Remitly Global (NASDAQ:RELY) used its fourth-quarter and full-year 2025 earnings call to highlight a year of accelerating scale, expanding profitability, and broadening product ambitions, while also announcing a leadership transition at the top. Co-founder and CEO Matt Oppenheimer said Sebastian Gunningham has been appointed as the company’s new CEO, with Oppenheimer moving to chairman.
Leadership transition highlights
Oppenheimer framed the CEO transition as the right moment to “accelerate execution with a new leader,” citing the company’s results and medium-term plan. He said the board ran an “exhaustive process” and described Gunningham as a product-led technology executive with operational discipline and experience in large-scale marketplaces, payments, and financial services.
Gunningham said he was drawn to Remitly by its mission, market opportunity, product trust, and the potential impact of AI. He described his background as product-first and operationally rigorous, and said his focus will be on building “the best product,” adding that in digital financial services “the product is the business.”
Full-year 2025 performance and scale
Management said 2025 was a “phenomenal year,” with Oppenheimer pointing to growth in the core money movement business, early contributions from new products, and operating leverage that drove record profitability and cash generation. The company reiterated its medium-term outlook issued at an Investor Day, targeting up to $3 billion of revenue and $600 million of Adjusted EBITDA by 2028.
Chief Financial Officer Vikas Mehta reported full-year revenue of $1.635 billion, up 29% year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA of $272 million for an Adjusted EBITDA margin of nearly 17%, an increase of more than 500 basis points year-over-year. Mehta said Remitly delivered $68 million of net income for 2025, marking its first full year of cash profitability, and free cash flow of $283 million, which he said more than tripled from the prior year.
Oppenheimer also emphasized scale metrics, saying Remitly ended the year with more than 9 million quarterly active users, close to $75 billion of annual send volume, and more than $1.6 billion of revenue. He added that Remitly has less than 4% share of the consumer total addressable market, which management cited as evidence of continued “headroom” for growth.
Fourth-quarter results: growth, margins, and efficiency
For the fourth quarter, Mehta reported revenue of $442 million, up 26% year-over-year, and Adjusted EBITDA of $89 million, representing a 20% Adjusted EBITDA margin, which he said was the company’s highest quarterly margin to date. GAAP net income for Q4 was $41 million, compared with a $6 million net loss in the fourth quarter of 2024.
Mehta attributed Q4 performance to:
- Revenue growth aided by a strong December holiday period and “efficiently managed” marketing spend
- Lower-than-expected transaction losses, which he linked to a new AI-driven fraud detection and prevention model
- Rigorous operating expense management
Operationally, the company highlighted improvements in speed and reliability metrics during the quarter, including more than 65% of transactions dispersed in under 20 seconds, more than 97% of transactions completed without customer support contact, and 99.9% uptime.
Mehta said revenue less transaction expenses (RLTE) dollars grew 30% to $305 million and RLTE margin reached 69%, a record high. Provision for transaction losses was $15 million, or 7.3 basis points as a percentage of send volume, which management described as a record low.
Customer mix shifting toward high-amount senders and businesses
Mehta reported Q4 send volume grew 35% to $21 billion, while quarterly active customers rose 19% year-over-year to nearly 9.3 million. He said send volume per active customer increased to over $2,200, up 13% year-over-year, driven by more transactions per active customer and record growth in average transaction size.
The company also provided detail on customer tiers and mix shifts. Low amount senders were defined as under $1,000 per transaction, high amount senders as $1,000 to $10,000, and “very high amount” senders as over $10,000. In Q4, high amount sender volume grew 40% year-over-year and very high amount sender volume grew 105% year-over-year, with these tiers increasing their mix of send volume by more than 350 basis points year-over-year. Mehta said high and very high tiers now comprise nearly 50% of send volume.
On geography, management said U.S. revenue grew 28% in Q4 and rest-of-world revenue grew 26% year-over-year, with sequential acceleration. Mehta also noted strong adoption in the U.A.E., citing more than 160% quarter-over-quarter growth in new customers. On the receive side, revenue from regions outside of India, the Philippines, and Mexico grew faster than overall revenue growth and now represents over half of the revenue mix.
New products and 2026 outlook
Management described 2025 as a year of meaningful progress in new offerings, including Flex (Send Now, Pay Later), Remitly Business, and the Remitly One membership program, along with wallet and card initiatives. Oppenheimer said Flex ended the year with around 120,000 users and was the first product outside core money movement to surpass 100,000 users. He said Remitly Business ended the year with more than 15,000 customers.
Mehta said new products contributed a little more than 1% of 2025 revenue and that Remitly expects new products revenue contribution to “more than double” in 2026. He also reiterated the company’s Investor Day expectation that new products could contribute 5% to 10% of total revenue by 2028. Mehta said Remitly plans to launch “Remitly Credit,” described as a recourse line of credit, in the spring.
For guidance, Mehta forecast first-quarter 2026 revenue of $436 million to $438 million (about 21% growth) and full-year 2026 revenue of $1.94 billion to $1.96 billion (19% to 20% growth). He said Q1 guidance reflects favorable seasonality and early customer acquisition benefits related to a “1% tax on cash remittances.” For profitability, Remitly guided to Q1 Adjusted EBITDA of $82 million to $84 million (around a 19% margin) and full-year Adjusted EBITDA of $340 million to $360 million (around an 18% margin). Mehta said the company expects positive GAAP net income each quarter in 2026 and strong year-over-year growth in GAAP net income and free cash flow.
Mehta also said the company’s top capital allocation priority after organic investments will remain share repurchases, and that Remitly expects to increase the quarterly pacing of buybacks in 2026.
About Remitly Global (NASDAQ:RELY)
Remitly Global, Inc operates as a digital financial services company specializing in cross-border money transfers. Through its proprietary online platform and mobile applications, the company enables immigrants, expatriates and international workers to send remittances swiftly and securely to their families abroad. By focusing on fast deliverability and transparent pricing, Remitly seeks to streamline a process traditionally dominated by cash-based methods and legacy money transfer operators.
Founded in 2011 by Matt Oppenheimer and headquartered in Seattle, Washington, Remitly has grown from a startup into a publicly traded corporation listed on NASDAQ under the ticker RELY.
