The UK stock market is home to some brilliant companies. Many of these companies don’t get the attention they deserve, however.
One company that I feel doesn’t get enough attention from investors is international payments powerhouse Wise (LSE: WISE). In my view, this stock is a bit of a hidden gem in the UK market.
Today (13 April), Wise has posted a trading update for the fourth quarter of its 2026 financial year (FY26). And the numbers are very impressive, as usual.
For the quarter, cross-border volume grew 26% year on year (27% on a constant currency basis) to £49.4bn. Meanwhile, underlying income for the period £435.3m was up 24% on both a reported and constant currency basis.
At the end of the period, Wise had 11.3m active customers (+22% year on year). Business active customers amounted to 572,000 (+26%).
For the full FY26 year, cross-border volume was up 25% to £181.7bn. Underlying income was £1,609.2bn, up 18% on a reported basis.
It seems the market is happy with the numbers. As I write this, Wise’s share price is up about 5%.
That takes the stock’s year-to-date gain to about 12%. That’s roughly twice the gain of the FTSE 100 index.
Now, from an investment perspective, these kinds of numbers are exciting. However, there are several other exciting parts to the investment case that are worth highlighting.
One is that the company is shortly about to move its primary listing to the US but will maintain a secondary listing on the London Stock Exchange. This could generate a lot of interest in the stock – the US market is much larger than the UK’s and investors are also far more interested in growth companies.
So, while it’s a bit of a hidden gem today, it may not be for much longer. I reckon it will be more popular once it’s listed in the US, especially given its mid-20s price-to-earnings ratio.
Another is that the company operates a ‘scale economies shared’ business model. This essentially involves continually lowering its transfer prices to enhance customer loyalty and keep customers coming back for more (note that its cross-border take rate reduced 1bp in Q4 to 51bps).
Now, a lot of investors are put off by the lowering of prices. However, this business model can actually be very powerful as it tends to really lock in customers. Amazon has had huge success with this model.
One other thing worth mentioning is that Wise has built a really great product. I use it to send money internationally all the time and I couldn’t be happier – payments are super fast and extremely cheap!