Nordnet AB (publ)

Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the presentation of Nordnet's second quarter of 2026. My name is Marcus Lindberg, and I'm the head of investor relations at Nordnet. Joining me today is our CEO, Rasmus Järboj, and our CFO, Lennart Krän. Rasmus and Lennart will start by presenting the results, and then we'll have a Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, just click the raise hand button in Zoom, or you can submit a question in writing via Zoom, or just send me an email. With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Rasmus Hjelvoin.

Thanks, Markus. Hey, good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us today. The second quarter of 2026 continues to present a dynamic operating environment for Nordnet and our customers. Globally, equity markets showed resilient performance, with major indices pushing towards new highs. However, underlying market volatility remained elevated, driven by persistent deflationary questions, monetary policy shifts, and uncertain geopolitical developments with reignited tensions in the Middle East. Against this backdrop, retail wealth creation has proven to be a highly structural, secular trend. Our customers are not just trading, they are systematically deploying capital for the long term. This behavior, combined with our strong product execution, drove exceptional results this quarter. A standout moment for our platform was the historic IPO of SpaceX. Nordnet acted as a Nordic distributor across Sweden, Denmark, and Norway. This transaction highlights our unique ability to provide institutional-grade deal flow directly to the retail investor community, reinforcing our brand equity and driving significant account acquisition. turning to slide two. The headline for this quarter is that we achieved record quarterly revenue and profit driven by simultaneous growth across all of our primary revenue streams. Looking at some of the operational milestones, we officially crossed the 2.5 million customer threshold this quarter, achieving a 13% year-over-year growth rate in line with target. Trading activity remained robust with record high cross-border trading supporting strong brokerage margins. For the first time in history, recently, we saw a sequential growth in trading income from Q1 to Q2 and an otherwise seasonally weaker quarter with three fewer trading days. Net savings rose 78% year-over-year to 26 billion Swedish crowns. 2 billion of that was from Danish pension, which had a record quarter supported, of course, by Livrente. This capped off the strongest first half in Nordnet's history with 55 billion crowns in net savings year-to-date. Our Nordnet branded funds surpass 100 billion crowns in AUM, aided by the launch of the first German index fund in the Nordics. And this product is a great example of how powerful it is to have one platform and a uniform product set across multiple geographies. When we launch something for one market at Nordnet, it benefits our entire footprint. Our expansion into Germany is progressing on schedule. We commenced live production testing this quarter, signed a new country manager and are on track for our H2 commercial launch. During the quarter, we paid a dividend of £8.60 per share, in line with our 70% payout policy, and we remain committed to continued shareholder remuneration, including further buybacks. Any program in 2026, though, will likely be fairly modest, as we want the flexibility to manage the AT1 capital in the most optimal way once the next $600 million becomes callable in November. On slide 3... Our financial performance highlights the operating leverage inherent in our digital model. Adjusted revenues rose 26% year-over-year to 1.6 billion crowns. Over the same period, adjusted operating expenses grew by 11% to 440 million or just 7.5% when excluding our investments in the German expansion. The results of this exceptional operating leverage is an adjusted profit before tax of $1.2 billion, up 33% year over year. Turning to slide four, you can see the scale and geographic diversification of our customer franchise. We saw great operating momentum and revenue across all markets. Denmark and Sweden both reported record levels of cross-border trades. Sweden achieved a 9% customer growth rate, marking its highest pace of new customer acquisition since early 2022. In Norway, we saw record levels in all revenue streams. We added 74,000 new active customers this quarter, bringing our total customer base to 2.5 million, and this represents an absolute increase of 280,000 customers year over year. Savings capital reached almost 1.4 trillion, up 29%, or an absolute increase of 310 billion crowns compared to the same quarter last year, underlining what a machine we've built here at Nordnet. Turning to slide five, our top line momentum is directly linked to our product velocity. We shipped 21 new versions of our award-winning app this quarter. We launched a conversational AI assistant in Sweden and Norway to automate routine high volume customer queries. We also deployed AI powered company insights across more than 700 instruments. This AI model extracts and processes complex financial data points directly from quarterly filings, effectively democratizing institutional grade market data for our retail customers. We expanded our asset management footprint by launching the Nordic's first German index fund, offering direct low-cost exposure to Europe's largest economy at a competitive fee. I'm pleased to share that this fund has already attracted over 130 million in assets within its first few weeks, proving the strong client appetite for targeted cross-border exposure. And finally, we launched full pre-market trading for U.S. equities starting from 10 a.m. European time instead of the 1 p.m. we offered earlier. This dramatically extends the trading window for our active traders, enabling them to navigate pre-market news flow and reposition risk hours before the official Wall Street bell. Already, some 32% of pre-trading volume is in this early pre-market window. Slide 6 illustrates how this product and customer momentum translate into financial results. Our revenue grew across all three primary income streams to reach 1.6 billion in the quarter. Net transaction-related income was solid at near 740 million. Fund-related income rose to almost 200 million, driven both by asset depreciation but also high net buying. NII experienced a sequential recovery to 675 million as higher rates began to fully flow through our liquidity portfolio and credit book and deposits remained high. Turning to slide seven, we see the durability of our trading business. Average trades per day remained robust at 298,000, up 15% year over year as our customer base grows and is increasingly active in the capital markets. As a result, brokerage income rose 37% year-over-year to $740 million, and our revenue per trade expanded sequentially to 42 crowns. This margin expansion was driven by a highly favorable country and product mix, including record high cross-border trading, which comprised 43% of traded value and 40% of trades in the quarter. Looking ahead, while we're carrying very good underlying momentum, we're now of course entering this seasonally slower summer period, and it's worth keeping in mind that July and August of last year were fairly strong comparison baselines. Turning to our fund business on slide eight. Total fund capital grew to almost 360 billion crowns. We saw our highest quarterly net buying of funds ever at 13.6 billion, with almost 40% of those flows directed to our own Nordent branded funds. These funds now represent 30% of total fund assets, providing a profitable and stable recurring revenue stream that acts as ballast against transaction-based volatility. While fund margins contracted slightly this quarter due to lower ethics fees from reduced trading in foreign funds, the underlying fund margin remains largely stable. On slide nine, we applied our deposit development. As you can see, deposits remain stable and in the quarter at 95.2 billion crowns. Looking at the capital flows, we saw 20.5 billion in net cash inflows and 10.5 billion from dividends as dividend season wrapped up in the quarter. This was offset by 31.5 billion of net traded value, representing cash that our customers actively redeployed into the market. This cash sorting is natural and a healthy sign of an engaged customer base. Turning to slide 10. NII has firmly turned to growth, reaching 675 million crowns in the quarter, a 12.3% year-over-year increase. Our NII yield improved sequentially to 280 basis points, reflecting the upward movement of the three-month IBRA curves across all the Nordic currencies. We continue to run a conservative liquidity portfolio of $70 billion, with 68% rate of AAA and a balanced short-dated maturity structure. Our loan portfolio also expanded to $31.4 billion, supported by healthy demand in both margin lending and mortgages. I will now hand the call over to our CFO, Leonard Crenn, to walk through the expenses, capital position, and guidance.

Thank you, Rasmus. Thank you, everyone, for being here. Turning to the cost, we can see that the adjusted operating expenses were 440 million, virtually flat compared to the previous quarter. This demonstrates our rigorous focus on the cost discipline, even as we are aggressively scaling our operations. Excluding our planned investments in Germany, our core Nordic growth cost growth was limited to 7.5%, as Ferasmus showed earlier. This is below our 8% target on a medium term. Our 2026 guidance, however, remains stable and will be about 8%. And we continue to budget with 80 to 90 million SEK for the German expansion this year. We can go to the next slide. which actually displays the structural operating leverage of our platform. This relationship is driven by our highly scalable platform, which allows us to process record trading volumes and deposit inflows without the linear expansion of our headcount. As you can see, the 7-10% CAGR, 10% on costs, and then it all ends up in the PBT. So very nice operating leverage on this one. We can go to the next one. which is the capital situation still very strong capital situation also the liquidity is very strong but as a reminder here we usually we do not as we have not done this year either audit the Q2 results, while that is not included in our reporting of the capital situation. However, here it is. So what you see here is ended the quarter with a CET1 ratio of 22.2%, which is comfortable 710 basis points above the regulatory requirement. and also the leverage ratio with 5.0%. It's well above our own target of 4.0 to 4.5. The capital position gives us an immense strategic flexibility, and that is very important to have. During the first quarter, actually, we bought back shares for 250 million in a buyback program. We also gave the dividend, but still have a very strong capital situation. We have generated a lot of new capital for this one, and we have also submitted an application to the Swedish FSA to authorize a new buyback program for shares. But we will remain a little bit cautious about this one, as we also have the 81 of 600 million callable in November. Given that deposit levels can swing as we experienced firsthand in Q1, and our first priority is to ensure the flexibility for the 81. We did not intend to initiate the next buyback program until a little bit later. As we close out Q3 we will have much clearer view of both our deposit trajectory and the 81 market pricing and we will then probably inform you all of our next decision on the capital returns. So a strong capital situation and very solid liquidity position. Finally, we can go to the medium term targets on the next slide. And yes, we remain confident in our target of 13% to 15% annual growth, customer growth. Our last 12 months revenue model is about 49%, which is above the guidance, but the source of interest rates are above the 2% approximation that we have set out as an assumption for those. And also, as I touched upon in the previous slide, OPEX Growth is in line with guidance and we are on track to meet our targets for this year. By that, I hand over to you, Rasmus.

Thanks, Lennart. Okay, on slide 15 now, we lay out the expansion timeline for Germany. We've achieved several critical milestones along this journey, and especially in the quarter. We successfully executed our first internal production testing live, and our Frankfurt office became operational in mid-June. On July 1st, we announced the appointment of Arno Walter as our new country manager for Germany. Arno is a highly experienced executive in the digital brokerage space, and he will formally take over leadership on August 1st. Looking ahead, we are on track to initiate our friends and family launch, followed by a VIP launch later this fall. This is a phased approach that leads directly to the official launch of the new German pension account in January, which we expect to be a significant long-term catalyst for our German franchise. To wrap up on slide 16 now. Our strategic priorities remain for the year. Commercial launch in Germany. We will execute the phased H2 German rollout as I just described. Two, platform and trading investments. We will continue investing heavily into our platform and trading features to expand our core moat. Three, AI adoption. We will continue to lead the integration of generative AI into our customer facing and engineering infrastructure to support non-linear scale. Fourth, wealth management. We're now fully utilizing our new wealth management unit to further mature the private banking offering and capture high net worth client assets in a bid to have a higher share of wallet with this attractive customer base. And finally, as Leonard talked about, cost discipline. We will maintain our cost control, which has delivered an industry-leading 27% efficiency ratio, which combined with that top-line momentum provides us with the flexibility to fund long-term growth opportunities as they arise. Thank you.

Okay, I think it's time for the Q&A session. So once again, if you want to ask a question, just click the raise hand button. I'll call your name and unmute you. Or you can submit a question in writing via Zoom or send me an email. Okay, the first question comes from Jakob Heslevik at SEB. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks. A lot of conference calls this morning, so please let me know if you've already answered any of my questions. But first on Denmark, it delivered record net savings of 9.8 billion SEK and Finland grew savings capital 33% year-on-year. Both markets are showing operating margins of 74%, which is above your group average. What product or demographic dynamics are driving this outperformance? And do you see a path for these two markets to structurally close the savings capital per customer gap with Sweden?

Hey, Jacob. Thanks for that question. So there's a lot of different factors, of course, playing into the margins. It's, as you know, a mixed question, both a customer segment mix, the product mix, but also notably the sort of domestic versus cross-border trading mix. Now, as we all know, the domestic stock exchanges in both Copenhagen and Helsinki are smaller. And that has led to the situation where Danes in particular are trading a lot more cross-border. Cross-border trading attracts a higher commission and also generates an FX spread in most instances. And that's what's behind the margin, the leading margins of these countries. Although the Helsinki Exchange has done fairly well of late, it's not done particularly well over the last 10 years, which has also led to a lot of our Finnish customers being highly active in cross-border investing. And so that also supports that margin that you talk about. When it comes to closing the savings gap, sure, that's a possibility, I think more so in Denmark than in Finland, just giving sort of the demographics and how wealth is distributed in those countries. But for sure, we're very happy with the geographic diversification we have now that we have four very strong countries that are each contributing to both top line and bottom line.

Got it. Thanks. And cross-border trading reached a record 43% of total trades in the quarter, which has been the key lever lifting income per trade. How much of this is structural versus cyclical in your view? And could you elaborate anything on how much is from the SpaceX IPO?

So, Jack, you just dismissed that one right away. I mean, SpaceX was huge for us in a lot of ways in customer acquisition and net savings and in initial trading on the day. But on a quarterly basis, SpaceX didn't really move the needle in terms of cross-border. It's difficult to answer the question directly, but I would give you an unhelpful, it's a bit of both. I do believe that it is a structural trend. We see that it's driven by two major trends. I think one is just the mix of our countries where those countries with smaller domestic exchanges are becoming a larger part of Nordnet. And so that means that we're shifting structurally into more cross-border. That's one. Two, I think that the globe, the entire world is just getting smaller and smaller and it's becoming more of a global investment community. If you want to participate in the AI super cycle, for example, you're having to invest in the US markets. And so that's driving cross-border. We're also seeing a lot of foundries and other chip manufacturers that are not available in domestic markets, of course. And so that's driving cross-border assets, European defense. So I think that that is structural. And once customers realize that it's no harder to buy a US stock than to buy a Swedish stock, that behavior tends to stay. But then, of course, it's also cyclical. So we talked about the AI super cycle that's been there. There's been a lot of sort of play around defense energy now, given the tension in the Middle East. And so that's had an impact also. But it's both. But over time, I do see... the share of cross-border ever climbing, but whether it'll be as toppy as it's been this quarter, that's a different matter.

Very clear. Thank you so much.

Thanks.

Another point on the cross-border, we see that the equity holdings of our customers are still very skewed toward domestic holding. In Sweden, it's around 70% Swedish stocks and Finland and Norway, it's 60-70. Denmark is the most diversified, but it's still a little over 50. So there's definitely room to diversify over time.

Great. Thank you.

Okay. The next question comes from Patrik Bratelius at ABG.

Thank you. Can you hear me? Yep. Great. My first question is regarding Germany. So if we start off by the fact that it seems to be the number one focus now, but we also saw that your country manager is leaving. So has this changed the launch timeline in any way or execution risk in your view?

Short answer, no. Of course, the timing was unfortunate, but we were very lucky to have been working closely with Arno as a senior advisor to the initiative, even before we hired the previous country manager. So Arno has been advising us since the fall of 2024. He's been very close to the project, close to our staff, and so he was able to step in immediately, taking over formally on the 1st of August. So there's no change to our timeline. We're still committed to a late H2 launch. And I wouldn't say there's any additional operating list either. Norden is always bigger than one single person. And under Arnaud's leadership, I feel very secure that we're going to have a good launch and do this well and on time.

Okay, thank you. And regarding Germany, can you give us your latest take on the competitive landscape there? Have you seen any shifts or changes from competitors in terms of increased marketing or addition of new products ahead of this reform that we are going to see in half a year or so?

I mean, it's a highly competitive market, to be sure. I mean, it already was before we announced that we're going in. And since we've announced we're going to Germany, a lot of other international platforms have done the same. There have been some homegrown startups as well. But it really is a very exciting market in terms of being Europe's largest savings market, being at an inflection point now where we see sort of an acceleration of the number of Germans that are investing in equities and equity-based funds. Thank you very much. features and products over the last two weeks, which was a very good expansion of their product set. I have to give that to them. And of course, they're a marketing machine. So that's a strong competitor. Flatex is there. They're a very competent competitor. But actually, I was on a panel with the CFO of Flatex just the other month and he was saying that Germany is a market that's big enough for both of us and for many more. It's a sort of the tide lifts all ships type situation here with the influx of savers into the equity markets in Germany and with this government being very supportive of retail investment participation and at least through this new pension account which is subsidized and actually highly attractive.

Thank you. Then my last question is regarding this onboarding issue that you highlighted in your CEO wording. Can you elaborate a little bit more what the issue was and how it has been solved? It would be helpful to hear a little bit about the process improvements, when they were finalized, if they have been rolled out across all geographies, and will this enable you to hit your 13-15% customer growth target in the second half of the year, given these changes?

Yeah, so there are a couple of things in there that I highlighted already in my CO letter last quarter. And I think the issue we identified, which is not really something new, but that came back strongly to me on my listening tour, is that we make it a bit too difficult for especially high net worth customers to onboard because of all the AML and KYC requirements. And that process can definitely be smoother. separate from that, but of course it's the same flow, is that there are a lot of tweaks that can and should be done continuously to the onboarding flow in order to have a higher conversion to active customers. And so we measure, obviously we measure every single step, but we measure from the marketing funnel into a customer becoming a customer and opening an account. And then from opening that account, to funding it and making their first investment. And so there's a new team in our customer journeys area with the sole responsibility of improving that conversion to activation. And they're running multiple AB tests and features. It's not the fact that they've done something and it's going to be done and then we're happy and we move on. But this is a team that has a permanent commitment for me to improve that onboarding experience for customers, to improve that conversion. And yes, you're right. That is going to help us with the customer growth target, but I wouldn't say that it's going to have a meaningful impact already in Q3, Q4, but it's something we're going to be working with all the time over time in order to keep improving that conversion to active customers.

Okay. Thank you for the added color. That was all for me.

Thanks, Patrick.

Thank you, Patrick. Next question comes from Martin Ekstedt at Handelsbanken.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Yeah, good morning.

Excellent. Good morning. So I wanted to ask first on your income to savings ratio. I think it was on slide 14 in the presentation. It's down to 49 basis points from 59 in 2023. But your medium term target, as you state on the page, is around 45 basis points. But is that 45 meant as a floor or is it more as a kind of through the cycle midpoint, if you see what I mean?

Yeah, no, it's definitely these are medium term targets and they are through the cycle, as you mentioned. So and of course, the income to savings capital or the income margin is highly dependent on where we are in the rate cycle, as well as that's a blended margin of both commission income, fund income, FX and of course, NII. So. You know, we are actually printing 49 basis points now, LTM, which is above the target. And in 23, of course, that's when rates were higher. And so I wouldn't read more into it than that. And again, these are sort of five-year through the cycle targets.

Okay, great. And then on to my next question. You had a very good custom inflow this quarter, I think 75, 74, 75,000, right? But some of Some of these came in through the SpaceX distribution, I guess. Are you tracking this cohort for activity levels compared to normal customers, quote-unquote? Do they stand out in any way, or are they just behaving like normal customers generally?

No, we are tracking the SpaceX cohort separately. We have a number of cuts of cohorts. Of course, the one that we report on is the yearly cohort. No, they're trading normally, and they've... sort of monetize, activated themselves and not just bought SpaceX. So after allocation in the IPO, they've also continued to invest and setting up monthly savings plans and buying stocks and funds and ETFs like any other customer.

Great. And then finally, if I may just quickly, sorry if I missed it, have you stated what size buyback program you have applied for?

No, we have not.

Leonard?

No, we have not. We will look into that when it comes. As we saw in Q1, we had a giant inflows of deposits and that changed over time. So we watch this one and we come back later on with those statements.

So the leverage ratio is a little bit of a constraint as well that you have in mind.

The leverage ratio is the constraint, yes. And now we have the 81 on 600 million that will be callable in November. So that's also some aspect that we have to take care of in this aspect.

Okay. Thank you for that. That's all from me.

Thanks, Martin.

Thank you, Martin. The next question comes from Edmund Kirch at DMB Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Good morning and thanks for taking my question. So maybe starting on AI, you mentioned how you've increased adoption and you look to increase it even further. Do you see that having an impact on your cost outlook? And then I'm also just thinking about your user growth. So you're now at 13% and I suppose it's been quite a strong market. Your target is 13 to 15%. So what would be needed to get you towards that upper end of that range? Thank you.

Thanks, Erman. Let's start with AI. And so at the moment, AI is probably just costing us more rather than saving us cost. We're on purpose not touching the brake on token spend because it's important to us to be in the forefront of experimentation and to not only learn but use this technology for the benefit of our customers. So actually, towards the tail end of June, 60% of newly written code was agentically co-authored with Cloud Code. We have, of course, working that cost base. So we've been able to get a discount from Anthropic by committing to a certain number of tokens. And so that you have to work these things smart, but you don't want to tie yourself up too long because, of course, another technology may be the one that's prevailing in six or 12 months time. When I talked to my leaders within product and tech who had headcount mandates, they said they would rather spend that money on tokens than the new hires, which I think is telling. We also put into the company presentation, I don't know if you've seen yet, but a metric, which is the cost of engineering PULLED REQUESTS. SO DEPLOYMENT OF NEW CODE CAN BE ONE, TWO, THREE OR MORE PULL REQUESTS. AND SO WE'RE ACTUALLY SEEING A 14% DECLINE FROM DECEMBER TO JUNE ON THE COST THEN PER PULL REQUEST. SO THAT IS AN EFFICIENCY GAIN. BUT AT THE MOMENT WE'RE USING THAT EFFICIENCY GAIN IN ORDER TO SHIP PRODUCT FASTER AND AT A MORE AUTOMATED RATE RATHER THAN TAKING THE SAVINGS. AND WITH A, YOU KNOW, WITH A A gross margin of over 70%. I think that is the right call. In terms of the customer growth target, of course, it's the law of large numbers. It becomes increasingly difficult as we move beyond 2.5 million customers now to maintain the 13 to 15. Nevertheless, that continues to be our target. I'm really happy to see that we hit the 13% in the quarter. Like you say, it's been a confluence of good events this quarter with the IPO market, with volatility, with indices rising. The same time, our marketing spend is still doing its job, and we also put a new slide on that in the company presentation on how brand awareness, brand preference, brand recall, ad recall, all these things are ticking up as they should now that we're sort of a year and a bit into our marketing push. um so that's uh that's going to help support this and Germany will over time it's not going to move the needle initially and then thirdly like we already talked about it's upping that conversion to account open and upping the conversion from account open to active customer that's also going to aid that growth rate and in addition on customer growth if you look at our market shares outside of Sweden it's

And compared to Sweden where, you know, us and Avanza have a quarter of the population or so in Sweden and the other markets where we are the market leader, we have, you know, around 10% market share and those markets are maturing and catching up to Sweden. So over time, it's not unreasonable to think that we could double the market share outside of Sweden, which would get us that customer growth for over the medium term.

Yeah, I would agree on that. It was more the pace of getting those users, I suppose. But thank you for the call, very helpful, and wish you all a great summer.

Thanks, Herman. You too.

Thank you. Next question comes from Andy Lowe at Citi.

Thanks for taking the question. I wanted to ask about your U.S. pre-market. So I think you started offering that mid-April. I just wanted to check, what date did you extend the hours from 1 p.m. Swedish time to April? 10 a.m. Swedish time. And have you been able to identify any sort of early statistics about increased volumes in the U.S. stocks? And am I correct in thinking that the fees in the pre-market are the same as during U.S. market hours? So, is the benefit here just simply a volume benefit rather than benefiting the margins on on US trading. Exactly. Yeah.

Okay. So actually the full US pre-market access, this earlier window went live on the 2nd of July. So you won't see it in the results we're presenting. The other pre-market was last year, the 1 p.m. pre-market. We've done some preliminary analysis. It's early days, and of course, it's tough with the baseline because of market volatility. But we see strong early adoption. The new early pre-market window accounted for 32% of total pre-market trading. And as a share of total U.S. trading, pre-market increased from 7% to 9.4% in terms of number of executed trades. And so in terms of traded value, we saw a similar expansion from 4.7% to 6.6%. And it's really engaging a new segment of investors. So a substantial quarter of customers utilizing these new early hours had never traded in the pre-market session before. But it's the same price, to your point, Andy, and it's important. It's actually adding, though. It's not cannibalizing. So preliminary data shows that we're adding a couple of thousand trades per day so far. But then again, it's a summer period. I think it can only increase from there.

Great, thanks. And then two really quick ones. Last quarter, you had a higher mix of active traders, which dampened the margins on your brokerage. Could you just clarify how that mix changed in Q2? And then the second follow-up was just about your Germany offering, specifically your plans for securities lending. Am I right in thinking that that is likely to be part of the offering and is that going to be ready by the time that you launch?

Cool. So when it comes to the mix and the margins, compared to Q1, there was really no real change in the mix. Compared to last year, we see private banking representing a much larger part, and that's both due to more trading among PB customers, but also that the PB framework is new. When it comes to active traders, we do see that retail and PB are growing more than active traders, which is natural given that active traders is a smaller portion of the population and the new customer growth. But this really also was Q2 was, you know, in every man quarter, it was a full engagement to the retail base driven in part by those 10 IPOs we participated in. And so it wasn't as marked as it was in Q1. So when it comes to Germany, Securities lending today, as opposed to securities borrow, is only done under pension accounts, where the pension company is the legal owner of the assets, and so we can do sort of an opt-out solution. And so if you're now holding your stocks in either an endowment wrapper or in an occupational pension account, we can lend those out and give customers that yield enhancement. So for Germany, in time, it's something we're looking at but haven't decided. But of course, when we launch this fall, it's going to be a bank account only. So a stock trading account, which means we won't have stock lending on it. The new pension account that's coming in January is actually also a bank product, not officially a pension product. And so we won't be able to do securities lending on that either. But in time, if we do open a proper pension account or whether we have an endowment wrapper in Germany, then of course, we will turn that on.

Great. That's really clear. Thank you very much.

Thanks.

Thanks, Andy. Next question comes from Nicholas Veselier at BNP Paribas.

Can you hear me?

Yes.

Hi, good morning. My first question would be on NII-outlook for X-core. There's been a lot of intra-core volatility on short-term rates in Q2, a bit less in Q3, but I suppose most of the the bit on consensus today came on the liquidity portfolio. So I'd like to have a bit more guidance on how to navigate the liquidity portfolio yield into next quarter. What are you seeing right now to make comparison quarter on quarter in terms of revenues?

Sure. Let me start and then Lennart can take the question on liquidity portfolios. I mean, this was actually a beat on net transaction income, on the non-transactional related income and on an AI. So it really was a beat across all major income lines. But when it comes to liquidity portfolio, Lennart, I'm sure you have additional color.

Sorry, yes. The liquidity portfolio, the main thing here is the volume, of course, and that is driven by the deposit volume that comes into it. Otherwise, we see a little increase with the interest rate curves that we do the forecast for. So this is just a snapshot, which you see from present market interest rates and applied on the risk weights and yield that we have and the volume as we have as well. So this is not a forecast or a thing that we say this is going to be. This is a mathematical driven reader.

Okay, and perhaps a more different topic, but you were advisor on this SpaceX, I mean distributor on SpaceX IPO, your main competitor in Sweden Avanza wasn't for instance, so I'm curious to know what has driven the decision. there, why was chosen rather than them, if you can help us understand what were the key factors to be working on this IPO.

No, but I think we're the natural partner for giving out the strength of our franchise across the Nordic countries, right? And so our placing power is unparalleled in the Nordic region. We also work very closely with many of the banks that were global coordinators on the deal. And we have to give a shout out to our colleague within Securities Brokerage who really stayed close to that banking group and made sure to to pitch hard and to pitch enthusiastically about how we could make this IPO an absolute success, and I think we did, and so we outdistributed expectations, and I think that just cemented our role as the premier platform of choice if there's a broad retail participation in an IPO. I can't speak to why they weren't chosen. That's a question for Gustav.

Okay, sure. And lastly, I'm looking into marketing spend for next year. Obviously, there is a big launch and a big push in Germany in the launch. How do you think about your overall marketing budget coming into next year? Should we expect it to grow or would you reallocate the current budget more to Germany as opposed to other Nordic countries?

No, so the German marketing budget is actually separate, and it's part of the 100 million crowns a year German launch budget that we've communicated. Obviously, we haven't spent a dime of that yet, given that we haven't launched, and that's why to a degree it's back-ended this year. Also, just because of where we will be in the year, it's not that smart to spend your marketing dollars towards the tail end of the year because people are not usually in the mood to start savings and they're wanting to spend for Christmas and New Year. And so I think the big marketing push in Germany will come in January after the pension account is launched. But again, that money is separate from the general marketing budget, the brand marketing budget and the local budgets that we have for our four Nordic countries. We actually reallocate and redeploy that intra year as we see where the money is doing, giving us the most bang for the buck. And we follow that very tightly. We have a lot of tracking on a variety of metrics, and it's something that we discuss in the executive committee. So at the moment, we're We've allocated more to Sweden and to Denmark and less to Norway and Finland. But depending on how local markets, how the competitive situation develops, but also how much traction that spend has in any given market along the funnel from top funnel down to low funnel performance marketing, then we will make those calls along the way. Thank you very much. Have a good day. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Nicolas. Next question comes from Grace Dargan at Barclays.

Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I guess I just wanted to come back on two points. The first one actually is just in response to the marketing spend in Germany. And I guess noting your comments on really ramping up the German marketing spend in H1-27. IS THERE A RISK THAT THAT'S TOO LATE COMPARED TO SOME OF THE INCUMBENTS WHO ARE ALREADY IN THE MARKET WHO ARE RAMPING UP SPEND NOW I GUESS ARE YOU CONFIDENT THAT YOU'LL BE ABLE TO HIT THE GROUND RUNNING IN JANUARY WHEN THE PENSION REFORM COMES THROUGH IN GERMANY AND THEN THE SECOND QUESTION IS JUST AROUND SHARE BUYBACKS MAYBE COMING BACK TO SOME OF YOUR COMMENTS FROM EARLIER I JUST WANTED TO CLARIFY TALKING ABOUT THE KIND OF Q3 TIMING YOU MENTIONED Should we then be thinking of a potential announcement with Q3 results or is that a bit later? And is it likely or is it possible that you do a more modest buyback and look to top it up? Or is this kind of a one and done and start executing kind of thing? Thank you.

Well, let me start with Germany. We have to sort of differentiate between marketing spend and marketing activities. So we have a very good local marketing team that we've hired in Germany, but also very good PR department, including savings economists. And so we're going to be starting with a lot of more guerrilla style marketing PR events already this fall. As part of the phase rollout, we're going to be... holding a number of events where we will find customers that are close to our hearts in terms of early adopters, and we will be working with them as we move into the tail end of the year and the full launch. I think marketing spend in Germany in general has been high and is at a high level, so I wouldn't say that it's You know, accelerated much recently. But it's just the fact that, you know, we're never going to outspend some of these players in Germany. We're not going to be sponsoring the Bundesliga or plastering our logo across buses and bus stations across Germany. That's just not the way it's going to work. So we're going to have to be much more the way we are here, which is sort of working closely with content that marketing and low funnel conversion marketing supplemented by brand marketing. Really be smart in who we work with and how we're visible online. in that highly fragmented but exciting market. And then Lennart on buybacks.

You're muted.

It's still on mute.

Thank you for that, Rasmus. Didn't want to disturb your answers, though. Yes, it's most likely that will be around the Q3 results publishing. It could be earlier as well, but we haven't put the standards in here as we have submitted the application for buybacks and the 81 as well. So we wait for those replies first from the FSA. So after that, we can say much more.

Okay, great. Thanks, Grace. Next question comes from Oliver Carruthers at Goldman Sachs.

Hi there, morning. Can you hear me okay?

Yeah.

Great. Just one question for me. One of the, I guess, broader global retail trends that we're seeing this year is the rise of trading of leveraged ETFs. It seems to be more of a US phenomenon, but the trading volume in these products seems to be really high. I think you do offer a relatively narrow range of USITs, leveraged ETS, but would just be interested to get your thoughts on is this rise in trading something that you're seeing for your customers and any thoughts as to how these products grow from here? They're obviously much easier to understand for retail than, say, trading on margin from a leveraged perspective. So I'm interested to get your thoughts on that.

We have not seen that to date. But in general, as you know, Europe has been behind the U.S. in terms of ETFs and ETF participation. And I think the Nordics have been behind Europe actually for once because a lot of the European ETFs that exist and are traded are, of course, usually Zetra listed and traded in euros. But we definitely see ETF as a growth lever going forward, and it's something we're looking at. When it comes to leverage instruments, we have our Nordic Market suite of products, which have bull and bear certificates with varying levels of leverage between 1x and 20x. And so there's a small sub-segment of our customers that are trading those products. When it comes to leverage funds, we actually have our own Nordnet Global 125, which is a global index fund supplemented by 25% leverage, which is a highly popular product and, of course, fantastic to have in your pension savings over time. But when it comes to ETFs specifically, you know, we operate in ETF markets like Denmark, which have their own brand of ETFs, and in Finland, which of course is an ETF market because of the Euro currency, which means that it's no more expensive for them to trade ETFs, et cetera. And of course, fund company now with over 100 billion Swedish in AUM under new legislation, we're also able to issue fund classes of those existing funds as ETFs, should we so choose. And so that's something we're also looking at. Thanks.

Thank you, Oliver. Next question comes from Zach Wurst at Autonomous.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got two, please. The first, just a general follow-up on the competitive landscape in Germany. As you get into testing, what part of Nordnet's proposition do you think will be most differentiated in Germany? I'm thinking things like product breadth or platform quality, etc.? ? And then second, the report flags risk from political discussion around changes to ISK tax caps as a key risk. Are you able to talk at all about what kind of scenario planning you might be doing there, if any, or how you'd quantify the risk to the medium term outlook in Sweden? Thanks.

So in Germany, it depends on which competitor you're looking at. Some of the ones that actually have good UI UX, I think there our USP is really that we have a much broader and more relevant product set, which you can actually trade the real stocks on the real venues where they're primarily listed. BUT WHEN IT COMES TO WHERE THE VAST MAJORITY OF THE MONEY IS SITTING, WHICH IS INCUMBENT BANKS AND SOME OF THESE NEO BROKERS THAT AREN'T SO NEO ANYMORE THAT WERE LAUNCHED SOME 10, 15 YEARS AGO, THERE ARE ABSOLUTE ADVANTAGES IS UI, UX. I THINK IT'S BEEN KIND OF REVEALING AND SOMETIMES STUNNING TO SEE THE REACTION OF GERMANS THAT WE'RE INTERACTING WITH WHEN WE JUST Thank you very much. the wealth of information in terms of both static and dynamic market data that we provide. But we have to find our exact position and that's going to be an iterative game when we launch. But now, like I say, we are live testing. We have our local staff as customers, which is great for us because we can test the code and great for them because they can see really how kick-ass our product is. But I think I'm confident in our ability to compete. When it comes to the ISK, I mean, yes, there is a risk, and it's more, I would say, the fact of Nordnet always wanting to stand on the side of customers, and the different political parties are all vying to to remake the ISK. And that in itself, regardless of the intention, is a bad thing because for an investment account, visibility and predictability is key. And that's really what we don't like seeing. And we're starting a number of actually PR event stunts around this because we want to highlight how... you know, how risky it is to mess with something that's seen as a golden standard in Europe and a way to engage retail investors. When it comes to us, I mean, obviously it's a net negative. It's not a big one. Customers would shift their trading to the regular trading accounts, which are not tax shielded to the endowment wrappers. And you have to remember that in Finland, Denmark and Sweden, the ISK equivalent accounts are nowhere near as good as the one in Sweden. And some of the countries, they're fairly new as well. And so we had a thriving business in those countries even before their version of the ISK existed. But of course, all the things equal, we would like the ISK to remain simple or remain attractive in Sweden for the benefit of our Swedish customer base. And as a final point, I'd just like to reiterate that our geographic diversity, as always, is our strength here. And so Sweden is around a quarter of our revenue, but it's the smallest customer base. And we have a strong business, and we have four legs to stand on, soon five with Germany. And so that's also supported to the story, regardless of the tax implications for a particular trading account.

Great. Very helpful. Thanks a lot.

Thanks. Thank you, Zach. Next question comes from Christoph Krulish at Barenburg.

Hi, good morning. I just wanted to follow up on the Germany timeline. Do you see any risks that you might miss out on a big first wave of pension accounts openings by not being fully launched yet by the 1st of January? And then, yeah, on the timing of that full launch in H1, can you provide any more granularity if you should expect it rather earlier in H1 or rather towards the end of H1? Thank you.

No, we're not going to miss that. We're going to make sure that we're operational and live on the day that the new German pension account opens. We will be fully launched in retrospect. We won't be spinning up on full marketing spend. Until that, we're going to have that coincide with the pension launch as opposed to doing it in December when people are thinking about the kids' Christmas lists and other things to spend money on. So, I mean, the battle will not be determined in the first year. This is a long-term effort to really stake out our claim to the largest savings market in Europe as Germany grows its equity culture. We want to be part of that long-term growth in Germany, and I think it's more important to get that right over time than the exact timing of the launch marketing in H1.

And just to be fully clear, so when exactly will that platform in Germany be open to all potential clients? Because if I understand it correctly, in H2 is only for, let's say, selected?

No, no, it'll be open for everybody in H2, the tail end of H2. All right, very clear. We're just doing it phased. It's going to be friends and family VIP and then a full open, but not a full launch in terms of marketing spend. Okay.

Very clear. Thank you. Thanks.

Great. Now we have a written question from Alex Bowers at KBW. He's asking what drove the decrease in deposits in Norway quarter on quarter in Q2 follows larger than the other markets? What are the expectations for deposit levels for H2?

So deposits is one of those things that's really hard to forecast. It's sort of the side effect of how customers are engaging with the market. We saw actually The fall shouldn't be interpreted as such because we had a kind of large increase in Norwegian deposits towards the tail end of Q1 as customers in Norway took profits from successful positioning both within energy and within shipping. And so deposits in Norway rose by 7.2 billion in Q1 and then to your point dropped to 2.6 billion in Q2. But that's because they net bought more in Q2 than they net sold in Q1. So you could say that that cash is fully redeployed, but partially offset them by dividends and other net savings. And so in terms of redeployment, they're not just simply buying back what they sold, but they're doing selective... ROTATION WITHIN ENERGY AND A BROAD NET SELLING OF SHIPPING. AND SO THERE ARE ALSO SOME ADVANTAGING TRADES. SO I'M NOT CONCERNED AT ALL. I THINK IT'S MORE OF A FACT OF WHERE THE QUARTER CUTOFF WAS. AND JUST THAT WE HAD A LARGE INFLUX OF NORWEGIAN CROWNS AND CASH TOWARDS THE TAIL END OF Q1. THAT MAKES US LOOK LIKE MORE THAN IT IS.

Okay, great. That was the last question of the call.

So thanks everyone for listening.

If you have any questions, you can find answers on our corporate website known at ab.com or contact me. Now have a great day.

That's great. Have a great summer, everybody. Thank you so much.

Thank you.