Bango grows recurring revenue 31% as it cuts back payment routes
Recurring revenue now equals 39% of the Cambridge company’s trailing revenue, as it deliberately shrinks lower-margin carrier billing routes to back its telco bundling platform
- Net revenue retention: 119% (first half of 2025: 108%)
- Active subscriptions: 25.6 million, up 33%
- Gross margin: 87%, up 310 basis points
- Net debt: $8.7m (£6.6m) at 30 June
Bango offers a model for shrinking a business line on purpose: separate the growing recurring line from the one being cut, report both and warn early about the effect on reported revenue. Leaders with a legacy low-margin book can copy the framing. The risk is timing: if the restructuring runs past its planned end, flat headline revenue becomes harder to explain as a choice.
“Net Revenue Retention of 119% underlines the strength of our model: as customers add more subscription services and increase volumes, recurring revenue grows with minimal incremental cost.”Paul Larbey, chief executive, Bango
Bango reported on 25 September that its annual recurring revenue (ARR) stood at $20.4m (£15.4m) at 30 June, up 31% on a year earlier, while revenue for the six months grew only 3% to $25.9m (£19.6m).
The split explains the gap. Subscriptions revenue, from its Digital Vending Machine (DVM) bundling platform, rose 13% to $12.3m (£9.3m). Payments revenue, from direct carrier billing and wallets, fell 5% to $13.6m (£10.3m) as Bango drops higher-cost routes, a restructuring it expects to finish by December 2026. Core routes now make up 90% of payments revenue, up from 83% a year earlier.
The DVM lets telcos, banks and retailers bundle third-party subscriptions into their own offers, and Bango says seven of the eight largest US telcos have adopted it. It won six DVM customers in the half, three of them contracted by 30 June, and says it had won eight this year by 25 September. Customers announced in the half include KDDI in Japan and Mobile Vikings, a Belgian mobile virtual network operator owned by Proximus.
Adjusted earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) rose 34% to $9.0m (£6.8m). Bango says trading is in line with full-year expectations, but warned the payments restructuring may cause a low-single-digit variation in reported revenue against consensus.
Sources
- Bango, “Bango 1H26 Interim Results”, RNS announcement, 25 September 2026. https://www.investegate.co.uk/announcement/rns/bango--bgo/bango-1h26-interim-results/9790237
