Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. I'm Poppy, your conference call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the ATHEX, the Athens Exchange Group Conference Call to present and discuss the first quarter 2023 Financial Results. All participants will be in a listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session.
Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on your telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Nick Koskoletos, CFO, Mr. Stelios Konstantinou, Head of Investor Relations. Gentlemen, you may now proceed.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and good morning to those of you listening to us from the other side of the Atlantic. We would like to present the financial results for the first quarter of 2023, which were published yesterday and are available in the IR section of our website, and then take any questions that you might have. Nick, I pass the floor to you.
Yes, good afternoon and good morning to all. Just a few comments on what has developed over the first quarter . We had average daily traded value increasing by 21%, as you probably know very well, at EUR 113 million per day, and that's up from the EUR 93 million that we had last year. Last year was a typical year of having two halves, a very strong first half, as you remember very well, and a rather weak second half. This year, we started off a lot stronger than last year, and it seems that the market dynamics have maintained their momentum.
The average market cap is also up by 8% compared to last year, and that's predominantly driven by the increase in the value of the banking sector, but the rest of the market has also followed suit by 4.5%. So far, as I mentioned, things have been maintaining their momentum. April was a little bit weaker compared to what we had seen, but May has picked up momentum as well. Year-to-date, average traded value stands ahead of EUR 100 million euros per day.
One of the key highlights that you'll see with regards to our revenue, one, in Q1, we had two more trading days, so that was accretive as well compared to last year. The other element that I wanted to touch upon is with regards to operating expenses, you see that 20% year-over-year delta. However, we need to note here that there was a change in management at the end of the first quarter last year.
We've been focusing on increasing our competitiveness, and bolstering the executive team, and those were developments that took place in the, mostly in the second half of the year. In Q1 of 2023, we actually have the annualized impact of that, so we have a little bit of a base effect. It is not something that should be considered as the run rate for this year. We expect those expenses to come off as the year progresses vis-a-vis last year.
That's why we expect overall operating expenses, as we have talked about the particular line during our previous calls, we expect that to be at a high single-digit figure. With regards to electricity costs, that is also normalizing, and that should be some headwind, or, sorry, some tailwind to our operating expense line, vis-a-vis the headwind that it was last year.
As you know, we proposed EUR 0.15 per share as a dividend, that's just over EUR 9 million a year, EUR 9 million of earnings that we're paying out to shareholders, that it will be approved on June 8th, on our AGM. We also have brought to our shareholders a new buyback program, share buyback program, for up to 10%. We already have 2.5 million shares as treasury stock that we acquired over the previous program.
The shares are either to be canceled or to be given to as a reward to employees for sorry, executive remuneration, or a combination of those two. The board has not made any decision of that as of yet. We do believe that it's a good practice to have as an approval from the AGM, and that is something that we will be bringing to the shareholders on June 8th. I'll leave it at that right now, and then we can pick up anything you might have on during the Q&A. Stelios, I'll pass it on to you.
Thanks, Nick. Let's start with the overview of our first quarter financial performance from the top. The consolidated turnover of the group in the first quarter of this year was EUR 11.7 million, compared to EUR 9.9 million in the first quarter of last year. That's up 18%.
If we look at the breakdown, we see that trading-based revenue, i.e., from trading and post-trading, the first two lines in the P&L, that was up 31% on the back of a 21% increase in ADTV in the market, as Nick mentioned, in the first quarter of this year compared to the same period last year. Market cap-based revenue, i.e., from listings and services to issuers, was up 9% on an 8% increase in the average market capitalization.
Finally, revenue from services, i.e., data services, IT, digital, and some ancillary services that we have, was down 4% in the first quarter. If we look at the revenue lines in a little bit more detail, we see that revenue from trading represents about 20% of total consolidated turnover, in the first quarter of the year, it was up 26% to EUR 2.3 million. Revenue from post-trading made up 46% of total turnover and amounted to EUR 5.4 million, compared to EUR 4.1 million in the 1st quarter of last year.
That's up 33%. With the increase there being due mainly to a 145% increase from settlement, a 27% increase from stock clearing, and a 27% increase from derivatives clearing. Now, the large increase in settlement revenue just mentioned is in turn mostly due to increased fees from OTC transactions, which were up by about EUR 400,000 in the quarter. As far as revenue from the derivatives market is concerned, both trading and post-trading.
In the first quarter of the year, trading activity, measured by the average daily number of contracts, increased by 21% to 53,800 contracts, compared to 33,200 last year. Revenue from derivatives was up 27%, with the average revenue per contract increasing by 2% to EUR 0.219 per contract, compared to EUR 0.215 last year. Our fees, as you know, for derivatives contracts, depend on the type of investor, the product being traded, and the prices of the underlying securities.
As a result, market volumes and our revenue do not always go hand in hand. Lastly, on derivatives, trading and post-trading revenue in the first quarter of the year was EUR 730,000, compared to EUR 580,000. That corresponds to approximately 10% of total trading and post-trading revenue. Moving on, revenue from listings makes up 11% of total turnover. This line includes the quarterly subscription fees paid by listed companies, fees on right issues and IPOs and other services with issuers.
That line amounted to EUR 1.3 million, up 9% compared to the same quarter last year. Revenue from data services makes up 7.5% of total turnover and includes the fees that we collect from data vendors for the provision of our interchange data. The fees that we collect from market data depend essentially on the number of data terminals to which these data vendors distribute average market data to, and in the first quarter of 2023, dropped by 2.2%.
As we've mentioned before, we have been gradually increasing our data feed prices, so this drop is due to an invoice timing. Moving on. Revenue from IT and digital services makes up 13% of total turnover and includes revenue from digital services, infrastructure and technological solutions to the Energy Exchange Group and Boursa Kuwait. This category also includes revenue from services such as electronic book building, AXIAline , and some others.
Revenue from IT and digital services was down 7% to EUR 1.5 million, compared to EUR 1.6 million last year. Lastly, revenue from ancillary services makes up 2% of total turnover, and in the first quarter of the year was up 3%. This category includes revenue from support services to the Energy Exchange, rental income, and some others. Moving on to the expense side. Total operating expenses increased by 19.5% in the first quarter of the year, as previously mentioned, to EUR 5.9 million, compared to EUR 4.9 million last year.
If we break that down, we can see that personnel costs were up 24% in the quarter at EUR 3.3 million, compared to EUR 2.6 million last year, while all other expenses increased by approximately EUR 320,000, i.e., by about 14%. That was mainly due to an increase in consulting fees. We think that increase being due to a timing factor again, and which is expected to normalize in the quarters that will follow. Overall, utility costs are essentially flat, with energy costs starting to normalizing.
In fact, electricity costs were EUR 280,000 in the first quarter of the year, compared to EUR 320,000 in the first quarter of last year, so down 13%. Personnel and remuneration expenses, our largest expense category, accounts for 56% of total operating expenses, compared to 54% in 2022. With headcount at the group at the end of March 2023, at 244, compared to 221 at the end of the first quarter of last year.
Turning now to the bottom line. The earnings before interest and taxes of the group increased by 25.7% to EUR 4.3 million, compared to EUR 3.4 million in the first quarter of last year. We remind you that in the first quarter of last year, we had extraordinary income of EUR 625,000.R esulting from a favorable court judgment concerning the return of tax and penalties that were assessed following the tax audit for fiscal years 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010. And we have appealed to have a further amount of EUR 270,000 returned, and we're waiting the court decision on that.
At the end of the day, the net after-tax earnings of the group amounted to EUR 3.33 million, up 1.9% compared to the first quarter of last year on a reported basis, while on an adjusted basis, earnings after tax, were up 26%. In 2023, as in 2022, the nominal corporate income tax rate was 22%, with the effective tax rate on consolidated earnings in the first quarter of this year coming in at 23.2%, compared to 18.9% in the first quarter of 2022.
On the balance sheet, the cash and cash equivalents of the group on March 31st, 2023, increased to EUR 63.5 million, compared to EUR 60.6 million at the end of 2022, with approximately 24% of the cash, approximately EUR 15.5 million, at the end of March, being kept at the Central Bank, the Bank of Greece. The increases in interest rates by the ECB has eliminated the cost associated with keeping that cash at the central bank, even the negative interest rates that we had up until last summer.
Finally, also on the balance sheet, we have a further EUR 312.6 million that we report as both an asset and a liability. These are third-party cash assets and concern margins that our subsidiary, ATHEXClear, receives from its members in the cash and derivatives markets. This concludes our brief comments on the first quarter performance of the group. We'd like to turn the floor over to you for any questions that you might have.
Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press Star, followed by one on their telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press Star and two. Please use your handset when asking your question for better quality. Anyone who has a question may press Star and one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. The first question comes from the line of Al Alevizakos with AXIA Ventures. Please go ahead.
Hello, thank you very much for the presentation, and well done for the set of results. I've just got a couple of quick questions. The first one is, clearly after the first round of elections last week, we started seeing, like, too much higher, like, ADTV. I wanted to know whether you've seen, in your data, any recent influx of retail participation versus institutionals? Have you seen, like, the actual number of retail accounts increasing to levels not seen, like, in many years? Have you got something quantifiable for us? That's the first question.
The second question: I know that you have already mentioned that there will be the dividend of EUR 0.15 through the AGM, but you also mentioned that it's likely that there would be another buyback or actually to increase the buyback. Do you see at this valuation level, the share buyback as being preferred over dividend for the shareholders? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take the second question first, if I may. When we were planning for the AGM agenda, we had not foreseen such a rapid increase in the share price that we've seen over the last, let's say, eight months or so, because that's something we've been planning ahead. That's one thing. The reason I'm saying this is because when we set up the agenda with the shareholders, it is not something that we want to do and that we will be acting upon the decision right away.
We want to have the opportunity to do so, should market opportunities be such that it is much better for shareholders that we do buy back shares, like we did with the previous program. You know, obviously, there's a wide range, a wide price range that is set up by the AGM. Nevertheless, with the board, a much more specific execution of the share buyback program is actually authorized as we progress, given the authorization.
Just to give you an example, in 2021, we got the AGM approval in May and June, and we started buying back shares in November. Again, the valuation is something that obviously we do look at, but it's a standby tool that we wish to have, and that's something we need, you know, shareholder approval for. It doesn't mean that we will be executing upon it, right away and agnostic to, you know, buying back shares at any price.
I hope that covers your question on that respect. Now, with regards to the retail, that is something that we do over a bi-weekly, so to speak, interim. We're waiting for the month to end, and we'll be having that kind of information available as we assess, and that will be made available to the public as it is with the regular reporting that we have with regards to the retail participation. That's not something that we monitor live on a day-to-day basis.
All right, thank you. Regarding the question on distributions, just to clarify one point. The idea is basically at the AGM to ask for up to 10% buyback. That means up to 6 million shares, right? It means incrementally from what you got right now, it means another 6 million.
No, no. No, no. It means from where we are right now, we're at 2.5 million shares. It basically. Because the, you can have as treasury shares only up to 10%. Basically, right now, our allowance would be 3.5 million more shares.
All right.
Given the fact that we already have two and a half bought back.
Excellent. Thank you very much for the presentation.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question comes from the line of Memis oglu Osman with Ambrosia Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello, many thanks, for your time and the presentation. Just, sorry, I missed it. I just want to clarify. On the cost front, you mentioned that you expect operating expenses to rise by high single digits this year. Is that, is that accurate?
Correct.
is this like the plateau on expenses? Because we all know you've been hiring. After that, ceteris paribus, that's the new operating platform, around 245-250 people. Is that fair to assume?
That is fair to assume, yes.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Once again, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. As a final reminder, to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Ladies and gentlemen, there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the conference over to management for any closing comments. Thank you.
Thank you all for participating at this call. We will be happy to take any questions that you might have in private. Thanks again for participating, and have a great afternoon.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone. Thank you for calling, and have a good afternoon.