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the PensionBee Group plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Throughout today is a recorded meeting [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'm sure the company will be most grateful for your participation.

I'd now like to hand over to the management team from PensionBee, Romi, Christoph, good afternoon.

Thank you very much for joining us today. And for those of you who are new to the PensionBee story, we exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement. We operate in the enormous defined contribution pension market representing over $30 trillion in assets.

Our customer-focused offering helps consumers to feel retirement confident. We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online account. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings.

Our long-term ambition is to build a lifelong relationship with our customers. This approach not only delivers value to them throughout their retirement journey, but also drives predictable, scalable revenue for our business and strong returns for our investors. We were pleased to conclude 2025 with GBP 7.4 billion, approximately $10 billion of assets under administration, GBP 51 million of annual run rate revenue, 305,000 invested customers and GBP 1 million of group adjusted EBITDA.

In the U.K., we continue to invest in our brand, increasing our marketing budget from GBP 9.1 million in 2024 to GBP 12.1 million in 2025 and thereby reaching 305,000 total invested customers. We recorded approximately 60% brand awareness, placing PensionBee among some of the most trusted brands in consumer financial services.

We invested in our AI search visibility, resulting in high visibility on AI overviews, the new interface for traditional Google search. We also invested in our technology, recording a 22% increase in productivity. This increase was delivered through new automations, the launch of our new interface, which modernizes and unifies the customer experience on web and mobile and also our AI advancements.

We refined our internal copilot Beetrix to serve BeeKeepers and used our learnings to develop Beebot, our customer-facing chat agent who will increasingly serve our customers on live chat. Overall, we recorded strong customer satisfaction ratings, including an NPS score of 67 for 2025. Over 2026, we will continue to focus on customer growth, deploying an increased marketing budget through our data-led multichannel approach.

We will continue to raise the company's prominence through consumer advocacy, sports sponsorships and commercial partnerships. We will also continue to modernize our user interface and invest in our customers' experience, encouraging them to continue preparing for and enjoying a happy retirement. We will take steps in our AI journey, increasing our productivity through more automation in our customer communication.

Turning now to the U.S. We were pleased to refine our strategy in partnership with State Street. We established our long-term goal of national brand awareness and refined our localized approach to the market. Our national brand awareness benefits our individual business in the $1 trillion annual rollover market. We help our customers to consolidate old retirement accounts into one new IRA easily, giving them access to simple, high-quality investments.

Our investment in our brand also benefits our business line, where we offer our automatic rollover IRA to employers through advisers, helping those employers to manage 401(k) plan terminations or small balance rollovers from former employees. Our superior value proposition enables employers to reduce their fiduciary risks and achieve better outcomes for their stakeholders in this $55 billion annual inflow market.

Importantly, our U.S. business model is synergistic with customers acquired through our business line being served our individual product and being encouraged to consolidate accounts and advisers being attracted to our high-quality consumer offering as a key point of differentiation for their clients.

Given the importance of brand for our long-term success, we made significant strides in growing our online presence on social media, reaching customers in large metropolitan areas through our billboard campaign and growing our share of voice in the press. We recorded strong initial brand awareness of 5% and a high of 12% in our home state of New York.

We also completed a strong investment in our U.S. technology infrastructure, developing multiple sources of inflows, including individual rollovers, transfers and contributions as well as bulk transfers for our business line. We established a variety of accounts, including a traditional IRA, Roth IRA, SEP IRA and Automatic Rollover IRA. Within the individual Beehive, customers can monitor their investment performance, use our tools to plan for retirement, manage their accounts and take distributions.

This investment was delivered alongside group adjusted EBITDA profitability. We are now focused on reaching the $1 billion milestone in our U.S. business. We will deepen our national brand awareness, continuing to invest in marketing and highlighting the simplicity and effectiveness of our customer experience. Over 2025, we created a sizable and robust pipeline of new business for our automatic rollover IRA, which we will continue to grow over 2026 while onboarding new clients.

I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, our Chief Financial Officer, who will cover the financial update for the year.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and a warm welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to cover the financial section of the full year results. Turning to the financial overview, I would like to start with a summary of our full year performance before diving into details behind each value driver.

For the full year 2025, the U.K. delivered strong financial performance with 27% year-on-year growth in our AOA to GBP 7.4 billion and plus 33% year-on-year growth in ARR to approximately GBP 51 million. U.K. adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 5.4 million at a 12% margin compares to 7% the prior year. At the group level, top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to an improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin, achieving profitability of approximately GBP 1 million at a 2% group EBITDA margin for 2025.

These continuous achievements are derived from the core value drivers of our business, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability. Furthermore, they are a testament to our ability to consistently and reliably execute against our public market guidance. I would cover each of them in turn next. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration, a function of the assets of existing and new customers.

In 2025, we achieved a 27% year-on-year AUA growth to GBP 7.4 billion. The vast majority of our AUA base is derived from existing customers, customers who remain with PensionBee for a long period of time and continue to build up their pension savings with PensionBee, resulting in value generation for decades to come. Our average customer is in their early 40s, and they build up their pension savings with PensionBee, which means that cohorts on an underlying value basis, i.e., before any impact on market appreciation are resilient over time.

AUA is also derived from new customer acquired through our proven cost disciplined approach to customer acquisition. Over 2025, we onboarded circa 40,000 new invested customers onto our technology platform. And over 2025, customers joining were slightly younger than in 2024, aged approximately 39.7. The prior year, it was 40.6, in line with our marketing strategy for 2025.

The younger customer cohorts acquired resulted in a slightly lower average balance of new customers in 2025 compared to the prior year. As a result, the compounding AUA base is subsequently converted into our revenue growth owing to the resilient gross revenue margin of mid-60s. In 2025, we saw a revenue margin of 65 basis points, which enabled us to convert the 27% of year-on-year AUA growth into revenue growth of 28% and annual run rate revenue growth of 33%.

In conclusion, thanks to our compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we have generated predictable and recurring revenue, which represents PensionBee's first value driver. The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability due to the controllable nature of our cost base. Our cost base has continued to decline as a proportion of revenue. This scalability dynamics of predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in operating margin.

On a 2025 basis, the adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 12%, up from 7% in 2024 for the United Kingdom. Furthermore, the operating margin pre-marketing, a measure of scalability for the U.K. improved to approximately 40%, up from 33% last -- the year prior, resulting in an inherent strong scalability and margin potential for the business.

Reflecting on our long-term track record, PensionBee has delivered revenue growth since our IPO of a CAGR or compounded annual growth rate of almost 50% to 2025 and strong margin expansion in the U.K. with an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement from negative 166% pre-IPO to now positive 12% for 2025.

Further, operating margin pre-marketing improved from negative 35% pre-IPO to positive close to 40% for 2025 in the U.K. This underscores strong delivery against our growth and business scalability objectives. With respect to our guidance framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined our short, medium and long-term targets. In the short to medium term, by year-end 2029, we expect the group to be generating revenue of above GBP 100 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% by the year-end 2029 with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets.

In the long term, by year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate above GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50% by year-end 2034. Our circa GBP 33 million of cash balance puts PensionBee in a very strong position to further scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity, continuing to execute on our long-term strategy and delivering on our public market guidance.

I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. It's a pleasure to be here again with everyone today, and we hope that some of the additional context that we have provided on the 2025 results is helpful to you. we'd love to take some questions.

That's great, Romi and Christoph, thank you very much indeed for updating those on today's call. I'm just going to bring your cameras back up. Thank you very much indeed. [Operator Instructions]

Thank you to everybody. We've got a number of questions, Romi. So if I may, I'll start off with one from Paul. Thank you, Paul. 67% NPS is an excellent result. Congratulations. Could you just confirm the actual number of investors who responded to the request to score you?

This is a very excellent and precise question for which I do have a precise answer, which is 7,177 responses on the NPS questionnaire. And yes, we are pleased with the number. We always feel that there is However, more that we can be doing for our customers, but of course, very happy to have it at this level and to be positive on that.

Great. A question from Jonathan. Thank you, Jonathan. Do you expect the U.K. revenue margin to increase or decrease or to be maintained at 65 basis points? And what drove the expansion to 65 basis points in full year '25?

Yes, I'm happy to take this one. So generally speaking, on the margin, the gross revenue margin, we do guide that it will be in line with historical figures. So you can see clearly that it has been pretty much in the mid-60s since inception. So it's a very resilient margin.

We do expect it to remain at those kind of levels going forward. And the very slight change has to do with a mix effect across the funds. So there is some movements that results from the blend or the mix across the AUA is still spreading through the fund. But generally, again, going forward, looking forward, we expect the revenue margin to remain with historical figures, and it has been very resilient pretty much since inception of the business.

That's great. I've got a question from James. Let me just see if I can unmute your microphone [Operator Instructions] there we go.

Congrats on another good set of results. Just one question for me. I think at the end of Q4, from memory, there was around $3 million of AUA onboarded from U.S. customers. Are you able to kind of give us any sort of steer as to what that number is, say, at the end of February so far in Q1?

You're going to have to wait for the Q1 results, I'm afraid, which will be out in April. We'd really like to focus on the 2025 results. What I can give you some commentary on is that we are exceptionally busy in both countries. In the U.K., we are obviously approaching tax year-end, very similar in the U.S.

And we also see some increasing developments in our business line in the U.S. as well, where we work with employers and advisers to help them solve their needs around terminating 401(k) plans or around small balance rollovers, but you will have to wait for the exact details until the end of the actual quarter.

Yes. I thought it was worth a try anyway.

Let's move on to a question from Jonathan, if I may. How are you thinking about the split of investment between the U.K. and the U.S. going forward?

I'm happy to take this one. So the split between investment, I think, was the question. And the best way to think about our 2 geographic segments is the U.K. and the U.S., as you alluded to, you can think about that the U.K. is actually -- is generating its own profit and cash and is therefore fully self-funded.

So the U.K. business will, at this point, continue to scale. We expect the marketing budget to continue to increase while we're keeping the U.K., of course, profitable. So the profitability is something that is very firmly established, and we want to grow it and scale it as quickly as we can by basically reinvesting the excess profit into the organization and the U.K. business.

On the U.S., on the other side, the U.S., we specifically raised, think about now 1.5 years ago, around $20 million to fund the entirety of the U.S. business plan, and that is solidly earmarked for scaling the U.S. business. So in short, the U.K. is self-funding, so to speak, and the U.S. has sufficient funds to fund the business plan to its profitability point. I hope that answers the question. But if there is a follow-up, happy to take this one.

Great. Thank you very much, Christoph. Turning to 3 questions here from William. Thank you very much indeed, William. Q1 '26 is almost over. Are there any developments that we should know about in the U.K. or the U.S.

I would refer to my earlier commentary on the U.K. and the U.S. Obviously, the quarter will end at the end of March, and we will be reporting back to you in April on that. And what I can say in the meantime is that we are exceptionally busy on both fronts.

Great. Follow-up question. Can you update us on the expected time line to the USD 1 billion milestone, Slide #14?

We will update on the U.S. development as we continue to proceed. Obviously, $1 billion is a significant number. It's certainly a number that we feel puts a very strong marker in the sand. There are a number of milestones that we will, of course, report to you in advance of that number, but we wanted you to have in mind the same kinds of figures that we do and that we envisage for the business.

And of course, the constituents in terms of getting there, we have the individual business where we continue to see strong interest from individuals with very large accounts. And we have our business to business to consumer line, too, where some of the deals that we are looking at are well worth $100 million alone. And so we feel that we have the pipeline to be able to achieve that number, and we will report on milestones against it as we continue along.

That's great. And William's final question, where are you seeing the most and least demand for the fund offerings in your U.K. suite?

Well, we continue to believe that customers deserve a simple and straightforward approach to high-quality investing. And therefore, we spend a considerable amount of time and attention to our default solutions. This is a very well-established framework within the U.K. and ensures that even if customers are kind of not financial PhD holders that they can receive access to excellent investments.

And so we continue to see very strong interest within our default products. Those are products for under 50-year-olds and products for over 50-year-olds. And our product for over 50-year-olds, in particular, is very focused on managing volatility, which, as I'm sure you will agree, is very important in this particular time.

Thank you. William, I hope that addresses your questions. Jude from RBC. Jude. A couple of questions. I think you can take one of them. I'm not sure about the other, but let's see. Can you elaborate more on your AI comments from earlier?

It sounded like you've got some really interesting developments there, and it would be good to get any additional color. And then as we are nearing the end of Q1, are you able to give any update on customer acquisition so far? So over to you.

I am certainly able to take the first question about AI developments, which I believe we've been keeping you fairly apprised of. And of course, last year, we spent a lot of our time developing and implementing Beetrix, which is our internal copilot. Beetrix helps our BeeKeepers to answer customer queries and is trained on our proprietary internal knowledge of pensions, pension transfers and all things in the world of retirement savings.

Recently, we have taken steps to develop Beebot. Beebot is our customer-facing chatbot and will imminently begin serving customers. Beebot is expected to begin answering the first 20% of queries that are regular nonpersonalized queries. quickly moving to address another 40% of those types of queries before moving into slightly more personal account-based questions such as did you receive my contribution, how far along is my transfer and so on.

But the initial expectation is that Beebot will be serving about 20% of our live chat coming through. Now you may ask what proportion of our communication is through live chat. The answer is that it is actually still a small component of our overall kind of communication framework with our customers. As you know, we have live chat, we have phones and we have e-mails.

But over time, we will be transitioning written communication more into our Beebot live chat environment, which we think customers will enjoy more than e-mail anyway. But you can always rest reassured that when a customer wishes to speak with an individual at the company with their BeeKeeper, that BeeKeeper will always be available. I hope that helps to give a bit more color.

Great. Thank you. A question from Paul. Paul, thank you. When do you expect to be regularly reporting on AUA from the U.S. Not sure who wants that one.

I believe Christoph is taking that one on mute.

Go ahead, Christoph. Let me just take control there, Christoph. Just press aloud for me, sorry, one second. Okay. Go ahead, Christoph, we can hear you.

Yes, with regards to the reporting question, this -- we will commence the reporting on the U.S., specifically when the AA becomes and other metrics becomes material. You will see that in the announcement that some of that is already reported on a segment basis. But I think we will embed it more formally into the regular presentations as well as the numbers become more material.

Question from Andrew. Please, can you comment on the actual audited P&L results rather than management figures, excluding many costs from when will the company make a profit?

So with regards to profit before tax, we -- is one metric that we obviously have in our KPI framework. We primarily focus on adjusted EBITDA because that is the best approximation for cash. So this is the reason why adjusted EBITDA was chosen. With regards to profit before tax, that is again another metric that we monitor.

I think -- but primarily, we focus on the adjusted EBITDA number in the meantime, given that it's about the self-funding element and also when we still want to scale the U.K. business, we want to do it while basically being self-funding.

Therefore, we're using the adjusted EBITDA number as the primary guide. And then I think once we have scaled the marketing number to a level where we feel comfortable with to keep it more stable or slower growing, this is I think when the other metrics would come more and more into the fore.

That's great. Gautam, thank you for your question around retention rates. Could you split the churn between pension withdrawals versus customers moving to other platforms? And on the latter, where do people typically move to traditional incumbents or new wealth techs?

Yes. So crudely speaking, it's roughly half-half the split, and it has remained that kind of split for a while. And with regards to the attrition question, where do consumers go if they choose to go to another providers, this tends to really be a very idiosyncratic question in a way that many consumers have very specific needs and aspects of why they are going to another provider, for instance, some quote that we record in our exit interviews.

For instance, they want to consolidate the workplace pension, some prefer to pay a premium price for an adviser. Some want to have a very specific asset exposure. So there tends to be very individual specific or idiosyncratic reasons of why consumers are leaving. But I think what is important for us is that the retention is very high. So it has been 95% pretty much since inception of the company, and that is what we primarily are focused on.

That's great. A question from Tom around marketing. Thank you for your question. Are you able to provide any commentary on the dynamics between spending and customer acquisition?

For example, if each customer acquisition costs, say, GBP 250 per customer, is it roughly proportional if we spend 10x that, the amount that you normally see in terms of 10x the amount of customers being onboarded?

In certain parts of the funnel, broadly speaking, yes. So certainly, in the earlier parts of the funnel, where we see kind of the early parts of the conversion. So for example, when a customer first registers interest by leaving a name and an e-mail address, there is certainly a very strong correlation between sort of instant marketing spend and instant registrations.

Where things then become a little bit more different is how long it takes for any particular individual customer to ask us to transfer their pension or their account. And of course, depending on the nature of the customer, how busy they are, how big their assets are and various other life factors, that is not always an instant request. And then, of course, the second kind of aspect of the time line is how long it takes for a pension provider to save -- to send that money.

And we've seen in our experience, both in the U.K. and in the U.S. that some can be as quick as 5 days and others can take many months and throw additional roadblocks into the process which our BeeKeepers and operations executives are very well equipped with dealing with, but which can obviously take time.

And so broadly speaking, yes, at the earlier parts of the funnel, we can absolutely see a strong and early correlation. It does, however, because of the nature of the transaction, this is not a video game, for example, takes some time for the conversion to actually flow through.

But we feel very confident in terms of the numbers that we see moving through the funnel, and we have a lot of systems and processes in place to actually keep each and every single pension moving through that funnel of ours.

Christoph, Romi, that's perfect. Thank you very much indeed. We've taken all the questions that we've had through from investors today. So thank you to everybody for your engagement. Romi, Christoph, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you both.

I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But perhaps, Romi, I could just ask you for a couple of closing comments.

Well, thank you very much for attending today. We're pleased to offer some additional color on the 2025 annual results beyond what we offered at the trading update. We hope that you will join us again for the Q1 results later on this year, and we look forward to seeing many of you later on in the coming weeks and then as well. Thank you.

That's great. Romi, Christoph, thanks once again for updating those on today's call. Can I please ask attendees not to close this session as we're now...

Good afternoon, and welcome to the PensionBee Group plc Q4 Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions]. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to Romina Savova, CEO. Good afternoon.

Good afternoon, and welcome to PensionBee's Q4 2025 Results Announcement covering trading for the period ending 31 December 2025. I'm Romina Savova, the CEO of PensionBee Group. For those of you who are new to the PensionBee story, we are creating a global leader in the consumer retirement market. We exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement.

We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online plan. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings. Our aspiration is to build a lifetime relationship with our customers, generating predictable and scalable revenue and profit for our company and for our shareholders. We are pleased with the results of the fourth quarter, which reflects strong execution in the U.K. and in the U.S. As is expected for the medium term, the United Kingdom made up the bulk of assets and invested customers. The U.K. closed the quarter with assets under administration of GBP 7.4 billion, representing 27% year-on-year growth, annual run rate revenue of over GBP 50 million, representing 33% year-on-year growth and approximately 305,000 invested customers.

Over the fourth quarter, we increased marketing expenditure to GBP 2 million compared to GBP 1.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2024, positioning the business for continued ramp-up in marketing-led growth in 2026 and beyond. The investment drove U.K. customer growth of 37% over the quarter with 8,000 new invested customers onboarded, underscoring the effectiveness of our growing marketing expenditure. Overall, we onboarded approximately 40,000 customers in 2025, increasing the number of net new customers relative to 2024. We continue to invest in productivity, introducing new automations and efficiencies across our technology platform. We generated a productivity improvement of 22% year-on-year with each staff member supporting 1,621 invested customers.

We are well positioned for 2026 with the launch of our new and refreshed BeeHive experience, which will soon include the introduction of AI-powered chat in the app, further enhancing our long-term productivity. The U.K. achieved adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 3.4 million with a 26% adjusted EBITDA margin for the quarter, underscoring our commitment to profitable growth in the U.K. The U.K. also supported group profitability for the year overall. Turning to the United States. Over the fourth quarter of 2025, we have continued to focus on establishing a strong foundation for long-term growth. Our first advertising campaign concluded successfully, delivering a meaningful uplift in brand awareness in the markets where billboard advertising was deployed.

Our home location of New York saw prompted brand awareness of 12%, Seattle at 9% and Chicago at 6%. This heightened visibility converted broader market interest into a healthy customer pipeline, which we can see continues to convert over time. The company maintained its product-led growth strategy, enhancing the customer experience through the introduction of performance analytics, giving customers greater visibility of investment returns and improving transparency.

PensionBee is now entering 2026 poised for growth, supported by strong early interest in our 1% match initiative, which is designed to accelerate the company's path to $1 billion of AUA in the U.S. as well as a number of new distribution partnerships. PensionBee has successfully secured its inaugural Safe Harbor IRA contracts and initial clients are in the process of being onboarded, while additional clients are in the final stages of discussion. I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, PensionBee's CFO, who will cover the financial update.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and a warm welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to cover the financial section of the Q4 trading update. In Q4 2025, PensionBee had strong financial performance with 27% year-on-year growth in our AUA to GBP 7.4 billion and a 33% year-on-year growth in ARR to approximately GBP 51 million. This top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to an improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin with the group achieving profitability of GBP 2 million at a 16% group EBITDA margin for the quarter, driven by U.K. adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 3.4 million at a 26% margin for the quarter.

These continuous achievements are derived from the core value drivers of our business, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability. Furthermore, they are a testament to our ability to consistently and reliably execute against our public market guidance. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration, a function of the assets of existing and new customers. In Q4, we experienced a 27% year-on-year AUA growth to GBP 7.4 billion. The vast majority of the AUA base is derived from existing customers. Those are customers who remain with PensionBee for a long period of time and continue to build up their pension savings with us, resulting in value generation for decades to come.

Our average customer is in their early 40s, and they build up their pension savings with pension B, which means that cohorts on an underlying value basis, so that is before any impact on capital markets are resilient over time. AUAs are derived from new customers acquired through our proven cost disciplined approach to new customer acquisition. Over Q4 2025, we onboarded circa 8,000 new invested customers onto our technology platform, representing a 37% year-on-year growth. Over 2025, customers joining were slightly younger than in 2024, aged approximately 39.7. And so last year -- the year before in 2024, it was 40.6%, so approximately 1 year younger, in line with our marketing strategy for 2025.

The younger customer cohorts acquired resulted in a slightly lower average balance of new customers this year compared to the previous year. As a result, the compounding AUA base is subsequently converted in our revenue growth, owing to our resilient gross revenue margin. In Q4 2025, we saw the revenue margin of circa 65 basis points, which enabled us to convert the 27% year-on-year AUA growth into quarterly revenue growth of 34% and annual run rate revenue of 33%. In conclusion, thanks to our compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we have generated predictable and recurring revenue, which represents PensionBee's first value driver.

The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability due to the controllable nature of the cost base. Our cost base has continued to decline as a proportion of revenue. The scalability dynamics of predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in operating margin. On a 2025 basis, adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 11%, up from 7% in 2024 for the United Kingdom.

Furthermore, the operating margin pre-marketing, so this is a measure of scalability for the U.K. improved to 39%, up by 6 percentage points from 33% last year, reflecting the inherent strong scalability and margin potential of the business. Reflecting on our long-term track record, PensionBee has delivered a revenue growth since our IPO of compound annual growth rate of 48% to December '25 and strong margin expansion in the U.K. with adjusted EBITDA margin improving from negative 166% pre-IPO to positive 11% today.

Furthermore, operating margin pre-marketing improved from negative 35% pre-IPO to positive 39% over 2025 in the U.K. This underscores the strong delivery against our growth and business scalability objectives. With respect to our guidance framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined the short, medium and long-term targets. So by the end of 2029, we expect the group revenue to be above GBP 100 million and adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% by the year end 2029 with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets. And by the year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate above GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50%.

Our circa GBP 33 million in cash balance puts PensionBee into a strong position to further scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity, continuing to execute on our long-term strategy and delivering our public market guidance. I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. We are very pleased to be concluding the fourth quarter on a high note and are very excited about the 2026 plans ahead, both for the United Kingdom and also for the United States. We'd now like to open up to questions.

Fantastic. Christoph, thank you very much indeed for the update. Just while the team take a few moments to review those questions submitted today, I'd just like to remind all the attendees that you can continue to submit your questions and we'll have available the presentation on the platform as well. Romi, perhaps if I can just start with the first question, thank you. It comes in 3 parts. So I'll break them out for you. The first one is, can I please ask about the take rate, which was slightly higher in Q4. Anything to be mindful of?

Christoph, one for you.

The take rates, can you maybe ask a question of how this will be defined? Is this new invested customer? -- number, maybe someone can clarify.

Let me see if [indiscernible] can clarify that point. Let me just hit the second part of that question. CAC year-on-year was a touch higher as well. What are the drivers? How should we think about CAC long term?

Yes. Happy to take the second one. So the CAC, so the way of how we think about marketing and customer acquisition is basically to drive growth. And so CAC is a very important measure for that, that we look at and where we have a self-imposed threshold of GBP 250, which we are at the end of 2025. But another way that we're also looking at is what is the return on that CAC. And so a way of, again, thinking about we spend marketing to drive growth.

And so in other words, we spend marketing and we get cross inflows. So -- and if you're looking at the gross inflows and divide them by marketing, so you get basically what is the gross inflows that you get for each pound of marketing spend, what you will find actually that the business model is very, very predictable because the gross inflows per marketing pound spend for 2025 was 114, and the average age of the customer that we acquired was 39.7. So if you look actually 2 years back in 2023, the average age of the customer we acquired was 39.5.

So roughly the same age and the gross inflows per marketing spend was 120. So that means actually -- and then last year, where the average age was 40.5, the gross inflows were 145. And the years before it was lower, the gross inflows per marketing spend was lower. So that tells us that actually, if we are very mindful of what is the demographic and the average age of the customer cohort that we acquire, it gives us a really reliable and predictable indicator of what the gross inflows return would be as a proportion of marketing spend. So that's the second way that we're looking at. And I think that tells us a lot about the predictability of the nature of the business.

And the final part of the question, how is U.S. expansion tracking to your internal plan? Should we expect to see material revenues from the U.S. in 2026? How will costs track against this?

Great question on the U.S. The U.S. is, of course, still in the early phases of its development, and I would point you towards the medium-term guidance that we have for the group overall. The medium-term guidance, of course, sees us achieving a GBP 100 million revenue marker with a 20% EBITDA margin. And I think as you can see from the numbers that we've reported today, simply kind of doing more of what we have currently been doing would very much kind of be in line with the achievement of that guidance. And so when it comes to the U.S., we will continue to focus on the kind of key development milestones that we see for the business over the 2026 time frame.

That includes establishing the direct-to-consumer repeatable marketing funnel, which we are now starting to see coming through on the back of the advertising that we did last year, but also with the B2B contracts on the Safe Harbor IRA side, where we have signed the first ones and are in the process of onboarding. And so you can expect to see quite a lot of progress on the U.S. in terms of initial milestones being reported over 2026.

I would, as I have done in the past, contextualize the U.S. business with the goal of -- and our goal of growing it more quickly than we grew the U.K. business at a similar stage of its development, some relevant milestones there. It took us about 1.5 years to acquire the first U.K. customer. Within 2 years, we had about GBP 20 million of AUA. Within 3 years, we had about GBP 100 million of AUA. And so I think that you can see us moving the U.S. business much faster against those initial milestones. And I think that that's what we will be reporting against as we scale it up to a meaningful level.

Yes. Can I maybe add one point? I think there was also a question on the cost. And I think the key point to highlight there is that we approach the U.S. in a really, let's say, capital disciplined and derisk approach, generating a lot of synergies, number one, from the technology platform that we have developed in the U.K. and bringing it over to the U.S. and as well as having the commercial relationship with our local partner who refunds the marketing investment. So -- and then the third one is the 1% match that we're rolling out. And you need to be mindful is that 1% match, yes, it comes from our balance sheet, but what you actually get is a highly predictable return from it because -- or minimum return from it because the requirement for the 1% match is a 5% hold.

And so that means that is already paying back your acquisition costs as well as generating some returns on it. To quantify this a little bit, so the U.S. for the full year was an investment of GBP 4.5 million. There was some transfer pricing in those numbers. So if you take that out and look at the pure cash number, it was about GBP 3 million. So that means actually we spent a low single digit for expansion to tap in the world's largest pension market. So that's number one.

And then included in the number as well is a GBP 3.8 million investment in marketing. But again, this got refunded, thanks to the relationship that we have with our partner. So I think one thing to be very mindful of is how we approach the U.S. expansion in a very capital disciplined way and therefore, also derisk that expansion by being very mindful, generating synergies, having a very interesting commercial agreement and then the structure around the 1% match.

Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed. Next one we've got here. What are the key operational levers to reach your medium-term target 20%? I think you've covered some of these on the way through, but if there's anything further to add.

Yes, I'm happy to take this one. So the levers to get to our 20% target, it is really almost embedded in the business itself because PensionBee is of course, a growth story. So we will continue growing in the U.K. as strongly as we can. So we have publicly said we actually reinvest our profit back into the business to turbocharge growth and drive growth there. And so you actually see very clearly when you're looking at the scalability metrics and one proxy you can look at is what is the profitability as a percentage of revenue and actually track -- see how this tracks over time because this gives an indication of how strong the operating leverage is in the business.

I made a reference around profitability before marketing because that is really looking at the underlying platform itself, irrespective of how much we actually spend on growth. And so if you're looking at that adjusted EBITDA, so pre-marketing margin, basically pre-IPO, it was 35 -- negative 35%. And this year, 2025, it is 39%. So that tells you that as we grow the top line, given the high retention rate of our cohorts, and the compounded nature of the asset base and conversion to revenue, the top line is highly predictable and recurring in nature.

And then at the same time, the cost base is growing at a much slower clip compared to the top line, and that generates this operating leverage. And so this is probably the biggest lever is continuing investing in growth, continuing cost discipline and doing more of the same really of what we have already achieved since IPO consistently year after year to just driving that operating leverage and that scalability further.

A question from Paul. Marketing spend in Q4 fell to EUR 2 million from EUR 2.6 million in Q3, but new customers also fell roughly in the same proportion. Could you explain why you let the marketing spend -- the marketing spend and new customers fall? Wouldn't it be better to spend a bit more on marketing and keep the new customer growth momentum?

It's a great question in terms of marketing spend. I think one of the points that is highlighted through the question is very much how marketing spend and new customer growth are correlated. And that really points to the predictability of the revenue model and how we drive increasing customer growth, increasing revenue growth in a very, very big market.

In terms of Q4, in particular, I would say that Q4 is quite a special quarter for a number of reasons. Q4 last year was, of course, kind of the time where we were eagerly anticipating a budget from the U.K. government. It's also the run-up to Christmas. And so advertising decisions can be made around some of the bigger events. And normally, in Q4, you would seasonally see us spending a little bit less than we do in, say, Q1 and Q2 because of the timing and the nature around the sentiment of personal finances in particular. But certainly, what you can see in Q4 at the end of last year compared to the year before that is that we continue to increase the level of marketing spend on a relative historical basis, and we expect that to, of course, be positive as we move into 2026 because ultimately, we are investing in current customer growth, but also in future customer growth when we spend on marketing.

And so we're pleased to be able to continue that momentum of increasing the marketing budget at the end of last year, but also into 2026.

Next question from William. Thank you, William. In 2026, what level of growth do you expect you can achieve in U.K. customer numbers from the 305,000 and net flows from GBP 809 million?

Yes, very happy to take this one. So if you take a step back and you're looking at our medium-term guidance, so the GBP 100 million by 2029 and you back out or you apply also our average pot size guidance, which was GBP 20,000 to GBP 25,000 per customer, you get to a number of around GBP 600,000 by the end of 2029.

And so I think the way of how we get to where we are today to that point is by increasing the net adds every year a little bit more, roughly by 10,000. And I think this year, for 2026, we will probably expect the net adds to be around 50,000 to 55,000, let's put it this way. And then also, you need to be mindful that's on the back of, again, discipline in the acquisition cost per customer as well as an increase in the marketing spend because as we just alluded to earlier, the more we scale, the more underlying profitability we generate and that we reinvest into -- back into the business.

So I think the expectation for this year is probably to increase the marketing budget, as we have said in the past, to around mid-double-digit teens and therefore, drive the customer number. Then on the net flows, I think the way of how you can think about in certain building blocks is looking at gross inflows, gross outflows and markets. The market assessment, I would kindly leave up to the analysts.

But on the other 2, I think we can give a little bit more color around them. On the outflows, what you actually see is that the model is quite predictable because if you're looking at outflows as a percentage of beginning of period balance of the AUA base, you see that it is around 10% 2025, but it was also around 10% the prior year. And then when you're looking at from 2019 to 2024, I think it was always -- the average was always about 10%.

So this 10% is a very consistent, let's say, number. And then it depends -- and then it becomes how much gross inflows are we driving. And so there, you have the marketing number. We target for 2026 probably a slightly older demographic compared to 2025. So that means that the gross inflow for each marketing pound we spend will probably be -- we expect to be larger than it was in 2025. So if you bring those building blocks together, that should give you a very informed answer around your net flows.

And William, there's 2 further parts to William's questions. Second part is of the net increase in U.K. customers of 40,000, what was the gross addition and the gross loss? -- applying a 5% attrition rate from your reported retention ratio would imply lost customers about 13,000. Does that sound right? What are you learning from customers who leave actually.

Yes. Maybe I can quickly take the definition point. So please be reminded that the value retention is around 96% to be very precise. So the attrition is around 4%. And then if you apply the 4% to the average IC number over the year and apply this to the 4%, you get to around, let's say, very double digits, around the 10,000, 11,000 mark rather than the, I think, 13,000 that you ask.

So it's a little bit lower because the retention is higher than 95% if you actually look at the actual number. And then in terms of what we are learning from the customers that do leave, as you know, we are running various qualitative and quantitative analysis. And I think what we continuously see is that there's various idiosyncratic reasons of our customer leaving, some want to consolidate the workers pension, some are happy to pay a premium price to put an adviser. Some are -- they want to have a very specific asset exposure. So there tends to be various idiosyncratic reasons for us.

But I think the point is really when you're looking at the retention rate over the long run, it is quite resilient. It is quite stable. We reported greater than 95% retention on a value and volume basis since inception. So I think we're looking at those numbers, and it tells us that actually overall, the vast majority of the customers are actually quite happy.

Following part to William's questions. When do you think you'll have U.S. stats like customers flows and revenue that we may be able to disclose?

I'm happy to take this one. Yes, I think we're really excited about 2026. As you know, we secured our first B2B client. So I think we're very excited about onboarding our first clients, and I think that will help us getting the snowball rolling and acquiring more clients in that new distribution channel. And then also on the B2C side, the 1% match is something that we will place a little bit more prominently in the advertisement. And so I think we're really excited about that as well.

And I think once we see that ramp-up coming and we see the materiality of the numbers to come through, then we would place a little bit of a closer look at them and also embed them a little bit more closer in the reporting.

And Jude from RBC. 2 questions. Jude. On the U.S., can you add any color around the impact of flows from the Safe Harbor onboarding for Q1 '26? Is any further to add that? On the second part, on the U.K., it looks like your average new customer balance was a bit higher quarter-on-quarter. Is that driven by anything in particular? And how do you see that progressing next year? Some of the points you've touched on, but there's anything further you can just expand to.

Very happy to start with some of these questions. On the U.S., we'd like to add some color on kind of the Safe Harbor IRA contracts that we've been signing. These are the initial employers that we're onboarding. We are starting with some of the smaller and medium-sized employers. And so the level of flow will, of course, mirror the size of the employer that we begin with. That being said, relative to the starting point, you will see a meaningful change in net flows and in AUA in the U.S., and we'll have some more details for you on that at the end of the first quarter.

And then on the U.K. question, it looks like the average new customer balance was a bit higher Q-on-Q. Was that driven by anything in particular? Customer balance in general is pretty consistently driven by the average age of the cohorts that we onboard, which in and of itself can then be driven by specific marketing channels. Q4 tends to be a very SEO and organic heavy quarter. It's usually a quarter where we spend less on paid acquisition channels. And therefore, you usually do see a slightly older customer coming through. And so the changes in customer balance can generally be explained by the age of the customer cohorts.

Just a follow-up from William. U.K. read across of GBP 100 million AUA after year 3 in the U.S. would seem like a really low ambition. I know you said you should be ahead of this, but I'd assume considerably ahead of this. Am I getting ahead of myself?

I think it's really important to keep the U.K. numbers in context. And I would point you to the medium-term guidance that we have given for the group. If you look at where we stand on a revenue basis for the end of 2025, you can impute the growth rate required to reach GBP 100 million of revenue by the end of 2029.

And you would see that we have considerably been beating that on a historical basis. And so I would focus on the medium-term guidance, and we'll definitely let you know when it's a good time to start extrapolating more of the U.S. numbers. In the meantime, we'll be reporting on the significant milestones that it takes to build the U.S. business for the long term, which, of course, includes the completion of a lot of the product work that we did over the course of last year, but also the signing of the Safe Harbor IRA contracts that we just announced.

Fantastic. And that concludes the questions. And thank you for answering those from investors. And of course, any further questions come through the team will be able to review those and we publish responses where appropriate to do so on the Investor Meet Company platform.

Just before redirecting investors to provide their feedback, which is particularly important to you, Romi, if I could just ask you for a few closing comments.

Absolutely. Thanks so much for joining the call today. It's always a pleasure to engage with the investor community, and we look forward to having more conversations as we move into 2026.

Fantastic. Thank you both for updating investors today. Can I please ask investors not to close this session. You should now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order the management can better understand your views and expectations. It's going to take a few moments to complete and it's greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of PensionBee Group plc, I'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session, and good afternoon to you.

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PensionBee Group Q3 2025 Results for the quarter ending 30th September 2025 presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, but of course, we will provide those companies for responses post today's meeting if appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll.

I'd now like to hand over to the team from PensionBee. Romi, Christoph, good afternoon.

Thank you very much. Good afternoon, and welcome to PensionBee's Third Quarter 2025 Results Announcement covering trading for the period ending 30 September 2025. I'm Romi Savova, the CEO of PensionBee Group. For those of you who are new to the PensionBee story, we are creating a global leader in the consumer retirement market. We exist to help our customers prepare for and enjoy a happy retirement. We enable our customers to combine their old retirement accounts into a new online plan. We enable them to make contributions to invest in line with their objectives with money managed by the world's largest asset managers and ultimately, to withdraw and spend their retirement savings.

Our aspiration is to build a lifetime relationship with our customers, generating predictable and scalable revenue and profit for our company and for our shareholders. We are pleased with the results of the third quarter, which reflects strong execution in the U.K. and in the U.S. As is expected for the medium term, the United Kingdom made up the bulk of assets and invested customers. The U.K. closed the quarter with assets under administration of GBP 7 billion, representing 27% year-on-year growth, annual run rate revenue of GBP 46 million, representing 35% year-on-year growth and approximately 300,000 invested customers.

Over the third quarter, we increased marketing expenditure by 22% compared to the third quarter of 2024, ensuring effective deployment by optimizing our performance channels while also investing in our brand awareness through a U.K.-wide billboard campaign on roadside digital sites. This investment drove U.K. customer growth of 39% over the quarter with 11,000 new invested customers onboarded compared to 8,000 in the third quarter of 2024, underscoring the effectiveness of our growing marketing expenditure.

We continue to invest in productivity, introducing new automations and efficiencies across our technology platform. We generated a productivity improvement of 19% year-on-year with each staff member supporting 1,555 invested customers. We also made strides with our AI initiatives, further refining our internal bot, Beetrix, who is currently supporting our operations team with a view to enabling Beetrix to eventually serve our customers. The U.K. achieved adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 2.4 million for the quarter, underscoring our commitment to profitable growth in the U.K.

Turning to the United States. Over the third quarter of 2025, we have continued to focus on establishing a strong foundation for long-term growth. In a marketing highlight for the company, we launched our first brand campaign in 12 metropolitan areas, including New York, Chicago and Seattle. The brand campaign consists of television, billboard and radio advertising featuring our first U.S. customers. Simultaneously, we have continued to expand our product functionality, and we now have transfer protocols to cover a majority of 401(k) and IRA transfer types. As a result, we are now exiting the live testing period with confidence that our protocols can generate transfers following the successful completion of $2 million worth of transfers and contributions.

During the live testing, we also attracted account sizes multiple times above our target of $50,000, indicating the potential for rapid asset accumulation as brand awareness grows. With our transfer infrastructure now in place and growing brand recognition, we are preparing to enter the next phase of growth through a 1% match on all completed 401(k) rollovers, IRA transfers and contributions. This initiative will launch very soon and is expected to accelerate our path to $1 billion of assets under administration.

We also continue to invest in our Safe Harbor IRA offering with a number of employers now in the final discussion stage and ongoing consultant-led request for proposal. We're pleased to share some new market research with you today, which was conducted with the Employee Benefits Research Institute. The findings indicate that 1.7 million 401(k) accounts are automatically rolled over into Safe Harbor IRAs annually, representing over $4.6 billion in potential annual inflows. Our product offering, including our low fees, leave us well positioned to capture a growing market share over the coming years.

I would now like to hand over to Christoph Martin, PensionBee's CFO, who will cover the financial update.

Thank you very much, Romi. Hello, and a warm welcome to everyone. I'm pleased to cover the financial section of the quarterly trading update. In Q3 2025, PensionBee had strong financial performance with 27% year-on-year growth in our AUA to GBP 7 billion and 35% year-on-year growth in ARR to GBP 46 million. This top line growth, coupled with continuous cost discipline led to an improvement in our adjusted EBITDA margin with the group achieving profitability of GBP 1.3 billion (sic) [ GBP 1.3 million ] at 12% group EBITDA margin for the quarter, driven by the U.K. adjusted EBITDA profitability of GBP 2.4 million for the quarter.

These continuous achievements are derived from the core value drivers of our business, which are: first, predictable and recurring revenue; and second, business scalability. Furthermore, they are a testament to our ability to consistently and reliably execute against our public market guidance. The first value driver is PensionBee's predictable and recurring revenue, which is generated from a durable base of assets under administration, a function of the assets of existing and new customers.

In Q3, we experienced a 27% year-on-year asset growth to GBP 7 billion. The vast majority of the AUA base is derived from existing customers, customers who remain with PensionBee for a long period of time and continue to build up their pension savings with us, resulting in value generation for decades to come. Our average customer is in their early 40s, and they build up their pension savings with PensionBee, which means that cohort on an underlying value basis, i.e., before an impact on capital markets are resilient over time. AUA is also derived from new customers acquired through our proven cost disciplined approach to new customer acquisition.

Over Q3 2025, we onboarded circa 11,000 new invested customers onto our technology platform, representing 41% year-on-year growth. Over the quarter, customers joining were slightly younger than in Q3 2024, aged approximately 39, in line with our marketing strategy for 2025. We continue to observe strong underlying KPIs on retention rates and net flows, underscoring PensionBee's strength and resilience. As a result, the compounding AUA base is subsequently converted into our revenue growth, owing to the resilient gross revenue margin.

In Q3 2025, we saw a revenue margin of 64 basis points, unchanged year-on-year, which enabled us to convert the 27% of year-on-year asset growth into quarterly revenue growth of 32% and annual run rate revenue growth of 35%. In conclusion, thanks to our compounding AUA base and resilient revenue margin, we have generated predictable and recurring revenue, which is again PensionBee's first value driver. The second value driver is PensionBee's business scalability due to the controllable nature of the cost base. Our cost base has continued to decline as a proportion of revenue.

These scalability dynamics, i.e., predictable and recurring top line growth, coupled with cost discipline led to an improvement in operating margin. On a last 12 months to September '25 basis, the adjusted EBITDA margin improved to 10%, up from 2% last year for the U.K. Furthermore, the operating margin pre-marketing for the U.K. improved to 38%, up from 30% last year, reflecting the inherent strong scalability and margin potential of the business.

Reflecting on our long-term track record, PensionBee has delivered revenue growth since our IPO of a compounded annual growth rate CAGR of 48% to last 12 months September '25 and strong margin expansion in the U.K. with an adjusted EBITDA margin improvement from negative 166% pre-IPO to positive 10% over the last 12 months period. Furthermore, operating margin pre-marketing improved from negative 35% pre-IPO to positive 38% over the LTM period. This underscores the strong delivery against our growth and business scalability objectives.

With respect to our 2025 guidance framework for PensionBee as a group, we have outlined our short, medium and long-term targets. In the short to medium term, by the year-end 2029, we expect the group to generate of above GBP 100 million of revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 20% by year-end 2029, with the U.K. considerably contributing to those targets. In the long term, by the year-end 2034, we expect the group to generate GBP 0.25 billion in revenue and adjusted EBITDA margin of circa 50% by year-end 2034. Our circa GBP 33 million cash balance puts PensionBee in a strong position to further scale the U.K. business as well as invest in the tremendous U.S. market opportunity, continuing to execute on our long-term strategy and delivering on our public market guidance.

I would now like to hand back to Romi for concluding remarks.

Thank you very much, Christoph. We're very pleased with the conclusion of the third quarter and progressing into the fourth quarter, we remain very excited about the prospects of PensionBee in the U.K. and in the U.S. We're now very happy to take some questions.

That's great, Christoph, Romi. Thank you very much indeed. I will just bring back up your cameras. [Operator Instructions] I'd just like to remind you that a recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q&A can be accessed via your platform Investor Meet Company. Romi, we've had a number of questions. So firstly, thank you to everybody for engagement. If you do want to verbally ask your question, please just type in your name and we will unlock your microphones.

But let's start with the first question that we received, in fact, ahead of today's event. Could you please talk about the long-term competitive advantage of PensionBee?

Thank you very much. And what an excellent question because it's certainly one that's very important to consider in a changing world. And as we think about the long term and PensionBee's future, there are really 3 factors that we believe drive sustainable long-term competitive advantage. They are brand, technology and culture. On the brand side, I think we have quite a lot of evidence from our presence in the U.K. from the last 10 years in terms of how brand can be effectively grown, developed and nurtured such that you can become a household name.

And we're very excited to be applying a similar approach to the United States. And of course, our latest billboard campaign has been a great example of how we do that, for example, featuring our very first U.S. customers. But of course, brand is about more than just marketing. Our brand is about the trust that customers are willing to place in us. It's about the way that customers perceive the company in general. And it encompasses so much of what we do, including our customer service, our focus on information security and various other factors that make PensionBee a trusted household name.

On the technology side, we have been very proud of the work that we've done over the last 10 years to not only deliver an amazing experience for our customers, but also to deliver a very scalable and efficient experience for us internally. And you can see that through the growing productivity metrics that we disclose every single quarter. So technology, the investment in technology, staying at the forefront of innovation, we really have that in our DNA, and therefore, technology is our second long-term competitive advantage strategic pillar.

And then three is our culture. We love our culture at PensionBee. We have a very important vision and mission, which focuses on our customers and the ability to prepare them for a happy retirement. It's been foundational to who we are and aligns with the values that we hold dear internally. And we happen to believe that there is an exceptionally strong alignment between our culture, our technology and our brand. And it's really when you have alignment across the board that you can grow successfully, and we believe we have that in place. I hope that answers your questions.

That's great. Let's turn to a question around, I guess, the position in terms of defending yourself here. It says, how do you plan to defend against incumbents entering into the digital pension market as they seem to be looking to upgrade their tech stack?

Great question. And of course, as you know, the pensions market is absolutely enormous, not only in the U.K., but also in the United States, where we see millions of individuals and millions of accounts as being within the target market, which then translates into incredibly kind of open spaces for us to consider growing. Competitors are, of course, important. This is a market just like any other. But what's really distinguishing about the pension market and retirement assets in particular, is that so many people are not thinking about their retirement and saving for retirement when they should be. And so usually, when we think about competitive attention within the market, we see that as a factor that has the potential to grow the awareness amongst consumers of their pensions and their retirement savings.

And of course, in the U.K., we are a market creator. We're a household brand. And so we believe that people thinking about their pensions is ultimately very positive for us because it grows the awareness and the search for our particular solution. So it comes back very much to our ongoing investment within marketing, our growing investment within technology. And I think that because of our particular focus on the mass market, our technology and our product experience and our customer experience will always be best for our customers. And we're very much looking forward to establishing a similar position in the U.S. over time.

That's great. We have a question here from Tom at Canaccord. Thank you, Tom, for your question. And he asks approximately what percentage of customers or what percentage of the customer onboarding journey is automated?

Thanks very much for the question. We don't publish metrics around the level of automation. It really depends. It depends on the source of the customer. It depends on the pension provider in question. We have majority protocols in place, meaning that for most things we do, a majority is automated, but it will really depend on which part of the journey we're looking at, which part of the funnel really. Obviously, our sign-up journey is 100% automated. Within the transfers, it will very much depend on a provider-by-provider basis.

If I may, how do you see PensionBee's market share evolving in the U.K. as the U.K. pension consolidation takes place over the next 3 to 5 years?

Well, I believe we've shown that we consistently keep growing market share. We disclosed the market share figures within the annual report every year. They can be somewhat tricky to compile because pension statistics are not as readily available as we might hope they are, but we certainly continue to grow market share. In a market like ours where the market in and of itself is just so large, we are not required to have an enormous market share in order to be a very rapidly growing and successful business. So market share figures, we tend to look at as an output rather than an input. And our focus is really on constantly growing our invested customer numbers and ultimately, our assets as well because that is, of course, what leads to higher market share.

Great. A question from Wayne. Thank you, Wayne. Are there any plans to introduce dividends?

We do not have plans to introduce dividends at the moment. Of course, this is something that we keep under review, but our potential for growth, both within the U.K. and within the U.S. is simply so big because of the size of the market that we foresee that as being the best deployment of capital for the foreseeable future.

A question from Jude from RBC. Thank you, Jude. The questions are as follows. At Q2, you highlighted a strong new customer pipeline. Can you offer any color on that, how that pipeline has progressed in the last 3 months?

Very happy to. At PensionBee, we monitor our pipeline rather obsessively, beginning, of course, from the very moment that a customer enters their e-mail address and their name, we begin tracking. And what we've seen over the course of this year as we have grown our marketing expenditure and as we continue to grow our marketing expenditure is that the pipeline of customers has grown substantially. You can start to see that coming through in some of the third quarter results. So particularly when we compare the third quarter of this year compared to the third quarter of last year, we delivered approximately 40% growth in new invested customers.

And so that is, of course, a direct reflection of the increase in the marketing spend that has been deployed since the beginning of this year. Of course, our plan is to continue growing the marketing spend. And so we would expect the pipeline of new customers to also continue growing. And it's really nice that in the third quarter, we can see that spend coming to fruition in a very reportable invested customer type of way. But certainly, within the background, we can see that the pipeline continues to grow and remain strong and therefore, gives us also confidence in the 2026 spending plans as well.

A question from Baron. Thank you, Baron. The U.S. seems to be progressing well with the first brand campaign and transfer automation in place. Can you help us understand what early indicators you're seeing that give you confidence in the unit economics, particularly whether U.S. customer acquisition costs and account sizes are trending in line or above U.K. levels?

It's a really great question around the unit economics. And I can certainly share some of our thoughts and observations around that. I mean I would first start with the customer behaviors, I suppose. So what we see in the U.S. from a customer behavior perspective is very similar to what we see within the United Kingdom from the perspective of sort of entering the pipeline, converting through the pipeline, the desire to have more control over retirement savings, that message resonates well.

We can also see that mass market advertising works well. We have early indications from the brand campaign that we're definitely getting noticed, people like the brand, and there is increased activity as a result of that, which is very similar to the kind of experience that we've had in the U.K. over the years. I would say when thinking about the U.S. unit economics, because of the structure of the U.S. business, they are, of course, different. So for example, on the marketing side, we have a strong partnership with State Street, whereby the marketing spend to date has been reimbursed entirely by them.

And as a result of that, the concept of the cost per invested customer is somewhat less of a relevant concept than it is within the U.K. As a result, we have been very focused on establishing initial brand awareness and growing trust in the PensionBee brand as much as we possibly can. We released some numbers in the second quarter around that, which showed that prompted brand awareness was at around 5% in the U.S. And once the brand campaign completes in the U.S. because it's still going on, we will, of course, measure again and probably share some more numbers with you.

But of course, cost per invested customer is a bit less of a concept at this stage within the U.S. The concept that we've been thinking about really centers around the match and the match program that we will be offering to customers to really support the growth of the next $1 billion worth of assets in the U.S. And that match will be a 1% match on completed rollovers, transfers and contributions. We think it makes sense to accelerate the growth of the U.S. business. I'll give you a little bit of context in terms of some of those numbers relative to the U.K.

In the U.K., I think it took us about 3 years to get to the first GBP 100 million worth of AUA. And of course, obviously, in the U.S., we have some very big targets that we would like to accelerate through the match program. We believe that the payback and the return on the match is very compelling. And so we'll be releasing more details on that very soon, but that's certainly one of the ways to think about it. And so we would encourage you to focus on that.

Account sizes is a very interesting concept as well. The U.S. is obviously an enormous market of individual consumers and also assets. However, we know that U.S. wealth is distributed very unequally. And so one of the more different dynamics within our U.S. business compared to our U.K. business is the sort of range of account sizes that we attract. We certainly had kind of hundreds of accounts that are very small. And we've also had accounts that are very big, not only compared to the small accounts in the U.S., but also compared to our U.K. account sizes.

And so we think it's really important for us to make sure that we're focusing the service in the U.S. in a way that attracts some of the larger account sizes in addition to the small ones. And so that is increasingly being reflected in our marketing approach as well. But overall, feeling very kind of positive around the U.S. unit economics because of the partnership that we have here in the States, but also because of what we are seeing in terms of the underlying trends and behaviors and the types of customer accounts that we've been attracting.

We've got 3 questions from William. I know you've just spoken about the 1% match, but the first question he asks is what does the 1% match mean for a U.S. 401 customer as an offer proposition? I don't know if there's anything to add there.

Yes. It simply means that for all completed rollovers, transfers and contributions, there will be a 1% match offering.

He then goes on to ask, are there any changes in flows per customer to discuss? Outflows per head seems slightly higher than last year's flows per new customer spiked in Q4. Why? And might that happen again?

Yes, I'm happy to take the flow question. So I think generally speaking, when we're talking about net flows, the consistency about the PensionBee story, about the predictability is also there. Because interestingly, when you look at the net flows and you look at actually the 2 constituents, which is gross outflows and gross inflows, they follow a very predictable pattern. So from an outflow perspective, over the last 5 years, we did -- have seen an outflow as a proportion of opening balance is actually quite stable, which is good.

And then from an inflow perspective, if you actually adjust for the age profile of customers acquired, it's again quite predictable and as expected. So for instance, when you look at gross inflows, so the incomings pots for -- in a way where you look at net flows by new customers over the net new ICs for this year, you actually see that we have onboarded around the pot of GBP 15,500 and the average age of the customers was around 39.5. So this compares with last year where we had [ GBP 17,500 ], but we acquired older customers at 40.5.

And 2 years ago, we had the incoming average pot of GBP 14,500 and the average customer was in the early 39s. So actually, if you look at the age profile of the customers and look at the incoming pots, this is very consistent actually. And again, it's underscoring the consistency of the model. There's another way you can look at it. When you look at the gross inflows over marketing spend, it was around GBP 100 of gross inflows over marketing. And that's again the same level that we have seen 2 years ago in 2023, where we acquired a customer cohort that had a similar age profile as this year. So this really suggests very strongly that from a flow perspective, it is also quite consistently predictable in line with historical trends as well.

That's great. And I think William's final question was what U.K. marketing spend is expected for Q4? And what is the outlook for 2026?

I'm happy to take this one as well. I think we have been quite clear from a strategic perspective that the U.K. is now in its profitable growth phase. So that means we scale the U.K. while remaining profitable. So for the last quarter of this year, that specifically means that in comparison to last year, where we had a little bit of a constraint around the profitability, we will -- we envisage to spend much -- to spend more than last year, where we spent in Q4 in the U.K. around GBP 1.2 million. This year is a much larger number.

However, still aiming -- still having the constraint around profitability as a requirement. And so this is how -- also how we think about the same way next year. So next year, of course, the top line and the net revenue is increasing. So it gives more capacity to spend a higher budget in marketing, which is what we intend to do, but again, still retaining the profitability goal as an underpin. I hope that helps and answers the question.

Yes. I've got a couple of questions here around the U.S. If it's okay, I might put them together. Tom asks, do you plan on taking PensionBee national in the U.S.? And then the other question is, what are your biggest lessons learned from the U.S. entry so far? And how are they informing you on your next phase of scaling?

Great question. I mean we are already operating at the national level. We have SEC registration, which permits us to operate federally. So that is already happening. Some of our advertising will, of course, especially where it has a physical element, be focused on metropolitan areas. And in particular, our billboards this time around are in New York, Chicago and Seattle. But certainly, our digital advertising is going much broader, and we see no reason to constrain ourselves to any particular area. So that is very much continuing.

In terms of lessons learned, I would kind of refer back to my earlier comments about the size of different accounts. In the U.K., there is a much narrower range of accounts, which reflects also income distributions within the U.K. In the U.S., there is a much broader distribution of account sizes. So it's very common to kind of attract accounts that are substantially larger than what we would have seen in our U.K. business in the early days.

And at the same time, it's very possible to attract accounts that have very little within them. And so that balancing act of making sure that we continue to serve everyone and focusing on the average goals that we have for the U.S., which is around the $50,000 mark. I think it has some interesting product implications for us because it does mean that we are focused on attracting slightly larger accounts than we may have been in the early days of the U.K.

Great. A couple of questions from Tom, if I may. The first one is, what is the financial impact in providing 1% matching for 401(k)s? And how will you fund this?

Yes, I'm taking -- I'm happy to take this question. So obviously, we have a very strong cash balance of GBP 33 million in the group. And so we are in a very strong position to actually scale the U.K. business and to answer your question, fund the 1% match as well, so to ensure delivery of the various targets. I hope that helps.

And then the follow-on there was, would you be able to explain why the outflow has increased by 27%? What was the main driver? Was it people transferring out or retirement? I don't know if you've got any color you can add there.

Yes, I'm happy to take this one. As I alluded to a little bit earlier, I think a very good way of looking at this is as a proportion of opening balance. So we have seen historically that it is actually a proportion that has been remarkably constant. And to your question around the split between transfers out and drawdowns, they actually tend to be quite equally split, so 50-50.

This is the final question as it stands, and it's from Jude at RBC. Thanks, Jude. And a follow-up question, absolutely welcome. Thank you. It looks as though pensions again could be in focus ahead of the U.K. budget in November. Did you see any changes to customer behavior as a result of the event last year? And do you expect to see it this year?

Well, certainly, I think it's been well publicized that tinkering with pensions and the prospect of pension tinkering in general can lead to consumers making decisions that they may not otherwise have wished to make. I certainly think withdrawals have been in the press quite a lot again. And so on the margin, it wouldn't be unreasonable to expect that some people who are nervous awaiting the budget could think about making withdrawals.

Of course, with our average account sizes where they are, which is at around the GBP 20,000 mark, it's unlikely that this would kind of impact us in any material way. But of course, it's something that we keep an eye on. We would prefer for that to be very limited, if not none in terms of pension tinkering. So yes, we'll keep an eye on it, but we think it's pretty marginal from our perspective.

That's great. Jude, I hope that takes care of your question. There are no further questions at this point, Romi, Christoph. So thank you once again to everybody for your engagement this afternoon. Romi, Christoph, I know investor feedback will be particularly important to you, and I'll shortly redirect those on the call to give you their thoughts and expectations. But perhaps I could just ask you for a couple of closing comments, Romi.

Thank you. I think we've enjoyed the investor engagement that we've had on today's call. We look forward to speaking with many of you in the upcoming one-on-one sessions. I'm very happy to close out the third quarter. Thank you.

That's great. Romi, Christoph, thank you once again for updating investors. If I can please ask those on the call not to close the session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that the company can better understand your views and expectations. It will only take a couple of moments to complete, and I'm sure it'll be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of PensionBee, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.