Remitly Global, Inc. (RELY) — Fundamental Analysis

Snapshot & Big Picture

Remitly Global is a digital-first international remittance platform that allows immigrants to send money to family and friends across more than 170 countries. Founded in 2011 and publicly listed since 2021, the company operates in a massive and underserved market — global remittance flows run into the hundreds of billions of dollars annually — competing against legacy wire-transfer incumbents like Western Union and MoneyGram, as well as fintech peers like Wise. Remitly's edge is its mobile-centric experience, transparent pricing, and speed, which have helped it compound revenue at an exceptional rate over the past several years. The headline story for RELY in recent filings is the inflection toward profitability: after years of operating losses, fiscal year 2025 marked the company's first full year of positive operating and net income, a watershed moment for investors who have been waiting to see the unit economics prove out at scale.

Latest Quarter Snapshot (Q1 2026 — Most Current Data)

The most recent data available comes from the 10-Q filed May 6, 2026, covering the quarter ended March 31, 2026. This is more current than the annual figures and reflects the strongest profitability metrics in Remitly's public-company history.

A single quarter generating nearly $453 million in revenue annualizes to roughly $1.8 billion — already well above the full-year 2025 figure of $1.64 billion, signaling continued strong momentum. Double-digit operating and net margins in Q1 2026 represent a sharp acceleration from where the company stood just two years ago.

Profitability — Multi-Year Trend

The profitability story at Remitly is one of steady, deliberate improvement. For most of its operating history as a public company, heavy investment in customer acquisition, product development, and geographic expansion kept the company firmly in the red. The trend has now clearly reversed.

Note that gross margin figures were not available in the SEC filings as reported in this dataset. The EBITDA swing from -$114.3 million in FY 2022 to +$102.5 million in FY 2025 — and then to nearly $60 million in a single quarter in Q1 2026 — illustrates powerful operating leverage as fixed technology and compliance costs are spread across a rapidly growing revenue base. FY 2022 was the nadir for margins, likely reflecting heavy post-IPO investment spending. Since then, improvement has been consistent and accelerating.

Financial Health

Remitly's balance sheet is notably clean for a growth-stage fintech that spent years burning cash. The debt-to-equity ratio has fluctuated modestly but sits at a negligible 0.003x as of Q1 2026, essentially debt-free in any meaningful sense. The current ratio has remained comfortably above 2.5x across recent years, reflecting solid near-term liquidity. There is no sign of balance sheet stress.

Capital Expenditure Discussion: For most of its history, Remitly has been a remarkably low capital intensity business — CapEx rarely exceeded 1% of revenue from FY 2020 through FY 2024, reflecting the asset-light nature of a software-driven payments platform. FY 2025 stands out as a notable step-up, with CapEx jumping to $29.4 million (1.8% of revenue), nearly five times the prior year's absolute spend. This is worth monitoring: it could reflect investment in infrastructure to support the company's scaling operations, technology buildout, or compliance-related systems. The Q1 2026 CapEx rate of 1.3% of revenue is consistent with the elevated-but-manageable FY 2025 level. Even at this higher level, reinvestment demands remain modest compared to most industries, which is a structural advantage of the digital payments model.

Growth

Remitly's revenue growth has been among the most impressive in the fintech sector. The table below summarizes compound annual growth rates across available windows.

A 3-year revenue CAGR of 35.8% and a 5-year CAGR of 44.8% place Remitly in rare company among companies of its size. Importantly, this growth has not come at the cost of permanently impaired unit economics — as demonstrated by the profitability inflection in FY 2025 and the accelerating margins in Q1 2026, scale is clearly doing the work the bull thesis always anticipated.

Plain English Summary

Remitly is a company that helps immigrants send money home, and it has been growing extraordinarily fast — roughly tripling revenue in just three years. For a long time, that growth came with big losses as the company spent heavily to build its platform and win customers. That era appears to be ending. In FY 2025, Remitly turned its first annual profit, and the most recent quarter (Q1 2026) showed operating and net margins of nearly 12% and 11% respectively — levels that, if sustained, would indicate a genuinely profitable, scalable business rather than a growth story propped up by investor capital. The balance sheet is healthy, with virtually no debt and comfortable liquidity. Capital expenditures ticked up meaningfully in FY 2025, something worth watching, but even at elevated levels the business remains far less capital-intensive than traditional financial services. The core risks for Remitly include intensifying competition from both legacy players and well-funded fintechs, regulatory complexity across dozens of jurisdictions, and the inherent sensitivity of its customer base to macroeconomic conditions like employment rates and currency fluctuations. But the fundamental trajectory — rapid growth converging with improving profitability on a lean balance sheet — is exactly what long-term investors want to see.

Source Filings

• Form 10-Q — Filed May 6, 2026 (Quarter Ended March 31, 2026)
• Form 10-K — Filed February 18, 2026 (Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2025)