Remittance startup Nium shaves losses, more than doubles revenue in 2020

Singapore remittance startup Nium announced in June that it was eyeing an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in the next 18 to 24 months, with further plans to enter the US market and scale its business in the country.

The company is in the process of getting its finances into shape. Nium has brought down its negative earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) in 2020 by 73x to just US$353,000 from the US$25.4 million hit it took a year prior.

However, the massive swing in EBIT came primarily from a non-cash item under “other income,” which surged by nearly 40x to US$18.3 million, according to the startup’s recent filings with Singapore’s Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (ACRA).

See also: Nium turns global amid tighter regulations in home market

This was mainly due to a one-time gain on derecognition of financial liabilities amounting to US$17.3 million, which occurred after Nium converted debt issued by its investors into equity. Excluding this amount, the company would have posted an operating loss of US$17.6 million.

Nevertheless, this doesn’t mean that Nium didn’t have a good year. The fintech firm saw its revenue grow by more than 2x to US$16.7 million in 2020 from US$7.4 million the year before.

Nium was able to cut its operating losses by about US$7.8 million in 2020, even after excluding its gain on the derecognition of financial liabilities. That’s a 44% drop in its operating losses from 2019.

While this is the first financial period in which the company was able to reduce its burn in the last five years, it’s still a long way from breaking even.

Nium declined Tech in Asia’s requests for comment regarding its earnings.

Photo credit: Vertex Growth

Nium handled up to US$2.1 billion in transactions in the fourth quarter of 2020 and aims to hit US$6 billion in the fourth quarter of this year, CEO and co-founder Prajit Nanu said earlier this year.

This is an improvement from 2019, when the startup moved roughly US$5 billion in transactions.

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