Hello, 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 of the group for the first quarter of 2025, which were published yesterday and are available on the IR section of our website, and then take, as usual, any questions that you might have. I will first pass the floor to our CFO, Nick Koskoletos, for some general comments before we present financial performance in more detail. Nick?
Yeah, thank you, Stelios. Good afternoon and good morning to all. Based on the market performance and our financial results in the first quarter of the year, 2025 is shaping up so far to be yet another strong year of financial results and strategic progress for our group. In the first quarter of 2025, what we've seen, we've seen the average daily traded value increasing by 28% to almost EUR 190 million, and that is compared to the EUR 148 million in the first quarter of 2024. This is the highest level of trading activity since 2009. March was particularly strong at EUR 260 million, but we see that the Q1 strength is holding both in April and in May. That is almost over, where average daily traded value is hovering around the EUR 180 million mark.
The average market cap of the Athens Stock Exchange constituents is 18% higher compared to the first quarter of last year. That's at EUR 112 billion. Breaking that down, we see that obviously listed banks market cap, particularly strong, increased by 39% to EUR 32 billion, while the market cap of the rest of the market increased by 11% to EUR 80 billion. At the end of the last day of the quarter, March 31, the capitalization of the market was at EUR 118 billion. It is worth noting that this is the highest market cap we've witnessed since before, actually, the Great Financial Crisis. Overall, just much like value traded, the size of the market continues to expand, and obviously this supports traded value, supported and further pushed by the continued increase in trading velocity.
In the first quarter, we witnessed an over 35% improvement in trading velocity versus the previous five-year period, marking the highest percentage change in the EU space. We are now fourth in the EU space, whereas in terms of velocity ranking, whereas a few years back we were at the middle of the pack. Interest in our market is picking up. In 2025, we had a first quarter and another one so far. The second of the group showed a notable increase than 68% of the revenue overall comes from transactional and market activity. Operating expenses are more muted. That's 6% growth compared to the previous year, with the main driver being the 8% increase in our personnel.
Last but not least, I just wanted to make a point here of saying that we're focused on continuing to expand our operating margins, and this is indicative of the operating leverage embedded in our business model. We reported a 54% EBITDA margin in the first quarter of 2025, which is almost five percentage points wider than last year. Let me stop here and give Stelios the floor to go through our performance in more detail and then take any questions you might have. Stelios?
Thank you, Nick. Let's begin our financial performance, our overview in a little bit more detail. The consolidated turnover of the group in the first quarter of 2025 was EUR 15.8 million compared to EUR 13.5 million in the first quarter of last year. That's a 17%. If we look at the lines, the top line, revenue from trading represents 19% of total consolidated turnover in the first quarter of the year. It was up 26% to EUR 3 million compared to EUR 2.4 million last year. The revenue comparison is like for like. Since on January 1, 2024, a new pricing scheme went into effect in the cash market. As you might recall, we implemented, we introduced trading bands, bundles with minimum guaranteed charges, which members have to pre-purchase six months. The fee is, and then the fee is further differentiated depending on the market phase.
The higher the band selected, obviously the lower the fee. Our effective fee in the first quarter of 2025 was 1.08 basis points compared to 1.02 basis points in the first quarter of last year, and the 1.25 basis point flat rate in effect until December 31, 2023. Revenue from post-trading made up 49% of total turnover and amounted to EUR 7.7 million versus EUR 6 million in the first quarter of last year, up 29% again on the back of higher trading activity in the cash market. A note here on the derivatives market, as far as revenue from derivatives market is concerned, both trading and post-trading in the first quarter of this year, trading activity measured by the average daily number of contracts increased by 12%, 48,000 compared to 43,000 in the first quarter of last year.
Revenue from derivatives was down 3.2%, with the average revenue per contract flat, essentially at EUR 0.242 per contract compared to EUR 0.241 per contract. Our fees for derivatives contract depend on the type of investor, the product being traded, and the prices of the underlying securities. As a result, the 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 2025 was EUR 614,000 compared to EUR 634,000 last year, corresponding to 5.7% of total trading and post-trading revenue. Moving on to listing, that line makes up 10.5% of total turnover. This line includes the quarterly subscription fees paid by listed companies, fee and rights issues, IPOs, and other services to issuers. That amounted to EUR 1.66 million this year, up 1.5% compared with the first quarter of 2024.
Revenue from data services makes up 7% of total turnover and includes the fees that we collect from data vendors for the provision of Athens Exchange market data. Our fees depend essentially on the number of data terminals to which these data vendors disseminate our market data to. In the first quarter of this year, they were up by 7%. We continue to gradually increase our data fee prices, and this is reflected in our revenue. Revenue from IT, digital, and other services makes up 13% of total turnover and includes revenue from digital services, infrastructure, and technological solutions to the Hellenic Energy Exchange. It should be noted here that our consulting contract with Boursa Kuwait ended at the end of last year, 2024. This category includes revenue from services such as EBV, electronic building, Axia Line, Axia E-Serve, meaning colocation and some other services.
Revenue from IT and digital services was down 8%, EUR 2 million compared to EUR 2.2 million last year. Finally, as far as the top line is concerned, revenue from ancillary services makes up 2.5% of total turnover. In the first quarter of 2025, it is EUR 400,000, down 21%. Ancillary services include revenue from sports services to the energy exchange, rents, and some other. Moving on to the expense side, total operating expenses increased by 6% in the first quarter of this year at EUR 7 million compared to EUR 6.6 million last year. If we break that down, we can see that personnel costs are up 8% in the first quarter of this year at EUR 4.3 million compared to EUR 4 million last year, while all other expenses were up 2.4% at EUR 2.6 million.
The key drivers there were third-party remuneration, which was down 11% due to reduced consultant fees, maintenance and IT support costs, which were down 15%, while on the other hand, we had taxes which were up 20% and some utility expenses which were up 13%, as you can guess, mainly on increasing electricity costs. Personnel remuneration and expenses account for 62% of total operating expenses compared to 61% in the first quarter of last year. Group headcount at the end of March this year was 249 compared to 252 at the end of the first quarter of last year. Turning now to profitability, our earnings for interest and taxes of the group increased by 32% to EUR 7.1 million compared to EUR 5.3 million in the first quarter of last year.
As a result, the net after-tax earnings of the group amounted to EUR 5.7 million, up 31.5% compared to the first quarter of 2024. Very briefly touching on our margins, and Nick already mentioned it, but all of our margins improved this quarter compared to last year. EBITDA margin up 4.8 percentage points, EBIT margin up 5.4 percentage points, and our net profit margin is up 4.1 percentage points at 37.8%. Lastly, on the balance sheet, the cash and cash equivalents of the group on March 31, 2025, are EUR 77.4 million compared to EUR 68.6 million at the end of 2024. Finally, as a reminder, the proposed dividend for 2024, which will be brought to the annual general meeting on 12th June, is EUR 0.29. That proposed dividend is 21% higher than last year's and is very much in line with our bottom line performance.
Our proposed, the proposed payout is 101% of 2024 earnings. If approved by the AGM, the dividend will be paid to shareholders on June 30th. This concludes our comments. We would now like to open up this conference, this video conference, to any questions that you might have. As you probably know, you have to raise your hand and we'll give you the floor in turn. Okay. We seem to have one raised hand from Mr. Miguel Diaz. Miguel, please ask your question.
Hi, hello. Can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Okay. Yeah, congratulations on strong results and thanks for taking my question. Just two from my side. First, it's regarding costs. It seems like there was some acceleration in personnel costs that implied a rather large annualized increase. Why was that? Could you give us some color on the dynamics that played out in the first quarter? Where do you think that you will land at the end of the year in personnel expenses in particular and total costs in general? The second one would be about MSCI. The country classification is coming up in June. Yeah, I feel like I need to ask the habituary question. How do you feel about the odds of Greece being put on the watchlist? That would be all from me. Thanks.
Okay. Hi, Miguel. Thank you for the questions. I'm not sure I understood the first question in terms of the annualization that you mentioned for the personnel. Let me just give you a few numbers, and then if I haven't covered you, you can probably clarify. Part of our variable compensation is tied to operating performance. The higher the operating EBIT, for that matter, the stronger that particular line performs, that kind of drags personnel remuneration as well. We do not expect the overall OpEx to be in the double-digit area. If anything, we're talking about mid-single digit or a little bit higher than that, and maybe that gets pushed towards the double-digit area. I do not believe that we will be hitting double-digit OpEx growth per se. That's with regards to OpEx.
Now, on the MSCI question, yeah, we have that coming up in June. You know how the raters work. From our part, everything that we could do and is within our control with regards to market accessibility, all those items have been tackled and streamlined. That's something that MSCI, there was a came out with their assessment last year saying that they just want to see how that plays out, but they do see all the improvements. We're happy with that. Aside from that, it's just a matter of having the size at whatever cutoff they deem appropriate. There's nothing more we can say about that. It has to do only compared to the components with regards to the market size. It is a scenario, given the fact that we have S&P, FTSE, as of late, stocks as well that has placed on their watchlist.
I wouldn't say that we have improbable odds for us to be placed on the watchlist. However, again, it's something that is not in our control. Do you want to clarify the question on the annualization that you mentioned on the personnel? Because I'm afraid I didn't get that part.
I believe I'm muted, Miguel. Please.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yeah.
Yeah, okay. No, it's just that usually the first quarter is a little bit more not so heavy on costs. Usually you see a drop from fourth quarter to first quarter of subsequent year, right? The bar for the first quarter or for the second quarter, actually, it's rather lower than for the first quarter. In the first quarter, you see like 8% increase in OpEx, right? That was my question. If in coming quarters, you would see the increase compounding even further because the base was lower on the second quarter of 2024. That was it. I think you've.
Okay, but on a quarter-by-quarter basis, that might be it. In the second quarter of last year, there was a reduced base. I think as we're talking about last year, it came out to pretty much what we were talking about, that higher single-digit figure. I think it's pretty much what's going to be the case this year as well.
Okay, okay. We can take these increases as sort of like run rate for the whole year. Okay. Cool. Thank you so much.
We have a, Nick, we have a written question, so I will read it out. It is from Emmanuel Arvanitis. The question is, what fees would you expect from the banks' mergers in 2025, and how should we treat them in terms of revenues? That is the question.
Okay Okay. Yeah, so we have these corporate acts, effectively these new IPOs of the bank companies that are subsidiaries of the holding companies from three banks. This is something that their board of directors have decided. There's obviously Alpha, Eurobank, and Piraeus for that matter. These are IPOs, and these should be treated as such. We expect increased revenues from that activity. If you just apply the fee schedule that we have for both the exchange and the CSD, I can give you a rough number, close to EUR 10 million, but that is very dependent on what the market capitalization of these banks will be at the time of these IPOs. The appropriation of that revenue, because their IPOs will be over a five-year period.
We don't seem to have any other questions. I don't know, Nick, do you have any final comments?
No.
Otherwise, we can wrap this up. All right. In that case, thank you all for participating at this call. We will be happy to speak with you in private if you have any questions later on. Thanks again, and you may all now disconnect.
Okay. Thank you all.