10/18/2023

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Hello and welcome to ReflectX DGRO Quadratree Analyst Call. My name is Caroline and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note this call is being recorded and for the duration of the call your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad to register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star 0 and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over the call to your host, Mr. Frank Niago, the CEO of Flexx Djiro, to begin today's conference. Thank you.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Yeah, good morning, everyone, from Frankfurt to our Q3 earnings call. Pleasure to be here with Dr. Binon Janos, our CFO, as well as Achim Schreck, our head of IR. Like always, I'm happy to do the introduction and share with you some highlights of last quarter. And then obviously I hand over to the CFO to run you through much more details. So as we've promised in our last call, we've managed our cost. We saw in the first half of this year a lot of one-offs. And we promised to manage our marketing spend. And we are quite happy that a client grows with reduction of marketing spend as possible. and that management is on top of things. We're also very happy to benefit from increase of interest rates due to our setup as a full-fledged bank. And obviously, you know, in very challenging times, be it the geopolitical situation, not only here in Europe, but also in the Middle East, and as well as with high inflation and interest rates, we distinguish ourselves from many Traditional brokers who only enjoy a brokerage license and cannot run a fully collateralized credit book like we do, as well as due to our treasury policy in the past last years, we never invested a huge amount of our money into fixed income products. So today we enjoy 4% at the central bank daily liquidity, no risk. with a huge amount of money. So this obviously helps us to compensate lower trading activities, which is an industry-wide phenomenon. We also had an IT integration, I would say the biggest in the history of Digiro, and that happened last week without any serious noise. So our IT system is very robust and performing very well. like always. So all in all we are quite happy with the Q3 numbers. We are back in the forecasted margin and we will continue like that for the rest of the year. So all in all for us a good quarter in that environment and obviously with our commercial activities which we started after BaFin cleared our credit risk mitigation situation positively, we will now enlarge the credit book and we also increased the interest rates at FlatEx for that credit product because we didn't follow the interest hikes of the ECB over the last 12 months and our competitor Analyze showed us that we were still quite low. So we used that opportunity to increase. And we will do the same as usual with the effect of 1st of January. So our interest income should increase by enlarging the credit book on one hand side and by an increase in interest rates. That's all for the moment with respect to the highlights. I'm happy to hand over to Benon and he will run you through more details.

speaker
Analyze

I apologize for the inconvenience cause. We'll be connecting the call shortly. Thank you.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Yeah, good morning. This is Ben Onianos. We lost the line for a second.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Thank you for your patience. I have the pleasure of walking you through the details. I also have a cold, so I apologize in advance for my husky voice. Let's start with the commercial performance. Gross customer growth in the third quarter remains healthy, despite significantly lower marketing spending compared to the first half of the year. I will come to this in a moment. With 77,000 additions, we were able to gain a few thousand more customers compared to the second quarter. Compared to a year ago, we saw a slowdown in growth of 17%, which is mainly attributable to the lackluster attractiveness of equity investments caused by a higher interest rate environment and general household income pressure. With a 4% deposit rate at the ECB, The euro currency area within the European Union trades effectively at a theoretical risk-free PE ratio of as low as 25 times. The assets under custody remain steady at 47 billion euros, almost unchanged to the second quarter and up 27% year on year. It is good to see our clients continuously growing their wealth base. At 13.8 million, the number of settled transactions in the third quarter was relatively stable, albeit on low levels. While Q1 saw the usual Q1 peak of 16.3 million, Q4 of 2022, as well as Q2 and Q3 of 2023, were in the 13 to 14 million range. Let's now have a look at our customer growth and retention metrics for the first nine months. With 263,000, we added more than a quarter million new clients on growth level in the first nine months. We subtract a churn rate of 1.7% or 32,000 clients and arrive at the net new customer accounts number of 231,000 clients. This is very roughly split between our core and growth markets with a small contribution from research markets. Compared to our listed peers that provide the numbers, we grew year-to-date with 9.6% or 1.8 times the net customer account growth of our peer average. In the third quarter, we were able to reduce our customer acquisition cost to €57 per gross new client. We can currently see clearly more banks for the buy in the brokerage advertisement industry, and can hence reduce marketing spend while continuing to attract customers onto our platform. Our asset under custody portfolio at the end of the first quarter of 47 billion euros is comprised of 33.7 billion in securities and 3.3 billion in cash. As you can see from the chart, the cash position has been relatively stable over the past five quarters despite a violent interest rate hike move from minus 0.5 to positive 4% in the euro area interest rates during that time period. We continue to pay out 0% interest rate on overnight deposits and have currently no plans to change that. Our ratio of cash to securities has moved down a bit over the last quarter. On the next page, I would like to give you an overview on the net cash inflows onto our platforms. In the nine months of the year, a gross of 8.6 billion euros of cash flowed into our bank. At the same time, we saw gross outflows of 4.6 billion, which nets into a total of 3.9 billion of inflows. The money was completely reinvested into securities, leaving minor changes in the total margin loan volume or cash position under custody at the end of September compared to the beginning of the year. The trading activity, as our CEO already alluded to, remains somewhat subdued and is in line with European peers. We currently do not forecast any major change on this metric given the current situation. While the inflationary pressures have eased a little, other factors such as, for example, the geopolitical situation remains strained. Let us take a closer look at the revenue split. Adjusted revenues in Q3 were up 12% sequentially and up 29% year on year to a total of 101 million euros. This is the highest number since Q1 of 2022, which to highlight was not only a seasonally strong first quarter, but also the last quarter that wasn't yet fully affected by the war in the Ukraine and interest rate hike expectations. Commission income in the quarter was the second highest of the past 12 months. The monetarization of the platform and selective price increases led to a sequential growth of plus 12%, which I will break down in the following slides. Interest income recorded another record quarter, growing 164% year on year. Interest income, which until the middle of last year was mainly composed of our margin loan profits, has now been increasingly backed by additional income derived directly or indirectly from that part of our customer deposits that are not recycled internally into securities margin loans. The majority of these deposits are held as overnight deposits with the Bundesbank, European Central Bank respectively, earning currently a 4% annual deposit rate. Commission per transaction is up to 4 euros spot 26 with a relatively stable share of high revenue transaction of 73%. We have seen a meaningful move up from the 3 spot 99 euros per transaction in the second quarter. The main effect was selected price adjustment at the brand Dehiro. Adjusted EBITDA of 41 million euros was the highest quarterly number for the last 2.5 years. Since the first quarter of 2021, when we experienced the meme stock hype and FedEx the hero executed 34 million transactions in that single quarter alone. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter is up 70% year on year and up 21% sequentially. We only adjust for the effect of long-term variable compensations. Also, the total number of outstanding stock appreciation rights has been meaningfully reduced by over 50% by the end of September 2023. The absolute delta between adjusted and reported numbers will be meaningfully smaller going forward on a like-for-like basis. Let me make a general comment on the cost side. The accomplishment that the regulator allowed us to reapply credit risk mitigation techniques at our brand, the hero for the margin loan business, was driven indirectly also by focusing on the remediation of all findings related to the 2022 BaFin audit and came along a stringent focus to grow the regulatory employee base at our firm, lifting general HR costs, one of the biggest cost increases year on year, which we compensated by reducing our marketing expense. We have also had one-off cost effects in H1, which we already communicated to the market during the H1 call. The third quarter saw also downward non-cash valuation adjustments of under 10 million in our small existing treasury portfolio. This is, in effect, a corresponding counterposition within our real estate equity fund participation to a massive increase in interest income from our other interest investments. We have communicated on September 29th that the regulator allowed us to reapply credit risk mitigation techniques at our brand Tejero for the margin loan business, lifting our June CET1 ratio to approximately 27% on a theoretical basis. We would like to repeat what we said during the call on September 29th, some three weeks ago. The reapplication provides our group with a capital structure that opens up further opportunities which we will evaluate and communicate to the capital market at the appropriate time following completion of the ongoing financial planning process and the needed corresponding coordination with the supervisory board and the regulator. Thank you very much for your attention. With this, we would now very much like to open the line for questions, please.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line Marius Verburg. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

speaker
Marius Verburg
Analyst

Hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I've actually got three of them. The first one is on your guidance. You reiterated your guidance of sales of approximately $380 million. And then adjusted EBITDA margin of more than 40%. Well, after nine months, you already got 290 in revenues. And to my understanding, or what I think is that trading behavior has found its bottom in Q2 and Q3. So an improvement should be expected in Q4. And with this set, you should be able to generate well above 100 million of revenues in Q4 and against this backdrop your guidance appears still a bit too low so what are your thoughts on this and why haven't you changed your guidance the second one is with regard to the use of funding with the risk mitigation you appear overcapitalized and What are your plans on using this cash? Any thoughts with regards to shareable banks or dividends? And the third one, could you give us a little bit more color on those valuation adjustments of around 10 million that you just mentioned? How big is that portfolio in total and what assets are included in there? And should we expect more valuation adjustments to come from this? Thank you very much for your question.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Yes, with respect to the guidance, I'd like to highlight that we follow under promise over delivery and with the geopolitical situation at the moment, both in Europe and the Middle East, as well as trading behavior is industry-wide still low. We rather want to stay on the safe side and don't want to increase our guidance. So we are happy that we maintain the guidance in those challenging times, but we have no plan to change it at this point in time. Second, with respect to capital allocation. We always said that after we cleared the credit risk mitigation situation, our capital buffer went up exceeding 100 million. which is great. So for us, the next step is now talk to our regulator, because as you know, for certain capital measures, be it share buybacks or dividend, we would want to talk to the regulator and would need approval. So that process has been started. And then obviously, we need to have shareholders approval on those measures provided the regulator approves it prior to that. So let us do our homework, and as soon as we have a clear view on that, we are happy to come back and share with the capital market and our shareholders the results. With respect to valuation, I'm happy to give back to Benno.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Yes, thank you very much, Frank. Maybe to add on the guidance question, we have a guidance on both the top and bottom line. It's also fair to say that some of the costs that we have seen this year were a notch of our expectations. So currently we focus on that side to make sure to cover all aspects of our guidance. On the valuation adjustments, maybe it's helpful to give you a full picture on that in order to be transparent about what we have done. So within our treasury department, we have currently four investments totaling a bit more than 100 million euros. For reference, they are all listed in Note 14 on page 130 in our 2022 annual report under financial instruments and in a bit less detail in the 2023 half-yearly report in Note 8. Funds that invest in residential real estate in Germany in the mid-range rental price segment. Number two, at almost 25 million, is FG Wohnen Deutschland, a German retail residential portfolio fund with a focus on ESG. There are also two non-real estate fund investments within the treasury portfolio, namely a 16 million euro investment into an infrastructure fund that invests in economic infrastructure products in Europe called Fidelio Infrastructure Debt Fund, and a small 3.5 million euro investment into a football finance fund. The football fund focuses on the acquisition of individual receivables as well as lending to football companies, one of our legacy activities many years ago. This fund does not reinvest and will run down to zero over the coming quarters. The first two engagements, the real estate engagements, were valued at the end of Q2 at a total value of approximately 60 plus 25 or 85 million they represent in total 2.5 percent of our 3.5 billion in invested assets as stated on multiple occasions by far the largest position is cash with central banks followed by margin loans to our customers Now, these two diversified German real estate funds experienced a non-cash markdown by the underlying independent valuation agent of under 10 million. Those valuation markdowns were triggered by the rise in interest rates and were simply passed on to our profit and loss statement, as they are all measured at fair value through profit or loss. The underlying properties are healthy and currently experience rent increases and historically low vacancy rates. While we cannot exclude further valuation adjustments to the German diversified residential real estate portfolio by the independent valuation agent, based on the estimates of the fund management company, we also believe the majority of the adjustments to the new interest rate levels have now been made. For full completeness, we also carry a legacy credit engagement that is not a treasury investment, but originated from the credit department, during the times we were engaged in those businesses a few years ago. It is also measured at fair value through P&L and valued as of the first half at approximately 32 million. As of today, we do not expect any negative changes to this valuation. With that detailed overview, we have given you a complete overview of the Treasury fund investment and our real estate exposure. I hope this gives you a bit more clarity on what happens I mean, in effect, the rise in interest rates is something where we benefited from on many fronts. This is one area from old existing investments on a smaller scale that now were readjusted to the new world.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Thank you very much for the transparency.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. We will take the next question from line Christy Grewledge from Barenburg. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

Good morning, Frank and Ben. A few questions also from my side. I would like to start with a few follow-ups on this 10 million negative impact. Basically, just to clarify, excluding that impact, the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter would have been 51 million. That would be the first one. that the numbers you've just given about the total value of the remaining investments, this is before the markdown. So basically what is left in the balance sheet should be about 10 million lower as of today, if I understood it correctly. And then I was wondering, it looks to me you've included a negative impact within the cost of goods sold. And if I would take it out again, that would mean the cost of goods sold in Q3 would have been only

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

um about 12 million euro um so only about 12 percent of sales so it seems quite a bit lower than what we've seen in the prior quarter so yeah maybe just a bit of our verification around them okay very happy to do that so on the 10 million impact we round this to 10 million it's been somewhat below 10 million but in general you are absolutely right that if we would not have had this adjustment the number will be up slightly below 10 million, so going from 41 to the very high 40s, given the impact in the third quarter. So I guess, if I'm not mistaken, this would cover both of your questions, the first and the second question. The values of the investments given in the H1 report will hence be reduced by that number, um going forward and the full details will be released then in the 2023 annual report as we do not expect any major new changes in the third quarter this is going to be give or take roughly the number where you see where you will see a markdown in the financial instruments

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah, and the last one was on the cost of goods sold. They look quite low to me in Q3 if I take out this, let's say, slightly below 10 million.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

I mean, the biggest change to our business model over the last year has now been the revival of interest rates. And interest rates have this benefit that they really don't cost us too much. So... the mix of our total revenues is shifting from, you know, very high commission and lower interest to a more balanced view. And that brings our cost of goods sold.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

The cost of goods sold are mainly attributable to the commission income line. So that means we can assume that going forward,

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

that the ratio of cost of goods sold to sales should be somewhere around 12% on a sustainable basis?

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

I mean, the number fluctuates a bit depending on which product we sell. Let's not be mathematically too precise here, but certainly it should be lower than what we have seen in the past, yes.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Okay.

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

No, that's very helpful. Thanks for that. I also wanted to quickly check on what you said regarding You had a slide, I think it was slide seven, on the cash inflows and cash outflows. And I was wondering, regarding the cash outflows, have you seen any trends over the last few quarters or maybe last few months that you see that number increasing, that people start increasingly shift cash away from FlatEx to Shiro to other accounts where they can earn some interest on their cash deposits?

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

We have seen no meaningful trend of that. Net cash is coming into our platform. I made a comment in my presentation that if you are very focused on the details, the ratio of securities to cash has changed slightly. So our clients tend to invest more on average than they did in the past into securities. Maybe that's something that can be noticed, but in terms of cash in or out flows, There is nothing we can see with that regard. Our estimate is that, I mean, we are an online broker, and clients who would like to earn fixed income type interest revenues typically would have an account somewhere else where they allocate part of their money to fixed income slash overnight term money or something like that.

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

Okay. Yeah, then just a last one from my side. You mentioned in the presentation also that after the margin loan issue could be resolved that now there's an increased focus again on commercial topics. So you mentioned the interest rate changes for margin loans and giving more zero customers access to those products. I mean, these seem to be initiatives that are very close to implementation. So I was wondering Looking a bit beyond those very near-term new initiatives, what are the main priorities for the next 12 months or so of new initiatives you're working on or potentially new products you're considering to introduce?

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Maybe I can help out here. Obviously, we are trying to improve always the product and services to our existing clients and to new clients. We always see whether we can improve the ETP offering in all our countries, which is not yet the case. We are trying to improve offering use options, for instance, for the GEO clients, which is not yet in place. And obviously, we are looking into new products such as cryptocurrency trading. However, we are still in a crypto winter. So that the fact that we have not started this with respect to time to market is, I think, not an issue. And obviously, there is no signs that tomorrow spring kicks in. So as long as we in the crypto winter, we are carefully reviewing those things and we will make sure when crypto summer starts that we will have an offering for our clients. We always focus on no change in the risk profile. So if we do something, we will make sure that the custody risk is not with us. We will make sure that we have a top-notch service provider and we will have straightforward, maybe the five top cryptocurrencies in the offering. So this is what we are looking at. We're also waiting for the MICA, the Markets and Crypto Assets Regulation, to come into force. because we believe that's a good framework again, and this is what will keep us busy in 2024.

speaker
Christy Grewledge
Analyst, Berenberg

Yeah, that's all from my side. Thank you very much.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

You're welcome.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. We will take the next question from the line. Ian White from Autonomous. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

speaker
Ian White
Analyst, Autonomous

Hi, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from my side, please. First, just to round out on the property discussion, thanks a lot for the granular detail there. Can you just clarify for me, please, what is the nature of the legacy credit engagement that you talked about? You mentioned it's 32 million euros. What is that exposure? And is that the same as the piece that's highlighted in the interim accounts regarding asset-based financing in low. I understand all of that is real estate. That number was 34.6 million, I think, at 1H. And I just want to make sure, is that incremental to what you've set out here, or are we talking about the same thing there, just with slightly different numbers, please? So if you could just help me with those final clarifications, that would be great. And then just secondly, maybe could you just say a bit about the breadth of client participation? over the first nine months of 2023 you've previously given us some disclosure around percentage of clients who placed at least one trade so um could you give us that number please what percentage of clients um placed at least one trade in in the first nine months of 2023 and that would be useful please thanks so let's start with the legacy credit engagement until about a year and a half ago we were

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

trying to compensate the negative interest rates of the ECB by very short-term, less than two years, less than three years, real estate investments. We have run down that book. And as they expire, we basically do not renew any engagement. This is the last one that we have on our books that we are now managing down. We have the best position there. It's a senior loan. And we hope that we will have an answer on that very soon. They are marked as fair value. And you see that currently the investment is still going up, not going down. So we feel comfortable that we will be able to have it off our books over the next quarter. And it will not have any impact on our position. With respect to where it sits on the balance sheet, We reclassified it into a fair value through P&L in the first half, and I would follow up via email to you showing you exactly the line item on that, if that's okay with you.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

The second question was with respect to client activity.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Maybe let me add here, have him here. Unfortunately, I don't have the quarterly figure now in front of me. I'll follow up and send to all of you. Just looking at the monthly development, it's very comparable to what we've seen in the previous year. So expectation would be that it's also on a quarterly and for the full nine months on a comparable level. Just to remind everyone, last year the activity rate was around 50% of customers having done at least one trade in the period. So we'd expect it to be similar to that number.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Okay, thanks.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. We will take the next question from line Mingzhen Sun from Deutsche Bank. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mingzhen Sun
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Thank you very much for taking my question. Also three questions from my side. The first one is on a cost projection. So probably it might be too early to ask, but do you have any view on your cost projection for next year in terms of how much marketing expense you want to spend and How fast should the personal expense to growth and, if possible, also the other operating expense? And the second question is on the trading behaviors as well. So have you observed any difference between the trading behaviors, i.e., trades per customers on the FlatEx brand and also on the DeGiro brand? And the last question is on the monetization rate. Do you see any other upsides or any further increase in the monetization rate for next year? That's all from my side, the question.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Yeah, maybe I can start with the marketing budget. Obviously, we are in budget planning times now, last quarter of the year. Given the geopolitical situation, given the inflation and interest situation, we will be very flexible with respect to marketing spend. And I would say there can be a range of 20 million on the lower side and 35 million on the higher side, depending on how markets developed. Obviously, if trading activity kicks in tremendously and new client inflows increase, we are happy to spend more marketing to benefit from the trend. But if the behavior is going to be as low as it was this year, we will be very careful with the spending. And you see that we managed in this quarter, in the last quarter, the client growth at the same time was reduction of marketing spend. So we will exactly continue like that and adjust going forward with respect to the development of the overall situation. And I find that professional and management is on top of those things. With respect to the other question, I'm happy to give back to Bino.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Yeah, the comment on the personnel side. So we have this high focus on our regulatory employment base, and while we have effectively finished on hiring the people, not all of them have started, and also they have joined throughout the year. So next year we'll likely see a last adjustment year on year, given that some of the people came on board to us throughout this year. When you look at the total headcount at the end of this year, we do not expect a major change next year, unlike the last two or three years. So while personnel costs may go up a little bit, the effect should be smaller than over the last year. On other operational expenses, there are two comments I would like to make. We've seen truly some real one-offs, and that's not something that we plan to have repeated next year. However, I mean, this is the bucket where inflation adjustments typically come in. Our rents are going up, our energy bills are going up, our travel expenses are not going down. So that is an area that would also see a slight rise given the current economic situation out there. On the trading behavior in general, we usually don't try to be too specific with respect to how our cohorts trade. I mean, at the end, we don't want to incentivize our competitors to increase marketing budgets in one country versus another. But in general, our domestic turf, the hero Netherlands business is performing really well Our FlatX business is great and it's typically a bit better than the rest of the Dehero brand. It's maybe something that I would put on the plate. And with terms to monetization, the last two years saw some selective price increases, mainly at the Dehero brand. I think going forward, we still have to play catch up on the interest side. During the times of the negative interest rates, very simply speaking, our spread between the ECD rate and what our clients paid us for the margin loan was quite high, call it 4, 4.5%. That spread today is lower. And while we're not sure whether we can pass on 100% of that relative value from two years ago, we will have another round of interest rate increases for both brands, which will be a positive contributor to the 2024 interest income on margin loans compared to this year. We currently have no major plans to change pricing on the commission for the major brands.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Yeah, maybe allow me to add one more information and to be very clear. Management takes cost management very serious. We are on top of things and With respect to FTE growth, we are not planning to hire more people. So we strongly believe now the total amount of FTEs is enough and this will not increase.

speaker
Mingzhen Sun
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Thank you very much. Just one clarification on your marketing budget. So you said the budget should be around 20 to 35, depends on the trading activity. I should understand the 35 is the upper limit, so we should not expect the marketing expense should exceed that level.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Exactly right.

speaker
Mingzhen Sun
Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Okay, thank you very much.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. We will take the next question from line Andrew Lowe from Citi. The line is open now. Please go ahead.

speaker
Andrew Lowe
Analyst, Citi

Hi, guys. Sorry, I confess I thought I'd cancelled my question because it had largely been answered, but it was just on the past rationale for holding funds. in the British state funds in the treasury management book and then could you just also clarify your sort of risk management strategy within that book going forward it sounds like you're starting down.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Would you be so kind to repeat the first question? I think I didn't get that right.

speaker
Andrew Lowe
Analyst, Citi

Apologies, it was just on the past rationale for holding real estate funds in your treasury book. Okay. But I think you answered that with it was a low interest rate environment. And then just comment on the sort of future risk management policy in that book going forward.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

Thank you. Okay. So I do answer the question once again. I mean, this is from a time where we had to pay several millions per year to the European Central Bank for keeping our money there. That has changed now, of course. But back in those days, we did very small engagements compared to our total investment size in other areas. And this is our effort back then on a short-term basis to at least generate some interest income. going forward i mean we have very clearly communicated that with respect to a credit business we have stopped all credit activities and focused entirely on the margin loan so this is something that you can expect from the risk management side we will as of today not engage into new credit engagements outside of that the investments that we have in the treasury department are investments that were equally put into effect back then and they deliver a solid cash flow and we have frankly no major plans to change them. And when interest rates peak out or go down a little bit, we will see the reversing effect over the next few years that the valuation agents will simply mark them up while in between nothing changes really operationally. So that's how I would probably answer your question.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Thanks.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. We will take the next question from line. The line is open now. Please go.

speaker
spk01

Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to ask on the commission income per trade. There was an uptake in the quarter compared to the previous quarter. Obviously, it's driven by a number of factors, but one of them I presume is also the mix of the trades. And the share of the cash products, which is more profitable, was around 74%, 73% in July, August, but came down to 71% in September. So I'm just wondering, thinking for the next quarter or for Q4, is this something you continue to see, sort of higher penetration of ETFs, which is lower margin? So how do we think about the commission per trade for Q4? And the second question is around the activity obviously very strong, uh, customer growth in the, especially in the growth markets, uh, around 70% up, you know, a year, but the number of trades in total are down 70% as well. So just wondering, have you seen any, um, different customer dynamics there compared to their core markets or is it because early stages of new customers coming on board and, um, in building the portfolio. So anything around that would be helpful. Thank you.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Maybe I can start just with one comment here. As Benon said earlier, over the year we saw a trend that our customers invested more than before. So when you look at the cash net inflows, you see a figure over 100% because our clients invested more than the cash which was net inflows. And this is a bit of a trend. And then maybe it's helpful to distinguish again, revenues per trade include the cash and the interest income and the commission income obviously per trade does not include the interest income. Maybe there's a misunderstanding. But Binon, happy to hand over to you.

speaker
Dr. Binon Janos
CFO

So maybe on the first question, the mix of high revenue trades, We don't expect a major change. I mean, it will fluctuate always a little bit, but on the one hand, you have the general trend that people like to invest in ETFs and ETF saving plans, although the recent data shows that that trend is sort of going down a little bit. At the same time, we are introducing new products in selected markets, which are high revenue products. So over the last months, we introduced exchange traded products in Italy We are doing Switzerland. So those isolated small activities help to keep the ratio effectively similar to what it has been historically. And we will continue to, on an operating level, to introduce new products or to extend products to other countries step by step as we simply do our normal management of our business. With respect to the activity, I mean, I did answer it to some extent in the question before. The trading frequency in the core market tends to be somewhat higher. So that's an observation that you're clearly seeing in the data. And the good thing is that having such a high number of countries in Europe, we can typically balance any changes in one cohort or in one country with an uplift in another. So in general, we are quite happy to have a robust core market performance, while at the same time, we pay into the future of our company to grow the client base in other countries.

speaker
FG Wohnen Deutschland

Thank you.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you. It appears no further question at this time. I'll hand it back over to your host.

speaker
Frank Niago
CEO, Flexx Djiro

Once again, thank you very much for taking the time and looking forward to speak to you personally or see you in person with a good rest of the week. Thank you so much.

speaker
Caroline
Coordinator

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

-

-