Hello, and welcome to the flatexDEGIRO Quarter Three Earnings Call. My name is Caroline, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note, this call is being recorded, and for the duration of the call, your lines will be on listen-only mode. However, you'll have an opportunity to ask questions at the end of the call. This can be done by pressing star one on your telephone keypad to register your questions. If you require assistance at any point, please press star zero, and you'll be connected to an operator. I will now hand over the call to your host, Mr. Frank Niehage, the CEO of flatexDEGIRO, to begin today's conference. Thank you.
Yeah, good morning, everyone from Frankfurt to our Q3 earnings call. Pleasure to be here with Dr. Benon Janos, our CFO, as well as Achim Schreck, our head of IR. Like always, I'm happy to do the introduction and share with you some highlights of last quarter, and then obviously I hand over to the CFO to run you through much more details. So, as we've promised in our last call, we've managed our cost. We saw in the H1 of this year a lot of one-offs, and we promised to manage our marketing spend. And we are quite happy that a client growth with reduction of marketing spend is possible and that management is on top of things.
We're also very happy to benefit from increase of interest rates due to our setup as a full-fledged bank. And obviously, you know, in very challenging times, be it the geopolitical situation, not only here in Europe, but also in the Middle East, and as well as with high inflation and interest rates. We distinguish ourselves from many traditional brokers who only enjoy a brokerage license and cannot run a fully collateralized credit book like we do, as well as due to our treasury policy in the past last years, we never invested a huge amount of our money into fixed income products. So today we enjoy 4% at the central bank daily liquidity, no risk with a huge amount of money.
So this obviously helps us to compensate lower trading activities, which is an industry-wide phenomenon. We also had an IT integration, I would say, the biggest in the history of DEGIRO, and that happened last week without any serious noise. So our IT system is very robust and performing very well, like always. So all in all, we are quite happy with the Q3 numbers. We are back in the forecasted margin, and we will continue like that for the rest of the year. So all in all, for us, a good quarter in that environment. Obviously, with our commercial activities, which we started after BaFin cleared our credit risk mitigation situation positively, we will now enlarge the credit book.
We also increased interest rates at flatex for that credit product because we didn't follow the interest hikes of the ECB over the last 12 months. Our competitor analysis showed us that we were still quite low, so we used that opportunity to increase, and we will do the same at DEGIRO with effect of first of January. So our interest income should increase by enlarging the credit book on one hand side and by an increase in interest rates. That's all for the moment with respect to the highlights. Now I'm happy to hand over to Benon, and he will run you through more details.
Apologize for the inconvenience, guys. We'll be connecting the call shortly. Thank you.
Yeah, good morning. This is Benon Janos. We lost the line for a second. Thank you for your patience. I have the pleasure of walking you through the details. I also have a cold, so I apologize in advance for my husky voice. Let's start with the commercial performance. Gross customer growth in the third quarter remains healthy, despite significantly lower marketing spending compared to the first half of the year. I will come to this in a moment. With 77,000 additions, we were able to gain a few thousand more customers compared to the second quarter. Compared to a year ago, we had saw a slowdown in growth of 17%, which is mainly attributable to the lackluster attractiveness of equity investments caused by a higher interest rate environment and general household income pressures.
With a 4% deposit rate at the ECB, the Euro currency area within the European Union trades effectively at a theoretical risk-free PE ratio of as low as 25x. The assets under custody remain steady at EUR 47 billion, almost unchanged to the second quarter and up 27% year-on-year. It is good to see our clients continuously growing their wealth base. At EUR 13.8 million, the number of settled transactions in the third quarter was relatively stable, albeit on low levels. While Q1 saw the usual Q1 peak of EUR 16.3 million, Q4 of 2022, as well as Q2 and Q3 of 2023, were in the EUR 13-EUR 14 million range. Let's now have a look at our customer growth and retention metrics for the first nine months.
With 263,000, we added more than 250,000 new clients on growth level in the first nine months. We subtract a churn rate of 1.7% or 32,000 clients, and arrive at a net new customer account number of 231,000 clients. This is very roughly split between our core and growth markets, with a small contribution from research markets. Compared to our listed peers that provide the numbers, we grew year- to- date with 9.6% or 1.8 x the net customer account growth of our peer average. In the third quarter, we were able to reduce our customer acquisition cost to EUR 57 per gross new client.
We can currently see clearly more banks on the buy, the brokerage advertisement industry, and can hence reduce marketing spend while continuing to attract customers onto our platform. Our Assets under Custody portfolio at the end of the third quarter of EUR 47 billion is comprised of EUR 33.7 billion in securities and EUR 3.3 billion in cash. As you can see from the chart, the cash position has been relatively stable over the past five quarters, despite a violent interest rate hike move from -0.5% to +4% in the euro area interest rates during that time period. We continue to pay out 0% interest rate on overnight deposits and have currently no plans to change that. Our ratio of cash to securities has moved down a bit over the last quarter.
On the next page, I would like to give you an overview on the net cash inflows onto our platform. In the nine months of the year, a gross of EUR 8.6 billion of cash flowed into our bank. At the same time, we saw gross outflows of EUR 4.6 billion, which nets into a total of EUR 3.9 billion of inflows. The money was completely reinvested into securities, leaving minor changes in the total margin loan volume or cash position under custody at the end of September, compared to the beginning of the year. The trading activity, as our CEO already alluded to, remains somewhat subdued, and is in line with European peers. We currently do not forecast any major change on this metric, given the current situation.
While the inflationary pressures have eased a little, other factors, such as, for example, the geopolitical situation, remains strained. Let us take a closer look at the revenue split. Adjusted revenues in Q3 were up 12% sequentially and up 29% year-on-year to a total of EUR 101 million. This is the highest number since Q1 of 2022, which to highlight, was not only a seasonally strong first quarter, but also the last quarter that wasn't yet fully affected by the war in the Ukraine and interest rate hike expectations. Commission income in the quarter was the second highest of the past 12 months. The monetization of the platform and selective price increases led to a sequential growth of +12%, which I will break down in the following slide.
Interest income recorded another record quarter, growing 164% year-on-year. Interest income, which until the middle of last year was mainly composed of our margin loan profits, has now been increasingly backed by additional income derived directly or indirectly from that part of our customer deposits that are not recycled internally into securities margin loans. The majority of these deposits are held as overnight deposits with the Bundesbank, European Central Bank, respectively, earning currently a 4% annual deposit rate. Commission per transaction is up to EUR 4.26. with a relatively stable share of high revenue transaction of 73%. We have seen a meaningful move up from the EUR 3.99 per transaction in the second quarter. The main effect was selected price adjustments at the brand, DEGIRO.
Adjusted EBITDA of EUR 41 million was the highest quarterly number for the last 2.5 years, since the first quarter of 2021, when we experienced the meme stock hype and flatexDEGIRO , executed 34 million transactions in that single quarter alone. Adjusted EBITDA in the quarter is up 70% year-on-year and up 21% sequentially. We only adjust for the effect of long-term variable compensation. Also, the total number of outstanding stock appreciation rights has been meaningfully reduced by over 50% by the end of September 2023. The absolute delta between adjusted and reported numbers will be meaningfully smaller going forward on a like-for-like basis. Let me make a general comment on the cost side.
The accomplishment that the regulator allowed us to reapply credit risk mitigation techniques at our brand, DEGIRO, for the margin loan business, was driven indirectly also by focusing on the remediation of all findings related to the 2022 audit, and came along a stringent focus to grow the regulatory employee base at our firm. Lifting general HR costs, one of the biggest cost increases year-on-year, which we compensated by reducing our marketing spend. We have also had one-off cost effects in H1, which we already communicated to the market during the H1 call. The third quarter saw also downward non-cash valuation adjustments of under EUR 10 million in our small existing treasury portfolio. This is in effect, a corresponding counterposition within our real estate equity fund participation to a massive increase in interest income from our other interest investors.
We have communicated on September 29 that the regulator allowed us to reapply credit risk mitigation techniques at our brand, DEGIRO, for the margin loan business, lifting our June CET1 ratio to approximately 27% on a theoretical basis. We would like to repeat what we said during the call on September 29, some three weeks ago. The reapplication provides our group with a capital structure that opens up further opportunities, which we will evaluate and communicate to the capital market at the appropriate time, following completion of the ongoing financial planning process and needed, and the needed corresponding coordination with the supervisory board and the regulator. Thank you very much for your attention.
With this, we would now very much like to open the line for questions, please.
Thank you. If you would like to ask a question, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. We will take the first question from line, Marius Fuhrberg. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I've actually got three of them. The first one is on your guidance. You reiterated your guidance of sales of, like, approximately EUR 380 million, and then adjusted EBITDA margin of more than 40%. Well, after nine months, you already got EUR 290 million in revenues. And, to my understanding or what I think, is that trading behavior has found its bottom in Q2 and Q3. So, an improvement should be expected in Q4. And with this said, you should be able to generate, well above, EUR 100 million of revenues in Q4. And, against this backdrop, your guidance appears still a bit too low. So what are your thoughts on this, and why haven't you changed your guidance?
The second one is, with regards to the use of funding. With the credit risk mitigation, you appear overcapitalized. And what are your plans on using this cash? Any thoughts with regards to share buybacks or dividends? And the third one, could you give us a little bit more color on those valuation adjustments of around EUR 10 million that you just mentioned? How big is that portfolio in total, and what assets are included in there? And should we expect more, yeah, like, valuation adjustments to come from this?
Thank you very much for your questions.
Yes, with respect to the guidance, I like to highlight that we follow under promise, over delivery and, with the geopolitical situation at the moment, both in Europe and the Middle East, as well as, you know, trading behavior is industry-wide, still low. We rather want to stay on the safe side and, don't want to increase our guidance. So we, we are happy that we maintain the guidance in those challenging times, but we have no plan to change it at this point in time. Second, with respect to capital allocation. We always said that after we cleared the Credit Risk Mitigation situation, our capital buffer went up, exceeding EUR 100 million, which is great.
So for us, the next step is now talk to our regulator, because as you know, for certain capital measures, be it, share buybacks or dividends, we would wanna talk to the regulator and would need approval. So that process has been started. And then obviously we need to have shareholders approval on those measures, provided the regulator approves it prior to that. So let us do our homework and as soon as we have a clear view on that, we are happy to come back and share with the capital market and our shareholders the results. With respect to valuation, I'm happy to give back to Benon.
Yes. Thank you very much, Frank. Maybe to add on the guidance question, we have a guidance on both the top and bottom line. And, it's also fair to say that some of the costs that we have seen this year were not of our expectations. So, currently we focus on that side to make sure to cover all aspects of our guidance. On the valuation adjustments, maybe it's helpful to give you a full picture on that in order to be transparent about what we have done. So within our treasury department, we have currently four investments totaling a bit more than EUR 100 million.
For reference, they are all listed in note 14 on page 130 in our 2022 annual report, under financial instruments, and in a bit less detail in the 2023 half-yearly report in those days. Funds that invest in residential real estate in Germany, in the mid-range rental price segment. Number two, at almost EUR 25 million, is Fokus Wohnen Deutschland, a German retail residential portfolio fund with a focus on ESG. There are also two non-real estate fund investments within the treasury portfolio, namely a EUR 16 million investment into an infrastructure fund that invests in economic infrastructure products in Europe, called Fidelio Infrastructure Debt Fund. And a small EUR 3.5 million investment into a football finance fund.
The football fund focuses on the acquisition of individual receivables, as well as lending to football companies, one of our legacy activities many years ago. This fund does not reinvest and will run down to zero over the coming quarters. The first two engagements, the real estate engagements, were valued at the end of Q2 at a total value of approximately 60 + 25 or EUR 85 million. They represent, in total, 2.5% of our EUR 3.5 billion in invested assets. As stated on multiple occasions, by far the largest position is cash with central banks, followed by margin loans to our customers. Now, these two diversified German real estate funds experienced a non-cash markdown by the underlying independent valuation agent of under EUR 10 million.
Those valuation markdowns were triggered by the rise in interest rates, and were simply passed on to our profit and loss statement, as they are all measured at fair value to profit or loss. The underlying properties are healthy, and currently experience rent increases and historically low vacancy rates. While we cannot exclude further valuation adjustments to the German diversified residential real estate portfolio by the independent valuation agent, based on the estimate of the fund management company, we also believe the majority of the adjustments, the majority of the adjustments to the new interest rate levels has now been made. For full completeness, we also carry a legacy credit engagement that is not a treasury investment, but originated from the credit department during the times we were engaged in those businesses a few years ago.
It is also measured at Fair Value through P&L and valued as of the H1 , at approximately EUR 32 million. As of today, we do not expect any negative changes to this valuation. With that detailed overview, we have given you a complete overview of the treasury fund investment and our real estate exposure. I hope this gives you a bit more clarity on what happened. I mean, in effect, the rise in interest rates is something where we benefited from on many fronts. This is one area from old existing investments on a smaller scale, that now we're readjusted to the new world.
Yeah, thank you very much for the transparency.
Okay, we will take the next question from line, Christoph Greulich from Berenberg. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, Frank and Benon. A few questions also from my side. I would like to start with a few follow-ups on this EUR 10 million negative impact. So basically just to clarify, excluding that impact, the adjusted EBITDA for the quarter would have been EUR 51 million. That would be the first one. Then secondly, the numbers you've just given about the total value of the remaining investments, this is before the markdown. So basically, what is left on the balance sheet should be about EUR 10 million lower as of today, if I understood it correctly. And then I was wondering, it looks to me you've included a negative impact within the cost of goods sold.
And if I would take it out again, that would mean the cost of goods sold in Q3 would have been only about EUR 12 million, so only about 12% of sales. So yeah, maybe just a bit of clarification around that.
Okay. Very happy to do that. So on the EUR 10 million impact, we rounded to EUR 10 million. It's been somewhat below EUR 10 million, but in general, you are absolutely right that if we would not have had this adjustment, the number will be up slightly, slightly below EUR 10 million. So growing from EUR 41 million to the very high EUR 40s million, given the impact in the third quarter. So I guess, if I'm not mistaken, this would cover both of your questions, the first and the second question. The values of the investments given in the H1 report will hence be reduced by that number, going forward, and the full details will be released then in the 2023 annual report.
As we do not expect any major new changes in the third quarter, this is gonna be give or take, roughly the number where you will see a markdown in the financial instrument. Yes.
Yeah, and the last one was on the cost of goods sold. They look quite low to me in Q3. If I take out this, let's say, yeah, slightly below EUR 10 million.
I mean, the biggest change to our business model over the last years has now been the revival of interest rates. And interest rates have this benefit that they really don't cost us too much. So, the mix of our total revenues is shifting from, you know, very high commission and lower interest to a more balanced view. And that brings our cost of goods sold, as the cost of goods sold are mainly attributable to the commission income line.
That means we can assume that going forward, that the ratio of cost of goods sold to sales should be somewhere around 12% on a sustainable basis?
I mean, the number fluctuates a bit depending on which products we sell. Let's not be mathematically too precise here, but certainly it should be lower than what we have seen in the past. Yes.
Okay. No, that's very helpful. Thanks for that. I also wanted to quickly check on what you said regarding you had a slide, I think it was slide seven, on the cash inflows and cash outflows. And I was wondering, regarding the cash outflows, have you seen any trends over the last few quarters and or maybe last few months that you see that number increasing, the people start increasing the shift cash away from flatexDEGIRO to other accounts where they can earn some interest on their cash deposits?
We have seen no meaningful trend of that. Net cash is coming into our platform. I made a comment in my presentation that if you, if you are very focused on the details, the ratio of securities to cash has changed slightly. So, our clients tend to invest more on average than they did in the past into securities. Maybe that's something that can be noticed, but in terms of cash in or outflows, there is nothing we can see with that regard. Our estimate is that, I mean, we are an online broker, and clients who would like to earn fixed income type interest revenues typically would have an account somewhere else, where they allocate part of their money to fixed income slash, you know, overnight term money or something like that.
Okay. Yeah, then just a last one from my side. You mentioned on the or in the presentation also that after the margin loan issue could be resolved, that now there's an increased focus again on commercial topics. So you mentioned the interest rate changes on margin loans and, yeah, giving more DEGIRO customers access to those products. I mean, this seems to be initiatives that are very close to implementation. So I was wondering, looking a bit beyond those very near-term, yeah, kind of new initiatives, what are kind of the main priorities for the next 12 months of new initiatives you're working on or potentially new products you're considering to introduce?
Yeah, maybe I can help out here. Obviously, we are trying to improve always the product and services to our existing clients and to new clients. So, we always see whether we can improve the ETP offering in all our countries, which is not yet the case. We are trying to improve offering use options, for instance, for the DEGIRO clients, which is not yet in place. And obviously, we are looking into new products, such as cryptocurrency trading. However, we are still in a crypto winter, so that the fact that we have not started this with respect to time to market is, I think, not an issue. And obviously, there is no signs that tomorrow spring kicks in.
So as long as we are in the crypto winter, we are carefully reviewing those things and, we will make sure when, crypto summer starts, that, we will have an offering for our clients.... We always focus on, no, no change in the risk profile. So if we do something, we will make sure that the custody risk is not with us. We will make sure that we have a top-notch service provider, and we will, we will have straightforward, maybe the five top cryptocurrencies in the offering. So, this is what we are looking at. We're also waiting for the MiCA, the Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation, to come into force, 'cause we believe that's a good framework again, and, this is what will keep us busy in 2024.
Yeah, that's all from my side. Thank you very much.
You're welcome.
Thank you. We will take the next question from the line. Ian White from Autonomous. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Hi, morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from my side, please. First, just to round out on the property discussion. Thanks a lot for the granular detail there. Can you just clarify for me, please, what is the nature of the legacy credit engagement that you talked about? I think you mentioned it was EUR 32 million. What, what is that exposure? And is that the same as the piece that's highlighted in the interim accounts, regarding asset-based financing in loans? I understand all of that is real estate. That, that number was EUR 34.6 million, I think, at 1H. And I just wanna make sure, like, is, is that incremental to what you've set out here? Or are we talking about the same thing there, just with slightly different numbers, please?
So if you could just help me with those final clarifications, that would be great. And then just secondly, maybe could you just say a bit about the breadth of client participation over the first nine months of 2023? You've previously given us some disclosure around percentage of clients who placed at least one trade. Could you give us that number, please? What percentage of clients placed at least one trade in the first nine months of 2023? That would be useful, please. Thanks.
So let's start with the legacy credit engagement. Until about a year and a half ago, we were trying to compensate the negative interest rates of the ECB by very short-term, you know, less than 2 years, less than 3 years, real estate investments. We have run down that book, and as they expire, we basically do not renew any engagement. This is the last one that we have on our books that we are now managing down. We have the best position there. We are sitting alone, and we hope that we will have an answer on that very soon. They are marked at fair value, and you see that currently the investment is still going up, not going down.
We feel comfortable that we will be able to have it off our books over the next quarter, and it will not have any impact on our position. With respect to where it sits on the balance sheet, we reclassified it into a fair value through P&L in the second, in the H1 . I would follow up via email to you, showing you exactly the line item on that, if that's okay with you. The second question was with respect to client activity.
Maybe let me add here, Achim here. Unfortunately, I don't have the quarterly figure now in front of me. I'll follow up and send to all of you. Just looking at the monthly development, it's very comparable to what we've seen in the previous year. So expectation would be that it's also on a quarterly and for the full nine months on a comparable level. Just to remind everyone, last year, the activity rate was around 50% of customers having done at least one trade in the period. So would expect it to be similar to that number.
Okay, thanks.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line. Mengx ian Sun from Deutsche Bank. The line is open now. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my questions. Also, three questions from my side. The first one is on the cost projection. So probably it's, it might be too early to ask, but do you have any view on your cost projection for next year in terms of how much marketing expense you want to spend, and how fast should the personal expense growth, and if possible, also the other operating expense? And the second question is on the trading behaviors as well. So have you observed any difference between the trading behaviors, i.e., trades per customers on the flatex brand and also on the DEGIRO brand? And the last question is on the monetization rate. Do you see any other upsides or any further increase in the monetization rate for next year? That's all from my side, the questions.
Yeah, maybe I can start with the marketing budget. Obviously, we are in budget planning times now, last quarter of the year. Given the geopolitical situation, given the inflation and interest situation, we will be very flexible with respect to marketing spend. And I would say there can be a range of EUR 20 million-EUR 35 million, depending on how markets develop. Obviously, if trading activity kicks in tremendously and new client inflows increase, we are happy to spend more marketing to benefit from the trend. But if the behavior is gonna be as low as it was this year, we will be very careful with spending.
You see that we managed in this quarter and the last quarter a client growth at the same time with reduction of marketing spend. So we will exactly continue like that and adjust going forward with respect to the development of the overall situation. And I find that professional and management is on top of those things. With respect to the other question, I'm happy to give back to Benon.
Yeah. A comment on the personnel side. So we had this high focus on our regulatory employment base, and while we have effectively finished on hiring the people, not all of them have started, and also they have joined throughout the year. So next year we'll likely see a last adjustment year on year, given that some of the people came on board to us throughout this year. When you look at the total headcount at the end of this year, we do not expect a major change next year, unlike the last two or three years. So while personnel costs may go up a little bit, the effect should be smaller than over the last year. On other operational expenses, there are two comments I would like to make.
We've seen truly some real one-offs, and that's not something that we plan to have repeated next year. However, I mean, this is the bucket where inflation adjustments typically come in. Our rents are going up, our energy bills are going up, our travel expenses are not going down. So that is an area that would also see a slight rise given the current economic situation out there. On the trading behavior in general, we usually don't try to be too specific with respect to how our cohorts trade. I mean, at the end, we don't want to incentivize our competitors to increase marketing budgets in one country versus another. But in general, our sort of domestic turf, our the DEGIRO Netherlands business is performing really well.
Our flatex business is great, and it's typically a bit better than the rest of the DEGIRO brand. It's maybe something that I would put on the plate. And with terms to monetization, the last two years saw some selective price increases, mainly at the DEGIRO brand. I think going forward, we still have to play catch-up on the interest side. During the times of the negative interest rates, very simply speaking, our spread between the ECB rate and what our clients paid us for the margin loan was quite high. Call it 4%-4.5%.
That spread today is lower, and while we're not sure whether we can pass on 100% of that relative value from two years ago, we will have another round of interest rate increases for both brands, which will be a positive contributor to the 2024 interest income on margin loans compared to this year. We currently have no major plans to change pricing on the commission for the major brands.
Yeah, maybe allow me to add one more information and to be very clear, management takes cost management very serious. We are on top of things, and with respect to FTE growth, we are not planning to hire more people. So we strongly believe now the total amount of FTEs is enough and this will not increase.
Thank you very much. Just one clarification on your marketing budget. So you said the budget should be around EUR 20-EUR 35, depends on the trading activity. So I should understand the EUR 35 million is the upper limit, so we should not expect the marketing expense should exceed that level?
Exactly right.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line, Andrew Lowe from Citi. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Sorry, I confess, I thought I'd canceled my question because it had largely been answered. But it was just on the past rationale for holding funds in the real estate funds in the treasury management book. And then could you just also clarify your sort of risk management strategy within that book going forward? It sounds like you're dialing down the risk.
Would you be so kind to repeat the first question? I think I didn't get that right.
Apologies. It was just on the past rationale for holding real estate funds in your treasury book.
Okay.
But I think you answered that with it was a low interest rate environment. And then just comment on the sort of future risk management policy in that book going forward. Thank you.
Okay. So I do answer the question once again. I mean, this is from a time where we had to pay several million EUR per year to the European Central Bank for keeping our money there. That has changed now, of course, but back in those days, we did very small engagements compared to our total investment size in other areas, and this is our effort back then, on a short-term basis, to at least generate some interest income. Going forward, I mean, we have very clearly communicated that with respect to a credit business, we have stopped all credit activities and focused entirely on the margin loans. So this is something that you can expect from the risk management side. We will, as of today, not engage into new credit engagements outside of that.
The investments that we have in the treasury department are investments that were equally put into effect back then, and they deliver a solid cash flow, and we have frankly, no, no major plans to change them. And when interest rates peak out or, or go down a little bit, we will see the reversing effect over the next two years, that the valuation agents will simply mark them up, while in between nothing changes really operationally. So that, that's how I would probably answer your question.
Thanks.
Thank you. We will take the next question from line. Panos Ellinas from Morgan Stanley. The line is open now, please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Thanks for taking my questions. I would like to ask on the commission per trade, there was an uptick in the quarter, compared to the previous quarter. Obviously, it's driven by a number of factors, but one of them, I presume, is also the mix of the trades and the share of the cash products which more profitable, was around 74%, 73% in July, August, but came down to 71% in September. So I'm just wondering, thinking for the next quarter or for Q4, is this something you continue to see, sort of higher penetration of ETFs, which is lower margins? So how do we think about the commission per trade for Q4? And the second question is around the activity.
Obviously, very strong customer growth in the especially in the growth markets around 70% up year-on-year, but the number of trades in total are down 70% as well. So just wondering, have you seen any sort of different customer dynamics there compared to the core markets, or is it because the early stages of new customers coming on board and investing the portfolio? So anything around that would be helpful. Thank you.
Maybe I can start just with one comment here. As Benon said earlier, over the year, we saw a trend that our customers invested more than before. So, when you look at the cash net inflows, you see a figure over 100% because our clients invested more than the cash, which was net in, and this is a bit of a trend. And then, maybe it's helpful to distinguish, again, revenues per trade include the cash and the interest income and the commission income, obviously per trade does not include the interest income. Maybe there's a misunderstanding. But Benon, happy to hand over to you.
Yeah. So maybe on the first question, the mix of high revenue trades. We don't expect a major change. I mean, it will fluctuate always a little bit, but on the one hand, you have the general trend that people like to invest in ETFs and ETF savings plans, albeit the recent data shows that trend is sort of going down a little bit. At the same time, we are introducing new products in selected markets, which are high revenue products. So over the last months, we introduced exchange-traded products in Italy. We're doing Switzerland. So those isolated small activities help to keep the ratio effectively similar to what it has been historically.
And we will continue to, on an operating level, to introduce new products or to extend products to other countries step by step, as we simply do our normal management of our business. So with respect to the activity, I mean, I did answer it to some extent in the question before. The trading frequency in the core markets tends to be somewhat higher. So, that, that's an observation that you're clearly seeing in the data. And the good thing is that, you know, having such a high number of countries in Europe, we can typically balance any changes in one cohort or in one country with an uplift in another.
In general, we are quite happy to have a robust core market performance, while at the same time we pay into the future of our company to grow the client base in other countries.
Thank you.
Thank you. It appears no further question at this time. I'll hand it back over to your host.
Yeah. Once again, thank you very much for taking the time and looking forward to speak to you personally or see you in person. Wish you a good rest of the week. Thank you so much.
Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect.