Shares in Wise PLC slumped on Thursday after disappointing guidance took the shine off a year of financial progress and customer gains.

Shares in Wise plunged 15% to 714.50 pence in London on Thursday morning. Its market value is £7.3 billion.

In the financial year ended March 31, the London-based money transfer services provider reported that revenue jumped 24% to £1.05 billion from £846.1 million a year earlier.

Pretax profit rose to £481.4 million, more than triple £146.5 million a year prior. Underlying pretax profit rose to £241.8 million from £74.3 million.

Looking ahead, Wise expects 15% to 20% annual underlying income growth for financial 2025, ‘driven by customer growth.’

Over the medium term, Wise expects to operate to an underlying pretax margin of 13% to 16%.

Broker Jefferies said the 2025 guidance for underlying income was, at its mid-point, 2% below the consensus of £1.41 billion.

Worse, Jefferies said the underlying pretax margin guidance implies pretax profit of £175 to £225 million, 19% below the consensus of £247 million.

Wise said improvements in efficiency were gained in financial 2024 resulting in an ‘inflated’ level of earnings, providing the opportunity to reduce average cross-border pricing by more than 2 basis points.

Adjusting for the ‘outperformance’ in 2024 and price reduction in financial 2025, expected growth would have otherwise been 20% to 25%, Wise said.

In addition, Wise said it had initiated a second re-price in the first quarter of 2025, which will see price reductions for higher value transactions, particularly on main currency routes.

‘While the announced guidance is disappointing at first glance given the price reduction, however, we think the cuts boost confidence in medium-term growth,’ Jefferies added.

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Kristo Kaarmann said: ‘We are investing in infrastructure and customer experiences to serve as much of this huge, under-served cross-border payments market as possible, including starting [financial 2025] by reducing fees further for our customers.’

He said the ‘best is yet to come.’

In financial 2024, Wise reported a 29% increase in active customers with growth across segments and regions.

This growth in customers drove a 13% increase in cross-border volumes to £118.5 billion, 16% growth on a constant currency basis, with double-digit growth across all five of geographical segments.

Active Personal customers grew 29% to 12.2 million, with Personal volumes growing by 14% to £87.2 billion.

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