Daily Brief Singapore: JustCo Holdings, Hydra X, Neptune Robotics, MoneyHero, Trust Bank Ltd and more

• It is not surprising that investors compare JustCo to WeWork, as both share the same business model: sign a long lease with a landlord, spend on renovation, rent out workstations on shorter and flexible terms, and earn the rental spread.

• There are inherent mismatches of fixed cost versus flexible revenue, long liability versus short visibility.

• The flexi-office business model carries high operating leverage, given that its costs are mostly fixed.

• Regulated Market Infrastructure Provider: Hydra X operates as a licensed digital asset custodian and tokenisation platform bridging traditional finance with blockchain ecosystems. The company leverages its Capital Markets Services licence from the Monetary Authority of Singapore to deliver institutional-grade exchange technology and secure settlement services across the Asia-Pacific region.
• High-Margin Regulatory Moat: The business model combines recurring software licensing with asset-based custody fees, .yielding a strong gross margin of 82.7% for the 2024 financial year. This asset-light financial profile is protected by formidable barriers to entry, as the rigorous regulatory approval process and deep institutional workflow integrations create substantial customer switching costs.
• Operating Leverage Still to Be Proven: Compliance and administrative overhead scaled faster than revenue through FY24, producing a US$1.9m net loss and reducing cash and cash equivalents to US$3.4m by year end. FY25 showed early improvement, with revenue up 34% and the loss before tax narrowing to US$0.8m, but the company remains loss-making and dependent on its cash reserves and further equity funding.

Executive Summary

• Dominant Regional Maritime Footprint: Neptune Robotics has established a commanding operational presence across 61 strategic ports in Singapore and China, servicing approximately 70.0% of major Asian shipping routes with its automated hull cleaning technology. Supported by a recent US$52.0m Series B funding round, the company is pursuing expansion into 20 new global markets while investing US$12.0m in a new Singapore manufacturing facility to increase local autonomous cleaning capacity by 400%.
• Compelling Decarbonisation Value Proposition: The core investment thesis is anchored in the company’s ability to directly address severe maritime fuel inefficiencies, utilising proprietary cavitational waterjet robots to remove marine biofouling, which can raise fuel consumption by up to 30.0%, with the company reporting average fuel savings of 18.0% after cleaning. This robotics-as-a-service model offers a rapid return on investment for major fleet operators, based on company-reported fuel savings, supporting customer acquisition and aligning directly with tightening global maritime emissions regulations.
• High Capital And Labour Intensity: The business model requires substantial upfront capital expenditure to manufacture physical robotic hardware and relied, as of its latest disclosure in 2022, on a labour-intensive four-person on-site operational team per deployment, with management targeting one to two operators. A failure to reduce on-site staffing towards this target or to scale manufacturing output to the targeted 60 daily hull cleanings by 2027 would compress gross margins and could return the business from its reported profitability to cash burn across the planned global expansion.

• Management Meeting. On Tuesday, we were able to sit down with Interim CEO Danny Leung to discuss MNY.
• First, there appears to be no update on the CEO search, whether Danny will have the interim tag removed or if an outside candidate will be coming in.
• In our view, this uncertainty is the biggest overhang on the stock. 

• Trust Bank achieved profitability within 3.5 years of its launch, positioning it among the fastest global digital banks.
• In FY2025, Trust’s total income grew by nearly 40% to S$135 million, while operating expenses decreased.
• Trust Bank’s client acquisition cost is one-seventh that of traditional banks, with 70% of new clients from referrals.