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Boku (LSE: BOKU) might have passed under many investors’ radars in 2025 — but analysts have their eyes on this growth stock, raising their price targets. Jefferies is the latest, with a new price of 334p stamped on it. That’s a rise of 60% on the Thursday (29 January) closing price. And it’s not the biggest — the top of the range has a 350p price in sight, for a huge 68% jump.
I’d wager quite a few investors have never heard of this AIM-listed company, with a market cap of £612m. Oh, and with forecasts for a 10-fold increase in earnings per share between 2024 and 2027. It’s no wonder eight out of eight brokers have it as a Buy.
Boku is a new-generation financial technology company — or fintech for short. It provides a platform to pay for goods and services on mobile phones. Telecom providers are using it to enable customers to buy from the likes of Amazon, Netflix and many more.
Not seen it local to our own neighbourhoods yet? Well, it’s growing particularly strongly in China and the rest of the Asia Pacific region. It’s the power behind the AliPay eWallet, for example, in China and Hong Kong. And China seems to be well ahead of the UK in electronic transactions, with cash payment rapidly disappearing — even in some remote parts of the country.
What to expect
With January’s year-end trading update, the company braced us for an expectations-busting year. We should be on for revenue of approximately $128m, for a 29% increase from the previous year. As a result, we see total cash up 39%. And EBITDA should be 31% ahead at around $41m, with Boku now having 115m monthly active users.
Now, these amounts might not seem very big in the scale of global payment systems. But these are still very early days for this business sector. And the potential is surely huge.
CEO Stuart Neal told us: “Direct Carrier Billing remains a popular payment method, Digital Wallets are scaling rapidly and Account-to-Account schemes are continuing to emerge.” He also spoke of confidence in “our medium-term guidance of organic revenue growth above 20% on a CAGR basis and adjusted EBITDA margins above 30%.”
What’s the risk?
Nothing in the investing business is ever really a no-brainer Buy, not even if all the analysts say so. And I see a few potential rocks in the road ahead here. For starters, we’re very much looking at the kind of high valuation that often comes with an early-stage growth stock. Boku is on a forecast price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 53. But that’s down from over 200 last year. And if forecasts are right, it could be under 30 by 2027.
It’s in a highly-competitive market too, and subject to various global regulatory regimes. Still, with the potential I’m seeing here, Boku has to be a strong contender for growth stock investors to consider in 2026.
