PensionBee half-year results 2026: revenue jumps 40% as UK turns profitable

PensionBee Group plc has delivered a strong first half operationally, with customer growth, rising pension assets and improving UK profitability all helping revenue climb 40%.

The online retirement savings provider is not yet profitable across the group on an underlying first-half basis. However, the gap narrowed significantly as its established UK operation demonstrated the operating leverage investors have been waiting to see.

The headline £8.2 million statutory profit needs careful treatment because it includes a large deferred tax benefit. The original company announcement shows that PensionBee still made a £2.9 million pre-tax loss.

PensionBee's key half-year figures

Metric	H1 2026	H1 2025	Change
Group revenue	£26.4 million	£18.9 million	40%
Assets under administration	£8.6 billion	£6.3 billion	37%
Invested customers	327,000	286,000	14%
Net flows	£493 million	£423 million	16%
Adjusted EBITDA	£(1.1) million	£(2.9) million	61% improvement
Pre-tax loss	£(2.9) million	£(5.1) million	42% improvement
Cash and cash equivalents	£31.3 million	£34.1 million	Down 8%
Basic earnings per share	3.45p	(2.14)p	Positive after tax benefit

Adjusted EBITDA means earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation, adjusted here to exclude share-based payments. It is a useful measure of operating progress, although it is not the same as statutory profit or cash flow.

Customer and asset growth remains impressive

Invested customers increased 14% to 327,000, supported by approximately 22,000 customer additions in the UK during the half. Customer retention remained above 95%, while value retention stayed above 100%.

Value retention above 100% means inflows from retained customers exceeded outflows. That is encouraging because PensionBee's model depends not just on winning accounts, but on customers remaining on the platform, transferring additional pensions and making further contributions.

Assets under administration, or AUA, rose 37% to £8.6 billion. Net flows contributed £493 million, including £372 million from new customers and £121 million from existing customers.

Supportive markets did plenty of the heavy lifting too. Market growth and other movements added £712 million, compared with only £31 million a year earlier. Investors should therefore distinguish between assets attracted through customer activity and assets lifted by market performance.

Gross outflows increased 40% to £372 million. Management said this remained equivalent to an annualised rate of around 10% of opening AUA, but it is still a figure worth monitoring as the asset base expands.

Revenue growth is translating into UK profitability

Group revenue increased 40% to £26.4 million, slightly faster than AUA. PensionBee's revenue margin improved from 0.63% to 0.68%, reflecting a shift towards higher-fee funds.

Annual run-rate revenue reached £55.8 million, also up 40%. This metric indicates the annualised revenue level based on the position at the period end, rather than revenue already recorded for the full year.

The UK business was the standout. UK revenue rose 39% to £27.2 million and adjusted EBITDA improved from a £0.8 million loss to a £1.5 million profit. UK last-12-month adjusted EBITDA increased 141% to £7.7 million, representing a 15% margin.

UK revenue is higher than reported group revenue because the consolidated figure includes £0.8 million of intercompany eliminations.

This is important evidence that PensionBee's technology-led model can become more profitable as it scales. Revenue grew faster than technology platform costs and other operating expenses, which increased 20% to £14.0 million.

Productivity also improved 17% to 1,747 invested customers per UK staff member. The company's AI-powered BeeBot now resolves more than half of the live chats it handles, allowing employees to focus on more complex customer queries.

Marketing spend is rising, but customer economics look stable

PensionBee increased total advertising and marketing expenditure by 35% to £11.3 million. After £1.7 million of marketing reimbursement income, net expenditure was £9.6 million, up 26%.

UK marketing spending increased 24% to £9.4 million. Prompted brand awareness reached a record 62%, compared with 59% a year earlier, while the UK cost per invested customer increased modestly from £251 to £263.

The company is deliberately spending more to attract customers with higher average transfer values. Gross inflows rose broadly in line with UK marketing investment, increasing 25% to £864 million.

That looks reasonably disciplined so far. The test is whether new customer cohorts continue bringing sufficiently large pension balances to justify the acquisition cost.

The £8.2 million profit comes with an accounting caveat

PensionBee reported an £8.2 million profit after tax and positive basic earnings per share of 3.45p. Neither figure represents a clean move into underlying group profitability.

The company recognised a £11.5 million deferred tax asset for the first time. A deferred tax asset reflects tax benefits expected to arise when past losses are used against future taxable profits. Of this amount, £11.2 million was recognised through the income statement.

Excluding the deferred tax asset, basic earnings per share remained negative at (1.24)p. The pre-tax result was also still a £2.9 million loss.

The tax asset is not meaningless. Its recognition reflects the board's judgement that sufficient UK taxable profits are likely to arise through to the end of 2030. But investors should focus on the improving trading figures rather than treating the statutory profit as proof that group-level profitability has fully arrived.

US expansion remains the main drag

The US business is still very small compared with PensionBee's UK operation. US AUA reached £4 million, with £1.4 million of net flows during the half.

PensionBee is developing direct-to-consumer and business-to-business channels, with a pipeline of around 100 intermediary relationships representing more than 1,500 employers. Its initial target is $1 billion of US AUA.

There is clearly a long distance to travel. US adjusted EBITDA deteriorated from a £2.2 million loss to a £2.6 million loss for the half, while the last-12-month loss reached £5.0 million.

State Street reimburses the majority of US marketing expenditure, which reduces some financial pressure. Even so, the US operation is consuming resources before producing meaningful revenue. Execution risk remains substantial, particularly around converting intermediary relationships and brand awareness into recurring inflows.

Balance sheet and guidance

Cash and cash equivalents stood at £31.3 million, down from £32.6 million at the end of December 2025 and £34.1 million in June 2025. PensionBee reported no borrowings and regulatory capital coverage of 10.2 times the required level.

The company reiterated its ambition to generate more than £100 million of group revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 20% by the end of 2029. Longer term, it is targeting more than £250 million of revenue and an adjusted EBITDA margin of around 50% by the end of 2034.

These are ambitions rather than guarantees and assume relative market stability. PensionBee does not intend to pay a dividend while it continues investing in growth.

What investors should watch next

The first-half numbers provide strong evidence that PensionBee's UK model is scaling. Revenue is compounding, retention remains high and the UK business has crossed into first-half adjusted EBITDA profitability despite increased marketing investment.

The two main questions now sit outside that core progress. First, can PensionBee continue attracting strong net flows if financial markets become less supportive? Second, can the US business develop into a meaningful growth engine without placing excessive pressure on group cash and profitability?

For now, the UK operation is doing the hard work. The quality of future results will depend on whether that profitable momentum can outpace the cost and uncertainty of building the US business.