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A Mastercard debit card from U.K. digital bank Monzo.

Monzo

Monzo on Wednesday said it hit profitability for the first time this year, in a major milestone for one of the U.K.’s most prominent digital banks.

In its annual report for the year ending February 2023, Monzo reported net operating income of £214.5 million ($266.1 million), almost doubling year-over-year from £114 million.

Losses at the bank nevertheless came in at a substantial £116.3 million — though this was slightly lower than the £119 million net loss Monzo reported in 2022.

Still, the company managed to reach profitability in the first two months of the year.

In its annual report, Chief Financial Officer James Davies said Monzo is “now a business with diverse and stabilising revenue from a large, and growing, personal and business customer base.”

“Profitability was always a choice as we balance continuing to invest in growth with profitability,” Monzo’s CEO, TS Anil, told CNBC in an interview. “We could have chosen to be profitable a few quarters ago.”

Monzo is not the first digital bank to hit profitability. Starling Bank reached that milestone for the first time in 2021. Fellow fintech Allica Bank reached monthly profitability last year.

Monzo’s move into the black was largely thanks to a substantial increase in income from newer revenue lines, such as lending and subscriptions. Paid accounts now total 350,000.

Monzo declined to share a figure on how much of a profit it is making currently. The firm said it is on track to reach full-year profitability by the end of 2024.

Lending growth

Monzo’s strong revenue performance was driven by a bumper year for its lending business. This came against a backdrop of pain for U.K. consumers, who’re grappling with a harsh cost-of-living crisis as inflation soars.

Total lending volume reached £759.7 million, almost tripling year-on-year, while net interest income spiked by 382% to £164.2 million.  That was as usage of overdrafts, unsecured personal loans, and the Monzo Flex buy now, pay later service grew sharply.

Yet credit losses also surged dramatically, as the bank set aside a mountain of funds to deal with a sharp climb in anticipated defaults. Credit losses swelled to £101.2 million, a more than sevenfold increase from £14 million in 2022. 

It comes as consumers are increasingly turning to unsecured credit, such as credit cards and personal loans, to offset the impact of the rising cost of living. Research from consulting firm PwC indicates U.K. household debt exceeded £2 trillion for the first time in January.

Monzo’s boss disputed that the cost-of-living crisis had contributed to its revenue performance.

“The cost-of-living crisis was painful for everyone, but it really underscored the ways in which the Monzo product is incredibly powerful,” Anil told CNBC. 

He added the growing cost of living impacted how people used Monzo products, with usage of its savings pots and budgeting tools rising.

Meanwhile, Monzo said it continues to work with the Financial Conduct Authority regulator over an ongoing inquiry into the company’s alleged breaches of anti-money laundering laws.

“We expect it to take time to resolve,” Monzo said. “This could have a negative impact on our financial position, but we won’t know when or what the outcome will be for some time.”

UK ‘not holding us back’

The fintech sector has experienced increasing scrutiny since it grew in prominence after the 2020 Covid outbreak.

Major digital banks, from Revolut to N26, are receiving heightened attention from regulators. Revolut is reportedly set to have its application for a banking license rejected by the Bank of England, according to the Telegraph.

A number of tech bosses have expressed doubts about the U.K.’s bid to become a global tech power on the back of notable setbacks, including Cambridge-based chip design firm Arm’s decision to list in New York rather than London.

Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky earlier this month said his firm had encountered “extreme bureaucracy” in its experience applying for a banking license in the U.K. and said he would never list in the country. Monzo co-founder Tom Blomfield, meanwhile, left London for San Francisco, citing a “much more accepting” environment for tech founders.

“From our perspective, this is a country where we got licensed, this is our home market; we’ve clearly learned this is where we can build a business of scale,” Monzo’s Anil said. “It’s not holding us back, I don’t think of it like that at all.”

Monzo now has 7.4 million customers in the U.K., making it the seventh-largest bank in the U.K. by client numbers. Total customer deposits now stand at £6 billion.

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Chegg sues Google for hurting traffic with AI as it considers strategic alternatives

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Chegg sues Google for hurting traffic with AI as it considers strategic alternatives

Chegg seen at the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 13, 2025. 

Danielle DeVries | CNBC

Chegg on Monday filed suit in federal district court against Google, claiming that artificial intelligence summaries of search results have hurt the online education company’s traffic and revenue.

The legal move come nearly two years after former CEO Dan Rosensweig said students engaging with OpenAI’s ChatGPT assistant were cutting into Chegg’s new customer growth.

Chegg is worth less than $200 million, and in after-hours trading Monday, the stock was trading just above $1 per share. Chegg has engaged Goldman Sachs and will look at strategic options, including getting acquired and going private, President and CEO Nathan Schultz told analysts on a Monday earnings call.

Chegg reported a $6.1 million net loss on $143.5 million in fourth-quarter revenue, a 24% decline year over year, according to a statement. Analysts polled by LSEG had expected $142.1 million in revenue. Management called for first-quarter revenue between $114 million and $116 million, but analysts had been targeting $138.1 million. The stock was down 23% in extended trading.

Google forces companies like Chegg to “supply our proprietary content in order to be included in Google’s search function,” said Schultz, adding that the search company uses its monopoly power, “reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.”

Despite the suit, Chegg has its own AI strategy. It has drawn on Meta’s open-source Llama, as well as models from privately held Anthropic and Mistral, Schultz said. Chegg has also partnered with OpenAI, which the education company views as a competitor, alongside Google. The company reported that 3.6 million students had subscriptions in the fourth quarter, down 21%. Subscriptions include access to AI-powered learning assistance. Chegg also rents and sells textbooks.

AI Overviews, as Google’s artificial intelligence summaries are called, are available in the company’s search engine in over 100 countries, with more than 1 billion users, the company said in October. They show up above links to other pages in search results.

A Google spokesperson told CNBC that the company will defend itself against Chegg’s suit.

“Every day, Google sends billions of clicks to sites across the web, and AI Overviews send traffic to a greater diversity of sites,” the Google spokesperson said.

Chegg claimed that Google drew on Chegg’s collection of 135 million questions and answers on a variety of subjects in its model training data sets.

After training its models, Google can generate content that competes with information that publishers have on offer in search results, Chegg argued in its complaint. The online learning company included a screenshot of a Google AI Overview that borrows details from Chegg’s website but does not attribute the information. However, the relevant Chegg page does show up lower down in search results.

Chegg cited a federal judge’s ruling last August that Google holds a monopoly in the search market. The decision came after the Department of Justice in 2020 filed its landmark case, alleging that Google controlled the general search market by creating strong barriers to entry and a feedback loop that sustained its dominance.

WATCH: Google unrolls AI Overviews in six more countries

Google unrolls AI Overviews in six more countries

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Hims & Hers shares tumble after company misses on margin, says may stop selling some weight loss drugs

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Hims & Hers shares tumble after company misses on margin, says may stop selling some weight loss drugs

Hims & Hers Health shares plunged 18% in extended trading on Monday after investors looked past better-than-expected revenue and earnings and focused instead on the disappointing gross margin.

Here’s how the company did, compared to analysts’ consensus estimates from LSEG:

  • Earnings per share: 11 cents vs. 10 cents expected
  • Revenue: $481 million vs. $470 million expected

Revenue at the telehealth company increased 95% in the fourth quarter from $246.6 million during the same period last year, according to a release.

However, the company’s gross margin, or the profit left after accounting for the cost of goods sold, was 77%, while analysts polled by StreetAccount were expecting 78.4%.

It is the second big stock drop for Hims & Hers in a matter of days. The shares tumbled 26% on Friday after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that the shortage of semaglutide injection products has been resolved.

In May, Hims & Hers started prescribing compounded semaglutide, the active ingredient in Novo Nordisk‘s blockbuster GLP-1 medications Ozempic and Wegovy. The company was a breakout star within the digital health sector in 2024, in part because of the success of its popular new weight loss offering.

The company said its GLP-1 offering generated more than $225 million in revenue in 2024. The stock climbed about 200% for the year.

Compounded drugs are custom-made alternatives to brand-name drugs designed to meet a specific patient’s needs, and compounders are allowed to produce them when brand-name treatments are in shortage. The FDA said Friday that it will start taking action against compounders for violations in the next 60 to 90 days.

Hims & Hers said on the earnings call that as a result, compounded semaglutide will likely not be offered on the platform after the first quarter.

“We will have to start notifying customers in the coming month or two that they will need to start looking for alternative options on the commercial dosing,” Hims & Hers CEO Andrew Dudum said on the call. “I would suspect, just being very direct, that a lot of those patients will try to go into the open market and try to secure a branded option in some form factor.”

Some patients might still be able to access compounded semaglutide if it is clinically necessary, the company added.

The company’s weight loss offerings will primarily be composed of its oral medications and the generic medication liraglutide, which it plans to introduce on its platform this year. Excluding contributions from compounded semaglutide, Hims & Hers said it expects it weight loss offering will generate at least $725 million in revenue in 2025.

Hims & Hers also offers treatments for skin care, mental health, sexual health and hair care.

Revenue for non-GLP-1 products increased 43% to $1.2 billion for the full year, “meeting our previous 2025 revenue target a year early,” Chief Financial Officer Yemi Okupe said in a release.

“The success we are experiencing is a direct reflection of our improving ability to democratize access to high quality, personalized care across each of our specialties,” Okupe said.

Net income climbed to $26.01 million, or 11 cents per share, from $1.25 million, or 1 cent per share, a year prior. The company reported adjusted earnings of $54.1 million, meeting analysts’ estimates, according to StreetAccount.

For the first quarter, Hims & Hers expects to report revenue of $520 million to $540 million, while analysts were expecting $497 million. Adjusted earnings will be between $55 million and $65 million for the period, the company said.  

Hims & Hers will host its quarterly call with investors at 5:00 p.m. ET.

— CNBC’s Brandon Gomez contributed to this report.

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How AI is speeding the mining of valuable metals needed to power the clean economy

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How AI is speeding the mining of valuable metals needed to power the clean economy

As the clean energy economy expands, finding the minerals and metals that power it becomes increasingly critical. The answer might lie with artificial intelligence.

Electric cars, solar panels and hydrogen fuel cells all have one thing in common: the need for precious metals.

Historically, that’s required going through the arduous process of finding the metals and then getting them out of the ground. But new technologies from a slew of companies might be changing the game.

Kobold Metals, VerAI and a startup called Earth AI are in a race to get the metals to market as soon as possible. Earth AI combines AI-powered mineral discovery software with proprietary drilling technology. Its data goes back 50 years.

“We train our AI to learn from failures and successes of decades of hundreds of geologists that explored in the past to make much better predictions for where to look for metals in the future,” said Roman Teslyuk, CEO of Earth AI.

When the system finds what it thinks are metal deposits, Earth AI can drill down to verify it in just a tennis ball-sized hole. Teslyuk said that using this mining process takes half the cost and a fraction of the amount of time that was previously required. Individual annual mine revenues can range from $50 million to $3 billion, according to Mining Data Online.

“We drill down to 2,000 feet and grab a sample of rock that has never seen light, and the metals in that rock, they can build hundreds of millions of electric cars,” Teslyuk said. “They can turn our grid renewable. This rock can get us off hydrocarbons.”

Earth AI doesn’t explore around existing mines, but finds new areas and then sells that information to mining companies.

“The market for these minerals is massive,” said Jamie Lee, managing partner at Tamarack Global, an investor in Earth AI. “The way that they have approached this really caught our attention because there’s a there is a significant moat in their business model and the way that they’ve trained their large language model.”

Other investors include Y Combinator, Cantos Ventures, Scrum Ventures, Alpaca, Sparkwave Capital and Overmatch. The company has raised a total of $38 million.

Earth AI explores on its own, as well as with partners to find deposits faster. The company recently discovered one of the largest verified deposits of palladium in Australia using AI as part of a joint venture with Legacy Minerals.

CNBC Producer Lisa Rizzolo contributed to this piece.

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