German Fintech NAGA Turns Profitable

NAGA Group closed the first quarter of 2020 with a provisional record result of EUR 7 million in sales (Q1/2019: EUR 0.6 million) and a provisional net profit of EUR + 2.1 million (Q1/2019: EUR - 3.9 million loss), the company announced on April 7.

It reported that the unaudited EBITDA stands at EUR + 3.3 million (Q1/2019: EUR - 2.8 million), while unaudited EBIT is at EUR + 2.2 million (Q1/2019: EUR - 3.9 million).

Founded in 2015, the Hamburg-headquartered firm has developed a socially enhanced ﬁnancial system that creates a uniﬁed and seamless experience across personal ﬁnance and investing. Its proprietary platform offers a range of products ranging from trading, investing, and Cryptocurrencies to a physical Mastercard and social investing features such as a Feed, a Messenger, and Auto-Copy.

NAGA said that with an all-time high of 1.2 million trades for the quarter, a record trading volume of EUR 23 billion was also recorded. In addition, customers deposited more than EUR 12.5 million into the platform, which was the highest in a quarter.

The number of active accounts has doubled since the beginning of the year, while the number of new registrations has tripled, according to the firm.

“Thus the turnaround is apparent for NAGA. Looking back to our very beginnings it is extremely positive that we turned this FinTech profitable in less than 5 years since inception. Especially after the challenges we faced last year, when we had to take extreme measures, showed us that a startup story can have both ups and downs. But strict discipline, forward-thinking and consistently pursuing our vision have brought us to where we are today,” said Benjamin Bilski, CEO and founder of NAGA.

“Personally, I am pleased with the cash flow-relevant EBITDA which gives us further strength in order to implement our high growth ambitions. We are already running a self-sustaining business, that was our primary goal for 2020. Our cost structure and operating structure today is very lean and dynamic. The entire NAGA organization can therefore adapt to growth just as quickly as last year to the restructuring," he added.

The company has adapted to the coronavirus crisis quickly and set up a full remote-working environment while ensuring that the platform works without any interruptions.

On the technological side, NAGA increased the system capacity and was able to scale with rising client's requests and transaction volumes.

"We have seen from the trading industry that numerous firms - especially in Germany - halted trading temporarily and had severe issues. NAGA had full uptime of our execution engine. It proves that our focus on proprietary technology and infrastructure pays off," Bilski explained.

Initiatives in Uruguay and China

NAGA will continue to grow its business on a global scale. The company expects further growth results from the recently started initiatives in Uruguay as well as in China.

Bilski noted that after the strong Q4 2019, the firm has confirmed that the growth was indeed sustainable.