Botanix Pharmaceuticals

Ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PLUS 500 H1 2025 interim results. The presentation will commence shortly. After the presentation, we will conduct a Q&A session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll be able to ask a question either through the Zoom webinar link provided separately or by submitting written questions using the ask a question button on the Spark Live webcast page. Please note this call is being live streamed to a webcast for a wider audience and will be recorded. I would now like to hand over to David Shreer, Group Chief Executive Officer, to open the presentation. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our 2025 Interim Results Presentation. I am David Zrouya, CEO of Plus500, and I am joined today by Elad Evenhen, our Group CFO, and Owen Jones, our Group Head of Investor Relations. During the first six months of 2025, Plus500 is globally diversified. Multi-asset offering drove an acceleration of positive momentum across a number of important strategic initiatives, which we will highlight to you today. Our differentiated offerings, which are powered by our proprietary technology provides us with strong competitive advantages, and we remain committed to delivering seamless and innovative access to financial markets worldwide. The structural growth opportunities ahead of us are compelling, and we look to the year ahead and beyond with confidence. As always, I would like to thank all of the people of Philosophy Fund-RED who once again made these results possible for their hard work and continued dedication towards successfully achieving our collective goals and strategic ambitions. Slide two shows the agenda for today. We will take you to the highlights for the first half and the operating review, followed by a run through of our unique technology and product set, and then continue with the financial highlights. We will then conclude with the summary and outlook section before taking your questions at the end. There are five key takeaways from today's presentation shown on slide four. In summary, we made significant progress in further diversifying our business and strengthening our operational model in a way that enables the group to continue driving compounded shareholder returns. The positive momentum behind our business is accelerating as we build on the growth achieved across our key markets in the first half. We have added to our industry-leading portfolio of global licenses and clearing memberships, continued to build out our product suite with new offerings in Japan, and announced the conditional acquisition of meta-equities in India, further expanding our geographic reach. We drove growth across key markets and regions, including the UAE and the US. This, in turn, led to an excellent set of financial results with revenue and EBITDA growth year on year. We announced shareholder returns of $200 million in February 2025, and we have added another $165 million today, comprising dividends and share buybacks, taking the total announced year to date to $365 million, equivalent to 11% of our closing market capitalization on 30 of June, 2025. And even with such attractive shareholder returns, The group ended the first half with an extremely strong financial position with cash balances of approximately $938 million and no debt. This accelerated momentum and excellent results for the first six months of 2025 build on the significant track record that we have established since our IPO in 2013. Over that period, Plus 500 has generated $3.7 billion in cash from operations, $3 billion in accumulated net profits, and of that, the company has returned approximately $2.7 billion to shareholders, which includes the $165 million announced today, to $1.6 billion in dividends, and $1.1 billion in share buybacks. These shareholder returns have positioned Plus500 as the best performing share in the FTSE All Share Index over the last 12 years on a total return basis with a cumulative total shareholder returns of over 7,900%, an achievement that we are extremely proud of. Earlier this year, the company joined the prestigious Stocks Europe 600 Index and important recognition of the compounding value creation and share price performance we have delivered in recent years. Moving now to slide six, which focuses on some of our operational drivers and outputs for the first half of 2025. Our ongoing focus on customer engagement, product development, and our people continue to drive meaningful results during the period. The drivers and outputs that you can see on the slide are all underpinned by our industry-leading proprietary technology, a key competitive advantage for Plus 500, which allows us to drive deeper engagement with our customers. As a result, 66% of OTC revenue was derived from customers who have been trading with Plus 500 for over three years, which demonstrates the benefits of our strategic focus on driving higher customer lifetime values. Customer deposits more than doubled to $3.1 billion, which is a record level for a six-month period, and this equated to a record of approximately $17,250 per active customer. The strength of our mobile offering was once again highlighted, with 89% of OTC revenue being generated from mobile or tablet devices. Moving now to slide seven. Three years ago, we introduced our strategic roadmap at our Capital Markets Day. Since then, Plus500 has successfully evolved from being a single product provider into a scaled, market-leading, multi-asset FinTech group with increasingly diversified operations, both geographically and across product lines. This transformation has had a significant impact on the growth of the business and underpins our focus on innovation, growth, and continued diversification through the development of new products and expansion into new markets. Furthermore, a crucial part of the group strategy is to deepen customer engagement and enhance customer retention by investing in and developing our customer retention technologies and initiatives. Together, we expect the objectives within our strategic roadmap to position Plus 500 to continue delivering compound returns for shareholders for many years to come. The group's superior proprietary technology and its ability to quickly develop new offerings, such as additional product lines and services, has enabled Plus500 to transform in recent years into a global provider of market infrastructure and proprietary trading platforms with a broad customer base. The Plus 500 of today provides a wide range of products, services, and instruments across its OTC, futures, options on futures, and share dealing verticals. And we operate in strategically attractive growing markets with powerful structural growth drivers. Our OTC business covers seven asset classes, and our futures business can be split further into a B2B institutional and a B2C retail offering, which provides clearing execution services across a growing range of global exchanges. We also include Plus 500 Cosmos here. an industry-leading client portal for our B2B futures customers, which was launched last year. On the right side of the chart, we can see our share dealing platform, Plus500 Invest, which enables customers to buy and sell shares directly. Our overall offering provides customers with a wide choice of products, enabling them to tailor their approach and trading strategies. The diversification of our business is a key part of our success, and we will continue to drive this agenda over the coming years as we seize the attractive growth opportunities in front of us. Moving to the next slide. Here, we show the important role that Plus 500 plays as a provider of market infrastructure. Our role has evolved significantly as the group has diversified its operations, and we now sit at the heart of the financial ecosystem, connecting institutional customers and retail customers to more than 30 different exchanges and clearinghouses. We provide the critical market infrastructure to a global customer base, which includes individual customers, institutions, and other businesses. We remain extremely excited about the potential for this key part of our business, and there is much more to come. Slide 10 shows our current clearing and industry memberships in the future space. With the acquisition of Cunningham Commodities and Cunningham Trading Systems in 2021, Plus 500 became the owner of a fully regulated futures commission merchant, or FCM, in the U.S., enabling the business to become an execution venue for its customers while also offering a full suite of holistic clearing services. The group has secured memberships with some of the largest clearinghouses globally, including the CME Exchanges, Eurex, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, and most recently, IceClear US in January this year. These clearing memberships, which are difficult to obtain, allow us to enhance our holistic offering and accommodate the need of our customers on a global basis, which is a key part of the growth strategy of our futures business. We will continue to pursue additional clearing memberships with global exchanges during 2025 and beyond. As shown here on the right-hand side of this slide, we are in the process of adding a further six exchange and clearinghouse memberships in India through our acquisition of MetaEquities, which we anticipate completing during the second half of the year. The Indian market is globally significant for both B2B and B2C customers, and we'll return to this opportunity in more detail later. Slide 11 highlights some of our ESG credentials and priority areas. Customer care and education is extremely important to us, and we always strive to provide the highest level of care and services to our customers. Employee welfare and wellbeing remain a key focus area, and we also continue to support the local communities in which we operate. We have an extremely talented and diverse board of directors who have relevant experience across a number of important business areas for PLUS500. We remain committed to being carbon negative by 2030, and we are looking at ways to reduce energy usage, particularly in our data centers. Consistent with this commitment, Last year, we moved our headquarters to a newer and more energy efficient building. I will now hand over to Elad to present the operating review section.

Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. It is a privilege to be speaking with you all again, and I'm proud to be presenting such a strong set of results. The operating review section will include an overview, of our operating performance in the first half of the year, as well as a closer look at our growing futures business. As David mentioned, the positive momentum in our business is accelerating, and we delivered an excellent operational progress in the first half of 2025, as shown here on slide 13. The operational highlights include Significant positive momentum across a number of important initiatives and strategic drivers. Excellent progress with our growing futures businesses with record customer segregated fund during the period. Optimization of our already market leading online customer acquisition strategies. And the exciting conditional acquisition of meta equities in India, which we announced in March of this year. Turning to the next slide. The acquisition of MetaEquities, which we anticipate closing later this year, represents an exciting step in our strategic ambition of becoming a global futures provider. Leveraging our existing futures platform, we can now establish attractive and meaningful synergies for B2B customers between our operations in the US and India. This will be achieved by providing these customers with more streamlined access to trading products and clearing services across jurisdictions, while also providing them with best-in-class customer service and access to our proprietary customer portal, the Plus 500 Cosmos. And we are really excited about the growth potential of this part of our business. Plus 500 operates in a highly regulated industry and our products across OTC, share dealing and futures are regulated globally by IOSCO with major regulators in each territory overseeing the local markets and ensuring compliance with applicable regulatory requirements. As can be seen on this slide, the group currently holds 15 different regulatory licenses which will become 16 with the expected addition of meta equities this year. These licenses represent an extremely valuable asset and a meaningful source of competitive advantage for Plus 500, as they all serve as a trusted regulatory stamp on our status as a global multi-asset fintech group on our international stage. Most recently, as announced in June, we obtained a new license from the Canadian Investment Regulatory Organization. This achievement marked another important milestone in PLUS 500's ongoing strategic efforts to further expand into North America with the extension of its offering into the well-established and highly regulated Canadian market. With this new license, Plus 500 will offer its services within the OTC market and aims to further expand its local proposition by offering an omnichannel suite of products over time. Our portfolio of international licenses represents a unique asset for the group. Taken together, these licenses serve as an economic mode around our business. raising the barriers of entry to the industry and reinforcing PLUS 500's value proposition. Additionally, our expertise in obtaining regulatory licenses leaves us well positioned to secure additional ones in new territories in 2025 and beyond. For instance, we're actively working to expand our operations in Asia and Latam. As can be seen in slide 16, we offer our services to approximately 32 million registered customers in more than 60 countries. This global scale and local offering is an important source of both current and future value as we focus on driving activation, retention, and monetization of our global customer base by leveraging our highly innovative and agile proprietary technology. Our global offering is further enhanced by our localized solutions, which include support in a customer's native language and products and services fully localized and tailored to the end markets in which we operate. On slide 17, we show some of our operating KPIs, overlaid with some regional performance data. As the group has consistently demonstrated historically, new customer acquisition and deeper engagement with existing customers lays the foundation for future growth, making it an investment today to drive value creation over the medium to long term. In the first half of 2025, we onboarded more than 56,000 new customers and active customers increased to approximately 180,000. Moving ahead to slide 18, we chose customer tenure and longevity. Over recent years, we have made investments in our customer retention technologies and premium account programs to improve customer longevity. The aim was to foster long-term relationships with our customers by providing technology-enabled retention initiatives and by consistently providing our customers with a wide range of products and services supported by robust, secure, intuitive, and reliable trading platforms. These improvements are working well, as shown by the blue shaded areas on the pie charts. For example, in the first half of 2025, 84% of the OTC revenue was generated by customers who have been with us for more than a year, while 47% of the OTC revenue was generated by customers who have been with us for more than five years. This is an excellent achievement, as the equivalent number from 2020 was just 14%. Over the next few slides, I will highlight the impact that a non-OTC business as a whole, and particularly the futures business, has had on the group's revenues, customer mix, and other KPIs. Slide 19 sets out how our revenue and new customer mix have evolved in recent years. When we acquired our future business in 2021, our non-OTC revenues accounted for just 1% of the group's revenue. Since then, our futures business has established itself and grown quickly, reflecting the strength of our offering, both to the retail and institutional customers. In the first half of 2025, non-OTC revenues accounted for approximately 13% of the group's total revenue, which highlights the importance of this vertical to the group. In 2025, we anticipate that the non-OTC business will generate revenues of more than $100 million. From a customer perspective, 17% of the new customers came from the non-OTC businesses in the first half of 2025. This is the foundation which we look to build on over the coming years. Slide 20 shows the progress we have made in attracting higher value customers and how that has impacted our average deposit per active customer since 2021. For the first half of 2025, aggregate customer deposits more than doubled to $3.1 billion, which is a record level for the group over a six-month period. reflecting our increased breadth and scale of operations. And over the last four years, we have more than tripled the average deposit per active customer from approximately $5,000 in 2021 to approximately $17,000 in the first half of 2025. We have done this by strategically focusing on higher value customers, leveraging our superior marketing technologies, and providing a localized offering to customers, which includes local payment solutions and an exceptional customer service. In the next two slides, I will cover the highly attractive opportunities ahead of us in the US futures market, starting on slide 21. Over the last few years, Plus 500 has established its position in the U.S. futures market with a B2B institutional and a B2C retail offering, both of which perform extremely well during the first six months of the year. Across our B2B and B2C businesses, we grew our customer segregated funds to approximately $850 million at the end of June 2025. versus approximately $350 million at the end of 2024, representing growth of over 140%, which is a fantastic achievement. This reflects both the onboarding of new customers and increased trading activity from existing ones. Our U.S. futures business is going from strength to strength. In 2025, we secured a clearing membership with IceClear US, which will allow us to further enhance our institutional product offering to a global customer base. In the B2C business, our trading platform, Plus 500 Futures, which offers a unique, omniscient solution, continues to set us apart from our competitors. And it is clear that our customers value the seamless trading experience which we offer. Moving ahead to slide 22. Plus 500's U.S. operation is regulated by the CFTC and is a member of the National Futures Association and the Futures Industry Association. Plus 500's U.S. operation also holds clear memberships with the CME Group Exchanges, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, Eurex, and IceClear U.S. We will continue to target additional Clear memberships going forward. This objective will be supported by our robust financial position and expertise in applying for and securing new Clear memberships. Thanks to our proprietary technology, financial strength, customer service, and strategic collaborations, we have grown rapidly in a short space of time to become an established player in the futures market. Additionally, as part of our B2C offering, we are proud to have the Plus 500 futures platform, which has gained good traction with our customers, driven by its OmniSET solution, and the T4 Pro, our trading platform for more professional customers. Our licenses, clearing memberships, strong balance sheet, partnerships, and innovative trading platforms leave us well positioned to generate continued value for all stakeholders. Overall, our expansion into non-OTC products was a key pillar of our strategic roadmap and one against which we are delivering real and accelerated progress. I will now hand back to David, who will take us through the technology section.

Thank you, Elad. Turning to slide 24. Since Plus500 was founded in 2008, our proprietary technology development has been a key enabler for the group. and it has provided an invaluable foundation for everything that we have delivered since. Developing and maintaining our own proprietary technology enables our system architecture to be extremely robust while keeping a high degree of flexibility. More importantly, our global customer base benefits from the framework. We maintain a global presence with localized and tailored offerings. And this wouldn't be possible without our superior technology-enabled foundation and the inherent resilience of our operations. Over the next few slides, I will cover the various aspects of our technology stack in more detail. On the next slide, slide 25, I will cover the various proprietary technology components which we have produced and which continue to deliver new innovative solutions for our customers. Our technology supports all our domains from operations, product, marketing capabilities to the customer service, This means our technology delivers a broad range of services within each of these areas, such as search and data analytics in marketing, payment processing, and customer onboarding solutions. Our domains are built using our own technology, and they are integrated and optimized with one another, giving a holistic view of our systems. Our system architecture, therefore, enables us to operate with both resilience and agility in highly regulated markets and underpins our global best-in-class multi-asset offering. Moving ahead to slide 26. Our proprietary technology allows us to support our customers at every stage of their journey, end-to-end, from customer acquisition to our established CRM system to payments to our proprietary cashier, all the way through to our unique trading solutions and product offering. Plus500 is focused on developing and delivering the most innovative and established technology which provides our global customer base with a localized, intuitive, and secure trading experience. Our industry-leading proprietary technology. provides our customers with a reliable, robust, and seamless trading experience across mobile devices, tablets, and the web. We offer over 2,500 different underlying global financial instruments across more than 60 countries and in 30 languages via our product portfolios of OTC, share dealing, and futures. As you can see on the slide, the graphic user interface and general user experience across our product offering is seamless, which enables higher level of customer satisfaction. Plus500's new technology stack for the US futures market, available across various platforms, serves both retail, professional, and institutional clients. This includes Plus 500 Futures, T4 Pro, and Plus 500 Cosmos, along with advanced clearing, risk management, middle office, and execution technologies. For retail clients, our mobile technological solutions offers an intuitive training experience, making futures trading accessible to all applicable customers. We also provide access to our trading academy for an informed trading experience. For institutional clients, we offer enhanced control over the end-to-end process. Plus 500 Cosmos leads industry innovation with a customer portal featuring advanced risk management tools and trade monitoring services. With these advancements, Plus500 has established itself as a key market infrastructure provider in the futures industry. On to slide 29. Shown here is our full suite of OTC products in the Japanese retail market. In the beginning of the year, we launched our new proprietary multi-asset trading platform for the Japanese market, including OTC products across forex, indices, equities, and ETFs, as well as knockout options. More recently, in June 2025, we secured an additional commodities license, meaning we now offer a full range of OTC products to the important Japanese retail trading market. It is a large and well-established market offering significant potential to plus 500 over the medium to long term. Turning to slide 30. The mobile trading space has become more and more important for retail customers and we work extremely hard to maintain our leading position in this field. Many of our customers have a mobile-first approach to trading, which is why Plus500's customer experience is seamless between mobile, tablets, or web. And each interaction is designed to have the same look and feel. This provides a more consistent trading experience for our customers, which is extremely important to us. As a result, 89% of OTC revenue was generated from customers training with us on mobile or tablet devices and 84% of OTC trades took place on mobile or tablet devices in the first six months of 2025. Slide 31 presents some of the educational tools we provide as part of our responsible and customer-centric approach. We go beyond giving our customers access to the best trading platforms. For example, we also provide them with access to PLUS Insights and to our PLUS500 Trading Academy. Plus Insights is our proprietary big data analytical tool that is designed to provide customers on our OTC trading platform with access to real time and historical trends and content using data from the group's extensive customer base. We also show here our trading academy, which includes educational materials and webinars on different trading strategies. I will now hand over to Elad, who will take you through the financials before I return with the summary and outlook section.

Thank you, David. Shown here on slide 33 are some of the financial and operational highlights for the period. The group delivered revenue in EBITDA growth of 4.1% year-on-year for the first half of 2025 and of 15 and 12% respectively for the second quarter of 2025, which is an excellent result and one I'm extremely pleased with. Our focus on attracting and retaining higher value customers, enabled by our sophisticated marketing technology investments, led to a significant increase in the average deposit per active customer to approximately $17,000, which reflects a group record of $3.1 billion total customer deposits for a six-month period. This kind of progress would not have been possible without the strong foundations we have in place of best-in-class customer service and robust and reliable trading platforms, all enabled by our proprietary technology. On site 34, we can see the financial performance that Plus500 has delivered in recent years. The group generated revenue of $415 million in the first half of 2025. representing growth of 4% year on year. EBITDA was also extremely healthy at the level of $185 million. This robust delivery, combined with the ongoing share buyback program during the period, led to a basic earnings per share of $2.05, representing growth of 8% year on year. I will now take you through our financials in more detail, starting on slide 35. Slide 35 shows a breakdown of our income statement in a bit more detail. Both selling and marketing costs and general expenses increased in line with revenues in the first half of 2025 due to the increased scale of our global footprint. and the investments we made to drive future growth. In the first half of 2025, the growth in our marketing spend slowed, reflecting the increased efficiency of our marketing programs during the period. Side 36 shows our cost base in more detail. The group's cost base is heavily weighted towards variable costs. which accounted for 70% of the total operating costs. The flexibility within the group's cost base is a key part of its overall financial strength and is a significant source of resilience through the different market cycles. In the first half of 2025, the marketing costs decreased as we improved and continued to optimize spend per customer via our multi-channel approach to customer acquisition. On slide 37, we can see the group's balance sheet. Our strong financial position underpins all of our activities, giving us the optionality to invest both organically and inorganically, and to enhance our shareholder returns where appropriate. The group ended the period with cash balances of approximately $938 million with no debt or loans, representing an extremely robust and flexible financial position. Slide 38 presents the cash flow statement. Plus 500 remains a highly cash-generative business. supported by a lean cost base and proprietary technology. Since our IPO in 2013, our average operating cash conversion has been approximately at the level of 98%. In the first half of 2025, cash generated from operations was approximately at the level of $130 million, and cash and cash equivalents at the end of June 2025 stood at approximately $938 million. This extremely strong cash position has enabled us to announce on shareholder returns of $365 million during the year of 2025, including the $165 million announced today. On slide 39, we show our disciplined approach to capital allocation across the group. We always seek the right balance between maximizing shareholder returns, making strategic investments to drive future growth, carrying out highly selective golden acquisitions, and developing a sustainable business over the long term. We illustrate on the slide the two broad categories within our capital position, one which is approximately at the level of $550 million, which includes the regulatory capital, working capital, clearing and risk management funds, and the other is the surplus capital, which was approximately at the level of $385 million at the end of the first half of 2025. Both categories are there to support the ongoing day-to-day activities of the group, including our growing clearing businesses, future growth, and enhanced returns to our shareholders, which I will cover now on slide 40. Our shareholder returns policy stated at least 50% of net profits are to be distributed to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, and at least 50% of those distributions will be made by way of share buybacks. This policy will continue to apply to net profits on a half-yearly basis. and will continue to be based on a 23% corporate tax rate for both interim and final distributions. The Board will also consider executing special share buybacks or dividends on a half-yearly basis, dependent on the fiscal year results as well as on investment and growth opportunities. Accordingly, we are highly pleased to announce today an additional shareholder returns of $165 million, comprising $90 million in new share buyback programs and $75 million of total dividends, which equals to a dividend distribution of more than $1.05 per share. Thank you all, and I will now hand back to David for his final remarks.

Thank you, Elad. Let's now move to the summary and outlook section, starting on slide 42. As we have shown, the first half of 2025 was another excellent period for PLUS500, with accelerating positive momentum and further strategic, operational, and financial progress. and we extended our track record of delivering significant returns for our shareholders, which goes back to our IPO in 2013. This has propelled us to be the best performing share on a total return basis since our IPO in 2013 to the end of June 2025. during which time we generated over 7,900% total return for our shareholders. And, partly reflecting this track record, PLUS 500 joined the Stocks Europe 600 Index in January of this year, which is another testament to the growth and success of the group. Putting everything together, shown here on slide 43, is our compelling investment case. Plus 500 has established an enviable track record of growth, innovation, and sizable shareholder returns, leveraging our proprietary technology We are focused on attracting and retaining higher value customers while ensuring that our customer offering remains cutting edge, innovative, relevant, and diversified. Our robust balance sheet underpins our growth objectives and enables us to deliver attractive and sustainable returns to our shareholders. the board and executive management team established a strategic roadmap that clearly outlines Placer Funders' growth plans, and we are laser-focused on executing against it successfully. And to conclude, slide 44. The opportunity to drive growth, scale, and compounding value creation is significant, and we have strong fundamentals underpinning our business. These fundamentals, coupled with our disciplined approach to capital allocation and our differentiated proprietary technology, mean that we are well positioned to seize the exciting growth opportunities ahead of us. We remain confident in the business future prospects and strategic direction driven by our status as a trusted, diversified, multi-asset FinTech group with a strong track record of delivery. Moreover, in the medium to long term, we will continue to invest in our strategic roadmap initiatives and our class-leading technology to deepen customer relationships and invest in our people. We will also focus our efforts on continuing to drive further diversification towards the non-OTC parts of the group. This is all supported by our robust financial positions, highly cash-generative business model, and the enduring strengths of our diversified business model. Thank you for listening, and that marks the end of our presentation. We will now move on to take your questions. We have a facility via the webcast

We will now begin the question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you have dialed in, please select star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Participants can also submit questions through the webcast page using the ask a question button. I would like to remind all participants that this call is being recorded. We will pause a moment to allow the queue to form. The first question is from James Allen at Panmer Librem. Please unmute yourself and begin with the question.

Hi, morning, guys. Congrats on another good set of results. Two questions, if I can. First one, we saw in the news that the regulators in India are calling for structural reform in the Indian derivatives market. Presumably stricter regulations is a good thing longer term in that market and helps to reduce things like the number of fin fluences, for example. So I guess that could be seen as a good thing for Meta. Second question is the percent of client deposits in the first half generated by the non OTC part of the business. That's already running ahead of the three to five year target. Is there a chance that that gets upgraded? And if not, what will swing that back the other way over the next few years? Thanks.

Hi, good morning, James. How are you? So as for Meta, very much we identified new regulatory changes and also the one that took place over the last year and even a couple of years is very positive. reasoning is because of SEBI new guidelines, we see more infrastructure, more regulated markets. And accordingly, you see also an established ecosystem and are currently more than a few players that came across as a new entrance. And very much you see that those new guidelines are actually supportive of the people and the new kind of customers to come trade and feel comfortable. So we feel very comfortable with them. We modeled them already and we see the opportunity including them. As for the client funds and the non-OTC segment. So as for that, it's true that we already kind of crossed the milestone that we put in front of us. But yet again, we see the end goal also as increasing the volume, increasing the total amount, not just the percentage. and very much we believe it's a good balance to be with. Reasoning is let's not forget that the OTC segment is one that also generates the increased level of EBITDA margins. We do believe that from an ROE standpoint of view, we need to put also focus on that segment. As you've seen, we're expanding ourselves into the operations in the UAE this year in the first half, into Canada, into the license in Japan. into additional monetization, retention technologies. And lots of focus is also being attributed to the OTC space, not just for the non OTC. While the non OTC brings us, of course, stability, strength, expansion into the US and other territories. Thank you very much.

Just a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, we ask that you please use the raise hand function at the bottom of your Zoom screen. If you have dialed in, please select star nine to raise your hand and star six to unmute. Participants can also submit questions through the webcast page using the ask a question button. There are no further questions on the webinar. I will now hand over to Owen Jones, Group Head of Investor Relations, to read out the written questions submitted via the webcast page.

Morning, thank you. We've had a few questions come through to me directly. The first picks up on James's question about growth in non-OTC customer deposits. And the question is, can you explain some of the dynamics behind this growth? What do we see driving the growth in customer deposits, and in particular, customer segregated funds? That's the first question. Second question relates to customer retention. And the question notes that customer retention has improved significantly in recent years. The flip side of that is that churn rates have obviously come down quite a lot. So the question is, can we provide any additional information as to what we have done to get those results?

Yes, sure. Over the last few years, we keep growing our customer base, both in institutional and in the retail in the US. And basically, this drives the increase in the deposits ratio in the US, in the non-OMTC business. The majority comes from IEBs introducing brokers and their customers. So basically, we recruited many introducing brokers. This is how the futures business works in the US. So each such introducing broker has between hundreds to thousands of customers. So when you recruit an introducing broker, Basically, it follows with his customers onboarding to the platform. And then this is the way to increase the deposits. So we recruited new IBs, new institutional customers, and also some high net worth customers in the US.

So this is for the first question. As for the retention side, so very much we're putting greater focus on the technological kind of stack of plus to enable us also to run through AI and big data capabilities, new techniques, new kind of features that we're integrating on the backend level from the R&D side, from the marketing standpoint of view, from the operational side. You will also see other AI capabilities to come on the front end later on in the next few months. But altogether, those kind of retention capabilities are one to generate already more than millions of dollars of revenues and profits, even kind of tens of millions. And we're seeing that on the back of running over the legacy and the very fresh level of millions of customers, the registered customers that we're having in the system.

The next question is from Edward James at Cantor Fitzgerald. Please unmute yourself and begin with your question.

Morning, thank you for taking my question. I've got a couple, if that's okay. So firstly, if we just go back to the 2022 CMD, where you outlined a target to add kind of $500 million of additional revenue through non-ATC products, as well as then expanding the OTC offering. You've obviously made a lot of progress on both fronts so far, but the question I have is when do we see, or how do you see that the revenues from those efforts really accelerating over the next few years and how that may change the growth profile of the group as we go into 2026 and 2027? I'm just interested in your more midterm thoughts there, particularly in comparison to consensus kind of only looking at, well, you know, near zero or low single digit growth. So just any comments on that would be really helpful. And then the second question is more on what seems to be a greatly improved marketing efficiency. If you could just unpack some of the key things that you've changed into driving the the improved marketing efficiency, which has led to reduction marketing costs or average customer acquisition whilst ARPU and other KPIs go up and what that will enable you to do in terms of margins going forward or the ability to continue to invest. Thanks.

So for the first question, since the capital market day, we invested a lot in building new fundamentals for the business. And it doesn't happen in one day. So we built many new products. We entered new geographies, all the new acquisitions, the licensing. And we are very much positioned, very well positioned now to cater these markets and these products. And we could see the growth coming in the last two years mainly, and we anticipate that we will keep growing the numbers and the revenues will follow as we keep investing in these initiatives. So this is for the first answer. Sorry, could you repeat the second question?

From the marketing standpoint, you could have seen that obviously we've taken a very active approach also towards the end of 2024. kind of to optimize a certain level of bidding processes and to enhance the marketing machine capabilities. What you could have seen there is actually that not only we brought more customers with a lower kind of cost, it was also through a period where vol kind of was reduced significantly. following the tariffs referenced by the beginning of Q2. So altogether, it's not just to bring those additional customers with a lower cost, but also on the back of reduced level of volatility. And what we could have also seen there, it's the level of transaction and the lower level of CTP and the customer training performance that took place. So from our perspective, the second quarter is being associated with higher quality earnings. with longevity, which is higher because about 50%, 47% of the revenues of H1 was generated by customers who were with us for more than five years. It's a fantastic, phenomenal kind of outcome, very different to the profile of plus 500 revenues historically. And then you are seeing also that we became more effective with bringing those customers. So altogether, the second quarter and the first half are associated with that level of strength. And also don't forget that what we are doing and putting those fundamentals associated kind of with your first question is by having those Bolton acquisitions that are generating actual return to our shareholders rather than just burning money and we are bringing that level of technology the fundamentals and you know for from an acquisition of 28 million dollars a company that held approximately 40 million dollars on sec funds today that operation holds more than a one billion dollar of sec funds and we're having significant level of operation on the b2b and b2c and all the stack of the fcm in the us to enable us also the expansion into other territories such as in india so yes very much we're putting the seats we're putting the technological fundamentals and those are the pillars to enable us the expansion Thanks.

I will now hand back to Owen Jones for some more written questions.

We've had another question about cryptocurrency regulation. And the question is that Europe and the UK seem to be some way behind the US with regards to regulating cryptocurrency. Do we see any signs of this changing and do we see this as a potential opportunity going forwards?

So obviously, Plus500 is not a crypto provider. Crypto is one asset that we offer. and the volume of customers who are trading crypto plus 500 crypto CFDs is minimal. And as such, the crypto regulation does not impact plus 500 directly. So we have nothing more to comment on this.

Okay. Thanks, David. No more questions from me.

Thank you for joining today's call. We are no longer live. Have a nice day.