[Update] Kaspi.kz (KSPI)

I wrote a deep dive on Kaspi back in October of 2025. If you haven't read it, you should…

Deep Dive into Kaspi.kz (KSPI)

But if you don’t have the time, the short version is: Kaspi runs basically the entire digital economy of Kazakhstan through a single app. Payments, e-commerce, lending, groceries, travel, bill pay, all of it. 15 million monthly active users in a country of 19 million people. The thing prints money.

Back then the stock was ridiculously cheap because they’d suspended the dividend and were pouring billions into acquiring Hepsiburada, Turkey’s second largest e-commerce platform.

The market didn’t love that.

And then you’ve got the Kazakhstan label on top of it, which carries a permanent discount for most allocators. So nobody wanted to touch it. I thought the market was being waaay too pessimistic.

Fast forward to today, the Hepsiburada deal is done, the dividend is back, management is turning its attention back to shareholders, and yet the stock is still sitting at ~7x earnings and roughly ~4.5x EV/EBITDA. It hasn’t re-rated at all.

Anyways, the business has kept moving since October even if the stock hasn’t so I wanted to put out a quick update.

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Tencent Takes a Stake

Tencent bought a ~3.2% stake in Kaspi on April 20th as part of a group that picked up 6 million ADSs from the Baring Fintech Venture Funds. The whole block was worth about $518 million. Lomtadze — the founder and CEO — also bought shares alongside them with his own money, as did other members of senior management.

On top of that, Spice Expeditions (a fintech investment firm), the Washington University endowment, and the University of Wisconsin Foundation came in as new holders.

“Tencent pioneered the super app ecosystem business model, and we have long admired its ability to combine innovation at scale with disciplined execution. We are delighted to welcome Tencent as one of Kaspi.kz’s largest shareholders. My own investment, together with those of key members of our senior management team, reflects our strong belief in Kaspi.kz’s Super App business model, long-term strategy and future growth opportunities…

The combination of strategic, management and highly respected institutional capital comes at an exciting time for Kaspi.kz as we build on our market leadership in Kazakhstan and expand into Türkiye.” — Mikheil Lomtadze, CEO and Co-Founder of Kaspi.kz

Look, Tencent invests in stuff all over the world. That’s kind of their thing. They were early in Shopee, MercadoLibre, tons of gaming companies. So I’m not going to sit here and pretend like a Tencent stake in Kaspi is some massive revelation about the quality of the business. They like super apps. Kaspi is a super app. Makes sense.

But Lomtadze buying more stock alongside them is a nice look too. He already owns a massive chunk of the company. He doesn’t have to buy more. He knows the tax headwinds coming, he knows the Kazakhstan base rate is at 18%, he knows Turkey is going to lose money near-term. He bought anyway. And he did it at the same time as a bunch of institutions with 20+ year time horizons.

The market liked it, stock popped about ~9% on the day. Tencent, the founder, university endowments all buying at the same time is a pretty solid vote of confidence.

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The Dividend

This is the bigger deal, in my opinion.

For several quarters the market was getting increasingly frustrated with Kaspi because the company was funneling all its cash into the Hepsiburada acquisition and not returning anything to shareholders. And I mean, I get it. You’ve got this incredibly profitable business generating a ton of free cash flow and you’re just watching it go out the door to fund a Turkish e-commerce acquisition while the stock drifts lower. That’s not fun for anyone.

That chapter is done. The board recommended a quarterly dividend of KZT 850 per ADS, which works out to roughly $1.71 per quarter at current exchange rates. Lomtadze said in his shareholder letter that this is the baseline going forward. So if you annualize that, you’re looking at about $6.84 in dividends, which at ~$86 per share is roughly a 9% yield.