Kaspi.kz (KSPI) Deep Research Report: Undervalued Super-App Facing Turkish Growing Pains in 2026

Kaspi.kz (NASDAQ: KSPI) is one of the highest‑returning fintech super‑apps in emerging markets, with a dominant position in Kazakhstan and a rapidly growing presence in Turkey. The stock trades at a single-digit P/E despite 40%+ ROE, mid-teens ex-Turkey earnings growth, and a structurally strong payments/marketplace engine.

Our team has gone through the filings, management commentary, and independent coverage in detail, using the latest 20-F (2025), the 6-K (2025), and multiple third‑party analyses. We think Kaspi.kz at roughly $82 sits at an interesting crossroads in early 2026: not a deep-value, high-margin-of-safety play, but a situation where risk/reward can be attractive if a few specific things go right and Turkey remains a manageable drag rather than a blow‑up.

From our work, we rate the stock a “Potential Buy” with medium conviction, a base‑case value around $95, and a suggested trim zone above $105. That’s not a “back up the truck” call, but it is a deliberate, thesis‑driven stance for investors willing to track regulatory and Turkish execution risk closely.

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Kaspi.kz at a Glance: A High-ROE Super-App With a New Second Act

Kaspi.kz is not a simple “fintech” pitch anymore. It runs two interconnected super‑apps:

• Kaspi.kz for consumers
• Kaspi Pay for merchants

These stitch together three big businesses:

• Payments – P2P, bill pay, in-store and online acquiring
• Marketplace – mostly 3P e-commerce, travel, classifieds, advertising, delivery
• Fintech – BNPL, consumer and SME loans, deposits, all largely funded via Kaspi Bank’s local‑currency deposits

According to the 20-F (2025), p. 51–52, the company has entrenched leadership in Kazakhstan across these segments. It has also started building a second ecosystem in Turkey centered on Hepsiburada, a major local marketplace, and Rabobank A.Ş., a newly acquired bank.

Over the last few years, the growth has been impressive:

• 2024 revenue: KZT 2,532,156 million, up from KZT 1,913,490 million in 2022
• 2024 net income: KZT 1,056,834 million vs. KZT 848,770 million in 2022
• ROE around 45.76% with strong capital ratios and net cash on the balance sheet

These figures come directly from 20-F (2025), p. 93 and p. F-34. Payments and Marketplace together now drive the majority of net income, dethroning the traditional interest‑income engine.

At the same time, the profile is getting more complex:

• Hepsiburada consolidation has boosted goodwill to KZT 617,719 million and inventory to KZT 142,275 million
• A $650m 6.25% Eurobond has been raised mainly to fund Turkey
• Turkish losses in 9M 2025 are around TRY 2.5bn, by management’s own disclosures in Kaspi.kz, 3Q 2025, 2025‑11‑10

In other words, what used to be a domestically focused, asset‑light fintech is morphing into a regional, asset‑heavy super‑app with bank‑like capital needs and FX exposure.

Valuation: Cheap for a Reason or Mispriced Growth Engine?

At about $81.97, Kaspi.kz trades on:

• P/E: 7.26x
• EV/EBITDA: 6.23x
• ROE: 45.76%

These numbers, pulled from the key ratios and 20-F (2025), p. 93, scream “optically cheap.” The stock is down roughly 16% over the last year, despite continuing to post mid‑20s net income growth in 2024 and 27% revenue growth in 9M 2025, as highlighted in the Kaspi.kz FY 2024 results, 2025‑02‑24 and 3Q & 9M 2025 results, 2025‑11‑10.

We think the key to the valuation is this:

• The market now assumes that new Kazakh tax rules, higher reserve requirements, and Turkish losses will structurally drag down EPS growth into the low‑teens or worse.
• Our base case is that ex‑Turkey, Kaspi can still sustain mid‑teens net income growth with stable cost of risk and high ROE, while Turkey remains a sizeable but gradually shrinking drag funded by internal cash generation and the Eurobond.

Under that base case, we’re comfortable underwriting a 9–10x P/E on 12–18‑month forward earnings, which points to a value range around $95–$105. That lines up with the internal scenario analysis from our report:

• Base case (50% probability): Value around $95, mid‑teens ex‑Turkey net income growth, Turkey losses contained
• Bull case (25%): $115, Turkey heading toward EBITDA breakeven, EPS compounding near 20%
• Bear case (25%): $65, persistent Turkish losses and regulatory tightening crimping consolidated growth to low single digits

From a risk‑reward perspective, that setup justifies a “Potential Buy” stance for investors who can live with volatility and some execution risk.

Business Engine: Where Kaspi.kz Really Makes Its Money

To understand whether the multiple is fair, you have to unpack Kaspi’s three revenue engines.

Payments and Marketplace: The Fee-Based Powerhouses

According to 20-F (2025), p. F‑34 and p. 85, 2024 segment revenues were:

• Payments: KZT 587,097 million
• Marketplace: KZT 732,943 million
• Fintech: KZT 1,281,827 million

The Marketplace take rate sits around 9.7%, and management has been pushing value‑added services (VAS) such as delivery, advertising, travel and classifieds. These are still early—VAS was only 1.7% of Marketplace 3P GMV in 2024—but they are growing faster than core GMV, per 20-F (2025), p. 56–57 and p. 89.

On the payments side, Kaspi benefits from:

• 14.7m average MAU and 10.1m average DAU in 2024 (68% DAU/MAU)
• 73 monthly transactions per active consumer
• Over 737,000 active merchants on Kaspi Pay

These engagement metrics from 20-F (2025), p. 51 underline why we see a durable moat in Kazakhstan. Once you’re the default app for utility payments, P2P, everyday shopping, and small‑ticket lending, it’s hard for competitors to pry users away without huge subsidies.

The proof is in the profitability:

• Segment net income of KZT 381,607 million for Payments and KZT 348,400 million for Marketplace
• Consolidated ROE of 45.76%
• Operating margins above 40%

All documented in 20-F (2025), p. 93 and p. F‑34. Moody’s investment‑grade Baa3 rating, which cites “profitability in excess of 40%” and “limited risk from loan losses” in the credit rating release, 2025‑03‑05, reinforces that this is not your typical emerging‑market bank.

Fintech: A Bank Within the Super-App

The fintech segment is more traditional:

• Consumer and SME loans
• BNPL products
• Deposits gathered via Kaspi Bank

In 2024, this segment still carried the largest revenue base, but its relative contribution to net income is shrinking as payments and marketplace scale. The model is clearly balance‑sheet‑intensive: as 20-F (2025), p. F‑10 and p. F‑70 shows, rising net income has been reinvested into loan growth and sovereign securities, which now fund much of the platform’s growth.

Asset quality so far looks stable:

• NPL ratios in the 5.4–5.6% range
• Cost of risk around 0.6% in 1Q and 2Q 2025

These figures are disclosed in 20-F (2025), p. 86, and in Kaspi.kz EX‑99.1, 1Q 2025 and EX‑99.1, 2Q 2025. That said, this is largely unsecured consumer credit; if Kazakhstan’s macro backdrop sours, provisioning could spike quickly.

From our perspective, the fintech arm is not the growth hero anymore, but it underpins the super‑app’s economics: it funds Kaspi’s payments and marketplace ecosystems and leverages cross‑app data to price risk effectively.

Is KSPI Stock a Buy in 2026?

The heart of the investor question right now is simple: does today’s price compensate you for the new layers of risk?

We approach that through three lenses:

1. Margin of safety

2. Turkey’s risk/return profile

3. Kazakh regulatory and tax changes

1. Margin of Safety: Not Deep Value, But Some Cushion

On traditional metrics, Kaspi.kz looks inexpensive. Yet our margin‑of‑safety assessment is only moderate.

Why? Because:

• Earnings are balance‑sheet dependent: growth requires ongoing loan expansion, higher reserves, and now Turkish working capital (inventory, trade payables).
• A growing share of assets—goodwill (KZT 617,719m), inventory, and mandatory reserves—do not provide hard protection in a downside scenario, as seen in 6-K (2025), p. 11–12.
• Kazakhstan’s tax and reserve regime is tightening, and Turkey already consumes capital with no profit.

The downside boundaries in our report spell out the true bear scenarios:

• Turkey burns cash for longer, forcing more capital injections and potentially extra leverage
• Kazakhstan introduces additional taxes or levies beyond the move to 25% bank CIT and a 10% tax on government securities income described by Baker McKenzie, Sept 2025 and KPMG, 2025‑12‑04
• Asset quality worsens, with NPLs breaking out well above the historic band and cost of risk materially exceeding the 0.6% target

If multiple of these hit together, the current valuation may not prevent permanent capital loss.

Our conclusion: at ~$82, you’re not buying a fortress balance sheet at a distressed multiple. You’re buying a high‑quality franchise at a fair but not bomb‑proof price, with returns depending heavily on management execution and a reasonably friendly regulatory backdrop.

2. Turkey: Optionality or Value Trap?

Turkey is the pivot point for whether KSPI is a mispriced compounder or a stalled high‑ROE bank.

What we know from management disclosures and third‑party recaps:

• Hepsiburada is a top Turkish e‑commerce player in a brutal, capital‑intensive market alongside Trendyol, Amazon, and others, as noted in Hepsiburada Q3 2025 press release.
• Kaspi consolidated Hepsiburada in 2025, sending goodwill and inventory sharply higher in the 6-K (2025), p. 11.
• Turkey produced about TRY 2.5bn of losses in 9M 2025, and Kaspi has signaled around $100m of additional planned capital injection, per Kaspi.kz, 3Q 2025, 2025‑11‑10 and the Freedom Broker 3Q 2025 review, 2025‑11.

Our thesis breaker here is crystal clear: if by FY 2027 the combined Turkish ecosystem (Hepsiburada + Rabobank A.Ş.) has not reached at least EBITDA breakeven, after burning more than $1.1bn of capital, then the expansion has destroyed value and invalidates any assumption of sustainably >30% ROE.

In the nearer term (2025–2026), what we want to see is:

• Turkey GMV growing, but EBITDA losses narrowing as a percentage of GMV
• No unplanned, oversized capital injections beyond what has been flagged
• Evidence that payments and lending products in Turkey are taking hold, not just higher marketing and shipping subsidies

If, instead, GMV grows but losses widen relative to GMV, then management is effectively “buying revenue” without improving unit economics. In that world, we treat Turkey as a value trap and Kaspi as an increasingly leveraged bank funding a weak foreign asset.

3. Kazakhstan Taxes and Regulation: The Steady Squeeze

The regulatory backdrop in Kazakhstan is shifting under investors’ feet.

Key developments:

• Corporate income tax for banks going from 20% to 25% from 2026
• New 10% tax on income from government securities, an important part of Kaspi’s liquidity portfolio

These changes are laid out in Baker McKenzie, Sept 2025, EY Kazakhstan tax update, July 2025, and KPMG, 2025‑12‑04. On top of that, the National Bank of Kazakhstan has raised mandatory reserve requirements to 3% of certain liabilities, per 6-K (2025), pp. 9–33.

In our analysis, these do three things:

• Creep up the effective tax rate, reducing after‑tax ROE even if pre‑tax income grows
• Lock more cash into non‑earning reserves
• Increase reliance on fee‑based growth (payments/marketplace) to offset a structurally heavier tax and funding load

The market is clearly awake to these issues; recent coverage from BeyondSPX, November 2025 and TipRanks, November 2025 has shifted from pure growth talk to a focus on margins, guidance cuts, and tax drag.

Our base case assumes no further meaningful tightening beyond what is already legislated. If authorities add another layer of bank‑specific levies or raise reserve requirements again, we would mark down our growth assumptions and valuation.

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Will Kaspi.kz Deliver Long-Term Growth?

Despite the new headwinds, there’s a reasonable path to Kaspi remaining a quality compounder—if a few levers behave.

We think of it in three time frames.

Near Term (0–6 Months): Guidance, Turkey Data, New Products

Over the next couple of quarters, the main catalysts are:

• Updated 2025 net income guidance, including and excluding Turkey, in the next earnings release as flagged in the Kaspi.kz 2Q & 1H 2025 results, 2025‑08‑04.
• Initial integration updates on Rabobank A.Ş. and early adoption of Turkish lending and payments products.
• Traction of Kaspi Alaqan pay‑by‑palm payments in Kazakhstan, cited in the 3Q & 9M 2025 results, 2025‑11‑10 as a potential new payments driver.

Our 90‑day checkpoint is explicit: if management cuts ex‑Turkey net income growth guidance meaningfully below mid‑teens (currently around 18–20%) without a clear one‑off explanation, we would re‑underwrite the Kazakhstan story and consider trimming. Conversely, reaffirmed or raised guidance with stable asset quality would support adding modestly on weakness.

Medium Term (6–18 Months): Taxes, Reserves, and Smartphone Normalization

From 2025 into 2026, we’ll begin to see the real impact of the new tax regime and higher reserve requirements in reported numbers:

• First full year under the new rules (2025) and then 2026 should visible shift the effective tax rate, as discussed in KPMG, 2025‑12‑04.
• Management’s mitigation tactics—repricing, product mix shifts, cost discipline—will determine whether net income growth can remain mid‑teens ex‑Turkey or slips into the high single digits.

One underappreciated positive driver is smartphone supply normalization. Recent quarters have seen Kaspi’s marketplace GMV held back by device shortages, a theme covered in the StockTitan 3Q 2025 recap and Yahoo Finance Q3 2025 recap. As these constraints ease from 2026, we expect:

• Higher GMV growth in smartphones without incremental discounting
• A mechanical lift in Marketplace revenue and segment net income, since smartphones are a core GMV category

If that plays out, it gives Kaspi a tailwind just as taxes and reserves become a larger drag.

Long Term (2–5 Years): Does the Moat Hold and Turkey Turn?

Looking out a few years, the key questions are:

• Can Kaspi maintain super‑app dominance in Kazakhstan against traditional banks like Halyk and digital competitors such as Wildberries and Ozon?
• Do early‑stage verticals—Advertising, Travel, e‑Grocery, BINPL, Business Deposit—scale into material profit centers or remain margin‑dilutive side bets?
• Does the Turkish franchise converge toward Kazakhstan‑like economics or settle as a structurally lower‑return platform?

The long‑term roadmap from 20-F (2025), p. 56–57 and p. 89 and Kaspi.kz FY 2024 results is ambitious. We think the Kazakh moat is durable over at least the medium term:

• High‑frequency usage (73 monthly transactions per user)
• Integrated logistics (Kaspi Delivery, 8,032 Postomats)
• Own payment rails and data‑driven underwriting

These features are detailed in 20-F (2025), p. 51 and p. 59–61. The main failure modes are exogenous (regulation, macro shock) or self‑inflicted (Turkey overreach).

For long‑term, quality‑oriented investors, we see Kaspi as a name worth following closely, even if you size it conservatively until Turkey proves itself.

Our Investment Stance: How We’d Approach KSPI Today

Pulling the threads together, here’s how we frame Kaspi.kz as of early 2026.

Our Rating and Price Levels

From our internal framework:

• Rating: Potential Buy
• Conviction: 3.5 / 5 (medium)
• Attractive Entry Zone: Around $78 or below
• Reassessment Zone / Fair Value: Around $95
• Trim Zone: Above $105

At roughly $82, the stock sits between “attractive entry” and our base‑case fair value band. We think it is reasonable for:

• Investors who are comfortable monitoring quarterly execution and regulatory developments
• Portfolios that can handle emerging‑market and FX risk
• Position sizes that reflect the thin margin of safety (i.e., not a core 10%+ holding for most people)

What Would Make Us More Bullish?

We would raise conviction or value if, within the next few quarters:

• Ex‑Turkey net income growth re-accelerates above 18% with stable cost of risk and NPLs
• Turkey’s EBITDA losses visibly halve relative to GMV, indicating improving unit economics
• Effective tax rate and reserve burdens stabilize at levels already baked into management commentary and market expectations

Any combination of these would support the bull‑case scenario (value around $115) looking more credible.

What Would Break the Thesis?

Conversely, we would reassess sharply, and potentially exit, if:

• By end‑2026, Turkey quarterly losses exceed TRY 1bn and NPL ratios rise above 7% with no macro shock explanation
• Kazakhstan implements further tax/levy step‑ups beyond what’s already legislated, driving net income growth to low single digits despite solid TPV/GMV growth
• Cost of risk jumps sustainably above 1% and NPLs above 8%, contradicting the current “stable 0.6%” narrative in Kaspi.kz EX‑99.1, 2Q 2025

These outcomes would undermine the core assumption that Kaspi is a high‑ROE franchise with manageable risk, and instead reclassify it as a more ordinary, heavily regulated bank with a problematic foreign asset.

Final Takeaways for Investors

For us, Kaspi.kz is no longer the clean, pure‑play Kazakhstan fintech it was a couple of years ago. It’s a complex super‑app plus bank that still throws off excellent economics in its home market, but has layered on Turkish expansion and regulatory headwinds that the market is trying to digest.

At around 7.3x trailing earnings, we think the stock reflects much of this uncertainty, but not all of the underlying strength:

• Payments and Marketplace remain structurally attractive, high‑engagement, fee‑based engines.
• The balance sheet is still relatively strong with net cash and solid capital ratios, according to 6-K (2025), p. 11.
• The new tax regime and Turkey introduce real risk, yet they don’t obviously collapse ex‑Turkey growth below mid‑teens in our base case.

We’d categorize KSPI as a selective buy for investors willing to:

• Size positions prudently
• Track quarterly guidance, Turkey metrics, asset quality, and tax/reserve disclosures
• Accept that this is not a low‑touch, set‑and‑forget holding

If you like the idea of owning a dominant super‑app with strong economics, but you also understand that Turkey and regulation are non‑trivial X‑factors, Kaspi.kz deserves a place on your watchlist—and potentially in your portfolio—at the right price.

Sources

• 20-F (2025) – Kaspi.kz Annual Report 2024
• 6-K (2025) – Kaspi.kz 9M 2025 Interim Report
• Kaspi.kz FY 2024 results, 2025-02-24
• Kaspi.kz 1Q 2025 results, 2025-05-12
• Kaspi.kz 2Q & 1H 2025 results, 2025-08-04
• Kaspi.kz 3Q & 9M 2025 results, 2025-11-10
• Kaspi.kz credit rating release, Moody’s Baa3, 2025-03-05
• Kaspi.kz 3Q 2025 Marketscreener recap, 2025-11-10
• Freedom Broker, Kaspi.kz financial results for 3Q 2025, 2025-11
• Baker McKenzie – Kazakhstan New Tax Code, Sept 2025
• KPMG – Kazakhstan rules for determining taxable income from banking activities, 2025-12-04
• EY – Kazakhstan tax legislation update, July 2025
• BeyondSPX – Kaspi.kz Q3 2025 earnings and analysis, November 2025
• BeyondSPX – Kaspi.kz super-app analysis, November 2025
• TipRanks – Kaspi.kz earnings and analysis, August–November 2025
• TipRanks – Kaspi.kz Q3 2025 recap, November 2025
• Smartkarma – Kaspi.kz earnings alert, November 2025
• Investors Business Daily – Kaspi.kz fintech super-app profile, April 2024
• Panabee – Kaspi.kz earnings coverage, August 2025
• Yahoo Finance – Kaspi.kz Q3 2025 earnings recap, 2025-11
• StockTitan – Kaspi.kz 3Q & 9M 2025 financial recap, 2025-11
• Hepsiburada Q3 2025 Results Press Release
• Kaspi.kz EX‑99.1, 1Q 2025 results
• Kaspi.kz EX‑99.1, 2Q 2025 results