On August 5, Remitly (NASDAQ:RELY) reported second-quarter results that set records across nearly every line the company chooses to highlight, then raised its full-year outlook on top of it. Revenue, adjusted EBITDA, and net income all hit new highs for the quarter ended June 30, 2026, while active customers crossed 10 million for the first time in the company’s history. That’s the kind of quarter that reads clean on a press release. Look closer, and the numbers tell a slightly more layered story.
Ten Million Customers And Counting
The headline figure bulls will point to is 10.2 million active customers, up from 8.5 million a year earlier, a 20% increase that pushed Remitly past 10 million users for the first time. That kind of scale matters for a remittance business, where more customers sending money more often builds the kind of network effect that’s hard for smaller competitors to replicate.
The more telling number sits a few lines down. Adjusted EBITDA jumped 79% year over year to $114.7 million, far outpacing the 20% growth in revenue. That gap is operating leverage showing up in real numbers: the company is converting a growing share of every dollar into profit rather than plowing it back into customer acquisition. Management pointed to AI-related efficiency gains as freeing up room to keep investing in growth without giving back margin, and that confidence showed up in the guidance too. Remitly raised its full-year 2026 outlook to $1.978 billion to $1.988 billion in revenue, 21% to 22% growth, alongside adjusted EBITDA of $410 million to $415 million. For the third quarter alone, the company guided to $505 million to $507 million in revenue and $92 million to $94 million in adjusted EBITDA. Raising guidance instead of just meeting it is usually a sign a management team likes what it’s seeing in the pipeline.
Not All Profit Is Real
Not every number in the release is as clean as it looks. That $205.9 million net income figure includes a one-time $140.6 million income tax benefit connected to releasing a US valuation allowance. Strip that item out and the underlying profit for the quarter looks meaningfully smaller than the headline suggests, a reminder that a large share of this quarter’s “record” net income came from an accounting event rather than the core business.
There’s a second wrinkle in the growth numbers themselves. Send volume rose 27% year over year to $23.5 billion, but revenue grew only 20% to $495.2 million. When the money moving through the platform grows faster than the revenue collected on it, that usually points to a shrinking take rate, whether from pricing pressure, mix shift toward lower-margin corridors, or competition. It isn’t a crisis, but it’s worth watching whether that gap keeps widening. The guidance itself is measured rather than accelerating too: a full-year revenue growth target of 21% to 22% and a third quarter guide of 20% to 21% both sit close to where the company already is, not meaningfully above it.
Wall Street Barely Blinks
Hedge fund positioning held steady into the print, with 38 funds holding a stake in Remitly in the most recent quarter, unchanged from 38 the quarter before. That flat reading suggests institutional investors weren’t rushing in or out ahead of earnings. Short interest sits at 7.2% of the float, a level that points to a real but not extreme bear camp rather than a setup for a short squeeze. Together, the two figures describe a stock that Wall Street hasn’t strongly picked a side on yet.
What Happens Next
Remitly’s second quarter gives both sides something to work with. The bulls have a growing customer base, EBITDA growing far faster than revenue, and a raised full-year outlook to point to. The bears have a net income number propped up by a one-time tax benefit and a widening gap between send volume growth and revenue growth that raises questions about pricing power. For the growth story to hold, that gap needs to stop widening even as the customer base keeps scaling.
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