Nubank Q2 2026 Earnings: The First $1B Quarter, 139M Customers and a 22.9% Net Interest Margin

Nubank earned $1.061 billion in the three months to June 30, 2026 — the first quarter in its thirteen-year history above a billion dollars, up from $871 million in Q1 and $637 million a year earlier. It did it serving 138.9 million customers at a monthly cost to serve of about $1.0 per active customer, against $17.1 of monthly revenue per active customer. That ratio is the business model in one line: a bank whose cost per customer fits in a footnote. The money is made on the other side of the balance sheet — a 22.9% net interest margin on credit cards and personal loans — and so is the risk: $6.59 billion of loss allowances sitting against those same balances.

The Headline Numbers​

The figures below are from Nu Holdings' IFRS interim financial statements, filed on a 6-K on August 13, 2026. Growth rates here are in reported US dollars; the earnings release quotes FX-neutral rates, which are lower because the Brazilian real strengthened.

The "first billion-dollar quarter" claim survives a check against the filings. The four prior quarters earned $782.7 million (Q3 2025), $894.8 million (Q4 2025) and $871.4 million (Q1 2026) on the same IFRS basis, and the release itself says net income "reached $1.1 billion for the first time in Nubank's history." The release's 49% growth figure is FX-neutral; in reported dollars the jump is 66.6%.

The table also shows that the jump was not all operating leverage. Gross profit grew slightly faster than revenue even after a 46% larger credit-loss charge, but operating expenses grew faster still, so pre-tax income rose only 40.6%. The rest came from tax: IFRS income tax fell 28% to $175.2 million while pre-tax income rose. Net income is consolidated; $0.9 million of it belongs to non-controlling interests and $1,060.2 million to Nu's shareholders.

One more distinction matters before any number is quoted. The release's headline revenue of "nearly $5.9 billion" is a managerial figure of $5,875.7 million. Management's reconciliation report adds $362.4 million of reclassifications and tax-equivalency gross-ups to IFRS revenue of $5,513.2 million, and moves a matching amount into managerial tax expense ($569.2 million instead of $175.2 million). Net income is identical under both: $1,061.1 million. The ledger uses the IFRS figures.

Revenue Deep Dive: A Card Book, a Loan Book and a Float​

Nu reports one operating segment. The IFRS statement splits revenue into interest income (and gains on financial instruments) and fees; the managerial view splits it three ways.

Credit income is interest earned on the card and loan books, and it is now 61% of managerial revenue. The release puts the total credit portfolio at $39.4 billion — $26 billion of credit cards, $10.3 billion of unsecured lending and $3.1 billion of secured lending — up 37% FX-neutral. On the earnings call the CFO's summary was that "growth remained broad-based." That operating portfolio is a gross, managerial measure; the balance sheet carries the same books at $21.5 billion (cards) and $11.3 billion (loans) net of allowances, and the two sets of numbers should not be mixed.

Float income is what Nu earns investing its $45.3 billion of deposits in cash, central-bank reserves and securities. It is the quiet engine: $1.45 billion in a quarter, with deposits costing 88% of Brazil's interbank rate, "3 p.p. lower than a year ago" per the release.

Fee income — interchange, late fees, insurance commissions — grew 39.4% on the IFRS line. Purchase volume reached $43.4 billion, up 16%.

The management signal scan finds robust-demand and market-expansion language but none of the supply or pricing themes. The CEO describes Mexico as a newly completed bank — "we launched our bank in Mexico, becoming the largest digital bank in the country with 16 million customers" — and management on the call called Brazil "our largest growth opportunity." Both Mexican bank operations (August 6) and the Croma premium tier (July) started after the quarter closed, so neither is in these numbers. There is no claim of demand exceeding supply, no tight supply, and no broad selling-price increase: higher revenue per customer comes from more products per customer, not from a disclosed price rise.

The Margin Story: 22.9% Before Losses, 12.4% After​

Two banking margins in the release carry the story. Net interest margin expanded 180 basis points to 22.9%, "reflecting portfolio growth, the mix shift toward unsecured lending, and the intentional risk expansions communicated last quarter." Risk-adjusted NIM — after the cost of credit — rose 290 basis points to 12.4% from 9.5% in Q1. Both are managerial ratios, not IFRS line items, so they belong in prose rather than in the ledger.

The IFRS gross margin tells the same story in accounting terms:

Q2's gross margin recovered five points from Q1 but did not exceed Q3 2025. Q1 is seasonally the worst quarter for early delinquencies, and the release attributes the 9% sequential decline in cost of credit mainly to "the normal second-quarter improvement in early delinquencies." Management also credited debt renegotiations under Brazil's Desenrola programme with part of the improvement; on the call the CFO declined to treat 12% risk-adjusted NIM as a floor.

Operating costs moved the other way. The efficiency ratio rose to 19.5% from 17.6% in Q1 as real-estate and marketing spend "shifted from the first quarter into the second," and management guided to about 20% for the year. On management's efficiency-ratio definition, operating expenses are less than a fifth of revenue — the cost-per-customer footnote in ratio form.

The One Big Question: Which Balance-Sheet Lines Carry the Margin?​

A 22.9% net interest margin is not earned on the whole balance sheet. It is earned on a narrow set of assets, funded by a narrow set of liabilities, and it has to cover a loss provision that lives on the same assets. The ledger's bank chart puts each of those lines in its own account:

Read the table from the allowances. In six months, gross card receivables grew 19% while the card allowance grew 28%, lifting coverage from 16.0% to 17.2% of the book. Gross loans grew 23% while the loan allowance grew 42%, from 13.7% to 15.8%. The allowances are growing faster than the books they cover. That is exactly what "intentional risk expansion" should look like in the accounts: the company is lending further down the risk curve, and IFRS 9 makes it reserve for the expected losses up front. The Q2 expected-credit-loss charge of $1,482.2 million splits into $832.2 million on cards, $632.3 million on loans and $17.7 million on other assets.

Credit quality moved in two directions at once. The 15–90-day NPL ratio improved 16 basis points to 4.8%, mostly from seasonality, while the 90+ NPL ratio rose 35 basis points to 6.9%. The allowance growth says management is provisioning for the second number, not celebrating the first.

On the funding side, deposits of $45.3 billion are more than the $32.8 billion of net card and loan balances combined — the surplus sits in securities ($19.2 billion) and compulsory central-bank deposits ($9.1 billion), which is where float income comes from. Payables to network, $15.5 billion owed onward to merchants for card purchases, are the second funding source for the card book. Deposits make up 54.8% of total assets. The margin question for the next four quarters is whether the spread between what the card and loan books yield and what the $1,482 million quarterly loss charge takes away stays near the 12.4% Q2 level once the seasonal and Desenrola tailwinds fade.

Tracking an $82.8B Digital Bank in Plain Text​

Modeling a bank in double-entry accounting forces every lending dollar to reconcile with the deposit that funds it and the allowance that discounts it. Our ledger follows how we model every company, with a few bank accounts added under the standard hierarchy — central-bank deposits, card receivables and loans shown gross with their allowances as contra accounts, deposits and payables to network — each mapped to its filing line in the ledger's header.

Here is the Q2 2026 income statement as a single Beancount transaction, in millions of US dollars. Income is negative (a credit) and expenses are positive (debits); Equity:Adjustments absorbs net income so the entry sums to zero, and the retained-earnings balance is set separately by a balance assertion.

; -- INCOME STATEMENT -- three months ended June 30, 2026 (Q2 only, not H1)
; Convention: income negative (credit), expenses positive (debit); Equity:Adjustments absorbs net income.
; Net income (consolidated, incl. NCI): 1,061.089
; Check: (-5513.208) + 1556.650 + 127.816 + 832.159 + 632.306 + 17.748 + 226.246 + 599.790 + 103.429 + 201.042 + (-24.954) + 4.663 + 175.224 + 1061.089 = 0
 
2026-06-30 * "Nu Holdings Ltd." "FY2026Q2 Income Statement"
  Income:Revenue                             -5513.208 MUSD  ; IFRS total revenue (interest income and gains 4760.573 + fees 752.635)
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                      1556.650 MUSD  ; interest and other financial expenses (funding cost)
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                       127.816 MUSD  ; transactional expenses
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                       832.159 MUSD  ; ECL expense: credit card receivables
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                       632.306 MUSD  ; ECL expense: loans to customers
  Expenses:CostOfRevenue                        17.748 MUSD  ; ECL expense: other
  Expenses:SellingGeneralAdministrative        226.246 MUSD  ; customer support and operations
  Expenses:SellingGeneralAdministrative        599.790 MUSD  ; general and administrative
  Expenses:SellingGeneralAdministrative        103.429 MUSD  ; marketing
  Expenses:OtherNet                            201.042 MUSD  ; other expenses
  Expenses:OtherNet                            -24.954 MUSD  ; other income
  Expenses:OtherNet                              4.663 MUSD  ; share of loss in associates
  Expenses:IncomeTax                           175.224 MUSD  ; income tax expense (Note 30; managerial view shows 569.2 after tax-equivalency)
  Equity:Adjustments                          1061.089 MUSD  ; net income offset (retained earnings set by balance assertion)

Revenue is one posting — IFRS total revenue — so this ledger compares cleanly with every other company in the Open Ledger fleet. The interest-versus-fee split lives in the comment and in the tables above. Interest income of $4,760.6 million less funding cost of $1,556.7 million leaves $3,203.9 million of IFRS net interest and financial income; the release's $3.7 billion "NII" is the managerial equivalent.

And here are the balance-sheet lines that carry the margin, as assertions:

2026-06-30 balance Assets:Current:CreditCardReceivables       25961.122 MUSD
2026-06-30 balance Assets:Current:CreditCardAllowance         -4466.716 MUSD
2026-06-30 balance Assets:NonCurrent:Loans                    13437.254 MUSD
2026-06-30 balance Assets:NonCurrent:LoanAllowance            -2119.832 MUSD
2026-06-30 balance Liabilities:Current:Deposits              -45328.419 MUSD

The number that tells the five-year story is deposits: $9.7 billion at the end of 2021, $45.3 billion now. Every other line in the bank — the card book, the loan book, the securities portfolio earning float — scaled on top of it.

The Multi-Year Arc​

Revenue grew more than ninefold in four years, and the company went from losing money to earning an 18% net margin. Three of these years carry named one-offs the ledger labels explicitly: FY2021 revenue is net of an $11.2 million NuSócios IPO customer programme, and FY2022 general and administrative expense includes a $355.6 million non-cash charge for the CEO's terminated contingent share award. FY2025 tax includes a $58.5 million benefit from a Brazilian tax-rate change.

The balance sheet grew in step. Deposits rose 4.3× from FY2021 to FY2025, and the FY2022 and FY2023 balance sheets follow the company's later restatement that removed crypto assets held for customers (and the equal liability) without changing equity. One quarter of 2026 has already produced $1.06 billion of the profit that took all of FY2023 to earn.

The Verdict: Bull vs. Bear​

Bull Case

• Net income crossed $1 billion in a quarter for the first time, up 66.6% in reported dollars, on 138.9 million customers.
• The cost to serve stays near $1.0 per active customer per month against $17.1 of revenue, and the efficiency ratio is 19.5%.
• Deposits of $45.3 billion exceed the net credit book by $12.5 billion, and cost 88% of the interbank rate.
• Mexico now runs as a bank with 16 million customers, a second franchise that the Q2 numbers do not yet include.

Bear Case

• Card and loan allowances grew 28% and 42% in six months while the books grew 19% and 23% — the risk expansion is showing up in reserves.
• The 90+ NPL ratio rose 35 basis points to 6.9%; the early-delinquency improvement was mostly seasonal.
• Pre-tax income grew 40.6%, slower than revenue; part of the net-income jump came from a lower tax charge.
• Management explicitly would not call 12% risk-adjusted NIM a floor, and the Desenrola recovery benefit is largely behind it.
• The release makes no claim of pricing power; revenue per customer depends on selling more credit to the same customers.

Our Take: Nubank is now a genuinely profitable bank, and the cost structure is the real moat — a dollar a month to serve a customer is a number no branch-based competitor can match. But the next leg of earnings growth is a credit bet, and the ledger shows the bet being placed: allowances are compounding faster than the books. We would watch one ratio above all others — the allowance-to-gross-receivables coverage — against the 90+ NPL trend. If coverage stabilizes near 17% on cards while risk-adjusted NIM holds near 12%, the billion-dollar quarter becomes the floor. If coverage keeps climbing, Q2 was the seasonal high.