Revolut posts over £100m adjusted EBITDA with £26.3m profit in first full year of profitability
Revolut has released its Annual Report for the year ending 31 December 2021. Growth in active retail customers and increased revenue across all major product lines resulted in strong financial metrics for the global financial super app in its first full year of profit.
Revenue tripled to £636m for 2021 from such products as Payments, Subscriptions, Revolut Business and Foreign Exchange and Wealth, proving the value in a diversified model, and which were significant contributing factors in Revolut posting £100.3m in adjusted EBITDA and £26.3m in Net Income (with £59.1m in Operating Profit) for the full year 2021.
Due to an increased share of revenue from higher margin products, Revolut’s Gross Margin increased from 33% in 2020 to 70% for 2021. Meanwhile, operating expenses only increased by 37%, demonstrating strong operating leverage.
Revolut’s strong financial performance in 2021 was also in part due to an increase of more than 50% in weekly active retail customers. Combined with an increase in average spend per user, which grew by 10%, it indicates a deeper integration of Revolut into customers’ financial lives.
There was also a 75% increase in the number of customers on paid plans, signalling customers’ eagerness to access more of Revolut’s features and contributing significantly to revenue growth.
Customer deposit balances also grew significantly year-on-year, totalling £7.4bn as of December 2021 (2020: £4.6bn); an increase of 58%.
Nik Storonsky, Chief Executive Officer, commented, “We have achieved our first full year of profit and shown that we can accelerate customer growth, at scale, and grow revenue across all of our product lines.
In 2021 we were granted a full banking licence from the European Central Bank and welcomed millions of new customers. We also launched several new products and saw more activity from our customer base.”
Martin Gilbert, Chairman of Revolut, added, “2021 marked a significant milestone for the company, as it was the first year in which we became profitable. This strong financial performance shows Revolut has efficiently moved from the ‘start-up’ business that is only focused on growth, to the ‘scale-up’ looking to grow profitably.
2022 Update
Commenting on performance in 2022, Chief Financial Officer, Mikko Salovaara said, “We are pleased with the strong performance we have seen since the end of 2021. Revenue has grown considerably compared to FY2021, with particularly strong growth in payments, as we welcomed millions of new customers and more people chose to travel again. Revenues in 2022 increased over 30% to more than £850m and our strong overall financial performance last year is a testament to our diversified business model.
During 2022 we continued to focus on growth and really ramped up marketing and sales efforts for the Retail and Business ecosystems respectively. Our investment has seen a real return, with customer growth accelerating in 2022 as we added more than 9m new customers last year, an increase of 54%. Today, Revolut has more than 27m retail customers, more than doubling the number of customers since the beginning of 2021, as well as surpassing 6m customers in the UK.”
The number of employees at Revolut doubled in 2022 to more than 6,000, showing the company’s resilience and growth amid a wider market jobs downturn. Revolut received over 300,000 job applications in 2022, equating to dozens of applications per job opening, and the launch of Revolut’s internship and graduate programme, ‘Rev-celerator’, has received over 3,000 applications.
Following the granting of a full European banking licence in 2021 by the European Central Bank, Revolut rolled-out banking services to an additional 12 new countries in 2022, taking the total European countries serviced by the Revolut bank to 30.
Looking ahead to 2023, Revolut plans to launch several major new products and is expected to launch in new markets including New Zealand, Brazil, Mexico and India.
