Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining today's analyst call with respect to our half-year figures 2021, and not strategy day. This was a misspelling fact. It's great to have you on board. I hope you're all doing well. We'd like to make use of the next 60 minutes to give you further insights to our press release and the preliminaries that we have published this morning. After the presentation, the analysts will have the chance to raise questions, and we are more than happy to answer them. Let's jump into the presentation and to the results of the first half-year. It has been the best half-year ever in our history. We are perfectly in line to deliver what we have promised for this year. We had record numbers for new customers, reaching at the end of June, 1.75 million customers.
If you keep in mind, our guidance for this year was 2-2.2 million clients at the end of the year. We are very well on track to meet this target. The transactions settled were close to 63 million, which is also absolutely in the range of the guidance that we as a management gave to the market, reaching 90-110 million transactions. A significant increase in both the adjusted EBITDA margin, as well as revenues, with revenues of EUR 226 million and an adjusted EBITDA margin of 48%. We'll come to the financials in a second as well. We have managed to continue our outperformance of all major peers in the first half. As already we have achieved in the first quarter and outperformance of the three largest peers in Europe, Avanza, Nordnet, and Fineco.
We also managed again over the whole first half, so also in the second quarter, to reach a great performance. We grew in terms of clients as much as these three peers did together, which actually is evidence for our strategy, which is driven mainly obviously by our great European footprint. Having in mind that the first half year was characterized by still a lot of corporate actions on the group level with the merger of DEGIRO, with the introduction of a new management with DEGIRO, with the implementation of further synergies. We are absolutely satisfied and thankful to our people for this great work that resulted in these record figures in total.
With respect to the major events that we had, as I said, not only the finalization of the merger of DEGIRO and flatex Bank to flatexDEGIRO Bank AG, but also launches of various numbers of products and services, including first and foremost the ETF and savings plans at zero fees. We have improved massively and are continuously improving with respect to ESG. We've been now just recently analyzed and rated and have managed to be rated under the top 10 of our peers with respect to our ESG setup.
With respect to the further products and services, a main point is obviously to mention the introduction of early and late trading all over Europe that we have announced, which will, by the way, go live next Monday to all our 1.7 million clients, as well as the introduction of the European ETP partnerships, which are expected to go live in the third quarter. Another point that we would like to mention is the AGM that we have done successfully, and that also supported us in the voting for the stock split, that should also happen during this quarter. This as an intro. Let's go into facts and figures. I mentioned a rapidly outgrowing structure and strategy. We've managed to grow in the first half year, our client base by more than 40% to 1.75 million clients.
We always said that this is for us with respect to our long-term vision and long-term mission, the first and most important metrics. It is customer growth and it is transaction settled. We know that on the way there will be quarters that will be awesome, there will be quarters that might be weaker, and especially given the business model that we are all having, which depends very much on seasonality. We will show you in a second also the seasonality structures. We truly believe that with an increasing number of clients and a sustainable trading activity over the next five years, we will manage to reach our long-term vision or midterm vision, the Vision 2026.
We'll manage to translate this commercial success in even stronger financial KPIs over the next years. If we have a look on our outgrowth over the last 18 months, you see that in each and every single month of the last 18, we managed to outperform our peers. Again, this is for us the pure evidence that we are going exactly the right direction, that we have implemented and are implementing exactly the right measures to continue this growth path. What we also see is that obviously, certain movements in the market will support us sustainably to outgrow our peers. Especially to mention is that this outperformance has nothing to do with fortune. It has also nothing to do with that we are doing things better or that we are smarter.
It has to do with our clear strategy to be a Pan-European player, and a Pan-European player that has a unique European footprint. That is the reason for our success. Rest assured, we are currently investing also into the future growth. We will continuously invest into our future growth. I've always highlighted that we will not judge our business on a financially quarterly basis. We are having a very clear ambition with respect to our growth story, and this is what we are absolutely going for. The seasonal patterns that I mentioned obviously impact short-term development, and in both the number of trades as well as in number of customer growth. Q2 has always been the weakest quarter. I was quite surprised about the recent weeks when competitors and peers published figures.
There was so much discussion about the weak Q2, where I have to say, this is a seasonal pattern that we are seeing for decades. Now we have just gave you the numbers 2016 to 2019 that show very impressively how significantly weak usually Q2 is. This is why we are absolutely not surprised about the fact that Q2 was weaker than Q1. Q1 is usually the strongest quarter together with Q4, especially, or also given that we have in Q2, especially in Europe, a lot of bank holidays and vacations that result in slower growth, both in terms of clients as well as in transactions. Again, we were absolutely not surprised by the fact and the results. If we were, we were positively surprised about the results of H1, given the recent growth speed and additional expenses that we had over the recent months and quarters.
As I said, the very important point is to translate commercial success, commercial KPIs, also into financial success and financial KPIs. We have reached in H1 2021 our all-time record in EBITDA margin with almost 48%, coming from the recent quarters somewhere around the high 40s, but we never made it to 48%. Yes, we were also here expecting a slightly higher margin, but we're very well aware of the fact that there are one-offs and one-off expenses. As I said, we had a lot of corporate structural changes in the company over the first six months of the year that we have digested. We were discussing to make an adjustment to EBITDA, but we always promised that the adjustment to EBITDA will be very straightforward, will always be only related to the long-term incentive plan and any one time, one-off personnel expenses.
This is why we have not adjusted any other items. I'm happy to explain in detail what other costs were involved during H1 that we don't expect in the future. The first one, and one of the highest impact, was that we have grown the employee base with all in all, roughly 100 more employees over the last six months. This has to do, obviously, with the growth, the massive growth that we have achieved. As you remember, I always say it, per 10,000 clients, we need something around one, two people, additional people. We did in total more than 500,000. 50 x the two people ends up with 100 additional employees. This is what we were expecting and what we were facing.
Thus, these things, these type of costs were not adjusted for because they are sustainable and will continue, but will have a big effect, a big positive effect on the profitability going with the economies of scale. We are continuously also winning the right clients. You all know this discussion about, okay, it's important to win a large number of clients. More important is to win the right quality. If you see what type of clients we have won over the last six months, you see that we are facing exactly and targeting exactly what we are preaching. The first and most interesting point is that we managed to increase winning more and more female savers and investors.
The share increased from 13% to 17%, which is a strong figure for us, especially because it's one of the most underserved demographic in the European market, female savers and investors. Given the fact that 50% of the population, even more, is female, this is something that the market lacks of, and where we will continue to focus on targeting these young professional ladies, the young professional women in a mature profile, that also become more and more financially independent, and are finding themselves in a situation where they have to decide where to invest long-term to end up with us. You see it also with the assets under custody. With EUR 40 billion assets under custody, we have roughly EUR 25,000 per client sitting with us in cash and in securities.
If you compare this to many other brokers, especially the big discussions about neo brokers, you will see that we are carrying 3x, 4x, 5x of what these players are carrying. This is a very important metric with respect to sustainability. The bigger the account sizes, the more sticky the clients are. I usually said that neo brokers are great for us because they create awareness for the market and tend to act as incumbents, sorry, as incubators for the more, let's say, affluent brokerage clients. This is what you have seen also with many of the brokers. I think it was included also within the Robinhood IPO papers that most of the clients, most of the churn is churned with high accounts, with big accounts. This is exactly what happens.
People used to start maybe with these neo brokers, end up to develop themselves, their accounts get bigger and bigger, and then they find themselves in a limited environment, so they have to do this additional step, to go for further products, for further services, and end up then with brokers like flatexDEGIRO. We are happy to continue our path to win clients in the right sector with the right demographic average. This is what you see on the right-hand side. As I said, AUCs of roughly EUR 23,000, annualized trades of 71. 70% of the population that we won was in the sweet spot that we have given to ourselves, 25 to 55. Almost 60% with previous experience in brokerage as well as higher education. This is also what you see, what we have amongst the most named professions. I touched this point.
What expenses did we have that we did not adjust for, but that we actually have digested through the P&L? I started with the operational personnel expenses. Yes, mostly coming from the consolidation. On top of that, where we increased the FTE number by slightly above 100, given the strong growth that we had and that we expect over the future. Additional top hires as well to continue developing the stability, the compliance, the fast execution in our systems and in our growth. This ends also up that we grew in areas like marketing, where we will continue to focus on, given the fact that we are aiming for four, five, six core markets additional to our domestic markets, that we have to play and that we will play over the next six months, very significantly.
The growth was very cost sensitive, so the average personnel expenses did not increase. In general, it's still very moderate at below EUR 40,000 per FTE on average. You see we are growing, but we are not growing with high expensive people. As I always said, especially in the area of service and customer support levels, where costs per se are usually lower than on the high end with IT people or risk people, where we have had only a super moderate growth that is not really reflected in the figures themselves. On top of the personnel expenses, we had some one-off other admin costs, not only coming from the consolidation, but especially from the corporate structural changes that we had in the first half.
All in all, we were at roughly around EUR 3 million in other administrative expenses resulting from mainly the consulting for the merger process that we had between DEGIRO and flatex Bank. As well as to a certain extent, provisions for potential claims coming from the federal court decision with respect to historic changes in pricing, et cetera, which is relatively low. All in all these one-offs were roughly EUR 3 million. On top of that, we spent almost EUR 10 million more in marketing with massive client acquisition cost. We brought it down to less than EUR 35, which I would say show how great our marketing team is operating and that the marketing strategy is absolutely the right way to continue with, and that will support us in the massive growth during the future quarters and half years.
Coming down from more than EUR 100 client acquisition, so savings of more than 60%-70% down to EUR 35 is exactly where we want to go to. Our internal guidance was always below EUR 50. First half with below EUR 35 shows what excellent job the colleagues are doing and where we are heading to. Yes, we will continue this growth, as I said, especially by implementing additional services and products during the next months, as well as increasing marketing campaigns with an ongoing low CAC view in all European countries, especially with the Tradegate introduction now. We will start a big European campaign that will support the growth during the second half. Despite all this high growth investments, we managed to increase the profitability. I think this is something that we have all altogether keep in mind. We are an absolute growth company.
If we would rest on our laurels and would say, "Okay, hey, we don't want to spend any more of that big marketing," saving EUR 17 million in marketing would result in a EUR 0.70 EPS growth, which is absurd, because we have a growth case and not a value case. Those are the things why, again, we will not continue to focus on quarter-by-quarter financials. We have a very clear long-term vision. The long-term vision is driven by customer growth and by customer activity, both on a very moderate and very reasonable expectation. On that way, there will be, in some quarters, higher marketing spends, in other quarters, lower marketing spends. Again, the long-term vision on the EBITDA margin is a 50% plus on the shorter end. On the longer end, it's a 60% plus EBITDA margin expectation.
Last but not least, between EBITDA and the EBT, we had as well increasing depreciation and amortization. This results from, here again, one-off write-offs on intangibles that we don't use anymore and other adjustments that we adjusted via the P&L of in total EUR 2.5 million that are sitting in the D&A that we will not see over the future anymore. Per se, the D&A increased. Obviously, it increased because we had the first time adaption of amortization on identified intangibles out of the flatexDEGIRO Purchase Price Allocation. That kicked in now the first time for full six months, and thus has had also an impact on the P&L results. With respect to the LTI, the long-term incentive provisions that are mainly determining the adjustment of the EBITDA.
The LTIP that is based on a stock appreciation rights program, as you know, is based on stock price development 50% and 50% on the EPS guidance and EPS growth, the expected one that we apply in our valuation models. The growth in this item results obviously out of the growth in the stock price, coming from EUR 62 end of the year, that was used to value the model up to EUR 117 as of June 30th or June 29th. This stock price growth is reflected in the higher provisions, obviously, as well as the changed consensus for 2023 when the plan starts to become exercisable.
Since the plan is depending 50% on the EPS growth, you can see that we have provisions and build the model based on a relatively high EPS expectation, since we are convinced that we are going exactly that way with respect to the EPS. All in all, roughly two-third of the provisions have already been built based on the fair value as of June 30th, as I said, based on a stock price of roughly EUR 117 and the consensus EPS for 2023 of more than EUR 6. We are continuously highly convicted to reach our full year guidance.
If we would just linearly continue as we did in the 1st half, we would end up with respect to number of clients in our guidance at the upper top of the guidance even, and we are very convinced that we will continue the strong growth that will ensure that we will meet both the guidance and number of clients as well as the guidance in number of transactions. We see absolutely no reason why we should change that. It's actually the other way around, given the fact, as I said in the beginning, that Q2 is the weakest quarter, assuming for Q3 and Q4 growth quarter by quarter. We are very convicted and highly convicted that we will continue very successfully in the next half year and reach also all management guidances. As I said, P&L is always a question of what one-offs did we have?
For what did we adjust? What didn't we adjust? What did we digest via the P&L? For us, one of the most important figures is that we generated in half a year more than EUR 80 million of operating cash flow, which is 2x what we have achieved in the first half 2020. Our net cash position increased to EUR 180 million. I think this is also something that a lot of people forget, that we are operationally debt-free. We don't have any debts, any long-term debts, nor any liabilities against banks coming from operational debt. Sorry, from non-operational debt. That we are also very convinced to continue this operating cash flow growth for the next years and next half years. Again, here, if we would double this, we'd end up with something around EUR 170 million. EUR 170 million in one year of operating cash flow.
If you would multiply this with five, so assuming that we would have no growth at all, would end up over the next five years with almost EUR 850 million, EUR 900 million of operating cash flow accumulated. You know very clearly what our ambition is over the next five years, and given the growth that we expect, again, here, we feel highly convicted to reach our accumulated operating cash flow target over five years that we gave out of EUR 1.5 billion plus. Seeing that this goes absolutely into the right direction, it gives us a high confidence in the steps that we entered during the last quarters. Important milestones. We touched on that. The early and late trading, the introduction and rollout of the European ETP partnerships, and new marketing campaigns with DEGIRO and flatex.
These things, they will kick in now in Q3 and will generate, obviously, also profitability and growth in the second half and going forward. Keep in mind that we are starting now in the second half with two major synergies. The order flow synergy, from which we expect a high profitability contribution, will only kick in in Q3. It took a bit longer. This had to do with the merger with DEGIRO that we wanted to finalize first the merger before we implemented. Four weeks later than expected, Tradegate is starting. A bit later than expected, the ETP partnerships will start. They will both start very soon and will start to contribute additional profitability and additional growth. This is a further point why we are absolutely convinced that Q2 was rather an exception than the rule.
With H2, so in the second half, rather in Q4, we will start the next trading app, flatexNext 3.0. As we have indicated as market leader and as an online broker, we absolutely have not only the responsibility but also the job to educate more and more people in Europe. Thus, we will have a very high-class documentary across Europe that we will use as well, obviously, for marketing purposes to prepare people, to give them a better understanding of the financial markets and financial investment, and to educate less experienced potential customers. We spoke about Tradegate, the early and late trading. You see what impact it might have. This is what you see here, share of early and late trading and flatex equity trades. With the flatex brand only, because with the DEGIRO we haven't had it before.
You see what number of trades, especially in the late trading and early trading, we can expect in the future. This applied to more than 1 point-ish million clients with DEGIRO, gives us a very strong upside potential on the transaction base that we expect to kick in then starting in the second half and then in a full year swing as of 2022. The marketing push has also been discussed. Starting now also the football season again, as of mid-August with Borussia Mönchengladbach and shoots and commercial ads, et cetera. We expect here a growing number of clients compared to Q2, as well as an increasing interaction between clients and broker, so higher trades. All in all, again, we feel very, very comfortable with the next quarters, so that we can continue also with the product.
FlatexNext 3.0 from push to pull should exactly fit into this marketing campaign and marketing strategy of winning more and clients, of educating more and more clients. We know that our platform so far is very robust, very stable, very good. We still see potential to reduce the complexity of these apps, and to allow clients much faster, much more direct to go into long-term savings and long-term investments. Combined with the zero fee ETF schemes, combined with Tradegate, we're absolutely on the right track. The High Class documentary, the true stories of investing powered by DEGIRO, will be launched at the end of Q3, beginning of Q4. Will, as I said, be broadcasted all over Europe, mainly in our growth markets and the underdeveloped G7.
That we will have a 360 campaigning in all big countries, to continue supporting us conquering market leadership after we have reached it in France, to continue with Spain, Portugal, and Italy. The outlook for 2026 has not changed at all. 7 to 8 million customers, 250 to 350 million transactions. Revenues of up to EUR 1.5 billion and accumulated operating cash flow of more than EUR 1.5 billion, with adjusted EBITDA margins of 60%+. Again, nothing has changed on that. Nothing has changed on the short-term guidance for this year, of 2 to 2.2 million clients at 90 to 110 million transactions. That's it from my side, giving you an overview of the latest results. I'd like to make use of the next 30 minutes to allow for questions and to deep dive maybe into one or the other question.
Dear ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin our question and answer session. If you have a question for our speaker, please press zero and one on your telephone keypad now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask a question. If you find your question has been answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero and two to cancel your question. If you are using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your connection. One moment, please, for our first question. We have a first question. It's from Roberta Luca, Goldman Sachs. The line is now open for you.
Hi. Morning. Thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. One is actually on a number you don't report, the revenue per transaction. Can you give us a bit of an overview of how that's developing? If we back calculate the numbers from what you've reported today, it's below the EUR 4 target. We kind of want to understand how it's developing and when you think you can reach that level. The second question is, I hear your point on second quarter being a slower quarter every year. Can you give us a bit of a sense of what your expectations. First of all, historically, how that gap has been on a quarterly basis, and if this second quarter, that is significantly different from previous years, given, I guess, the high volatility of the first quarter.
kind of a bit of a reiteration of what your expectations are for the second quarter, Sorry, third quarter, obviously having summer months, if you expect any kind of further slowdown there. Thank you.
Thanks, Roberta. The first one, revenue per transaction. Yes. We were slightly below, I think around EUR 3.50, EUR 3.60 revenue per trade. We expect in general up to EUR 4 to trade. This is our long-term perspective. For sure, there are products that have not been put in place to drive these revenues per trade. First and foremost, obviously, for example, the Tradegate trades. Tradegate trades will be offered to clients for a price of EUR 3.90 flat. This will first and foremost contribute to the growth. Plus, you know that we are running very successful ETP partnership all over Europe. This is the partnership that we will implement as well, with the DEGIRO, that will also increase the revenue per trade, giving existing and future models together with our product partners. We will still aim and continue to aim for the EUR 4 in average per trade.
Plus what we have also to keep in mind is that, in some of the European countries, we are in the markets with very, very low fees that also helps us in the growth and the growth speed. As we always said, it doesn't mean that we will have these fees forever like this. Now the focus is on growth. We always have to find the balance between growth and profitability, and we feel absolutely 100% happy and are super satisfied with the current balance between growth and profitability. Whereas we can increase both with an increasing number of clients. This is the first and foremost focus that we have on the short term of our Vision. With respect to the later end of that Vision, this might change into less, maybe growth and more profitability.
With respect to the second quarter, I'm not sure whether I got your question 100%, but it was a bit to put the second quarter 2021 into a historical context. How much better or worse was it against other quarters? The first, let me put it that way. From my perspective, wrong assumption is to compare it to Q1 2021, because Q1 2021 was not a normal quarter, was not a normal Q1. We had per se, a very strong Q1 and had this year a massively stronger Q1. Then there is Q2, which is super average. With respect to trading activity, it was for us, absolutely in line with what we knew in the past and what experiences we had in the past.
Keep in mind, Q2 was, I think as good as Q2 2020, when we were in middle of the COVID situation and everyone is saying, "Oh, you're winning so many clients just because of COVID." We managed to meet this strong quarter that we had back in 2020. Again, we had a very strong Q1. We have had a very average good Q2. Given that Q1 was so good, it seems like, oh, Q2 collapsed. Q2 was totally in line with the historic data and historic evidence and historic expectation that we always have. I'm absolutely, again, let me put this very clear. We are absolutely not surprised what happened in Q2. It was absolutely what we expected for Q2. Actually, we're slightly above what we expected for Q2. With respect to Q3 and Q4, again, also here, let me be very clear.
I don't care about Q3 and Q4. I care about next year and the year after and the year after. We want to grow. We're a growth story that will. If people want to challenge that on a quarterly basis, I'm more than happy to do it. We are not thinking about Q3 and whether this is currently the summer break, to be fair. We are here with a long-term vision to win 6, 7, 8 million clients over the next five years and are seeing ourselves perfectly on track to go for that goal. Again, our guidance for this year was 2 million clients. We're already at 1.75, so there's 250,000 clients that we have to win in six months, which is super absurd for us.
Again, we will not end up in this quarter by quarter game because we have the longer term vision in front of us. Yes, I expect Q3 to become, as I said earlier, better than Q2, and I expect that Q4, most probably, if everything goes right in the markets and markets don't go totally crazy, will outperform Q3. This is what we know from historical data and statistical analysis and expectations. Would I put my hand for this on fire? No, I would not because markets are totally going wild every now and then. Again, nothing that surprises us as of now. We were rather surprised by a very good Q1, to be fair, than by an average Q2.
Okay. Thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question is by Marius Fuhrberg, Warburg Research. The line is now also open for you.
Hi, Mo. A couple of questions from my side. First one, also you're stressing the Q3 thing, even though you don't focus on Q3 and Q4, as you pointed out, but could you give us a bit of flavor how Q3 started so far? Second one, the adjustments you made, I think were quite significant, with more than EUR 54 million, I guess it is. Obviously, the majority of this comes from the stock-based incentive program, and you cannot influence that. My question is, do you intend to implement another stock-based compensation program in the next two to three years? Or, do you wait, the current stock-based incentive program is paid out in three to four years?
Let me start with your question with respect to Q3. I cannot give any update how Q3 started, again, because we are now four weeks out of 12, and I don't want to start this game of monthly updates how a quarter was, sorry, or how even a month was. The next release of data will be the quarterly release. Again, it will be good, it will be strong. It will be hopefully in what our expectation is. Again, if we would just break it down to July, it is what we expected. Up till now, no surprises at all for us. With respect to the adjustments, yes, indeed, it is a significant adjustment. No, as of today, we don't plan any new long-term incentive plans. The plan has not fully distributed out.
There are still shares that we can give out to employees, although the vast majority has been given out, so that we don't expect any plans as of now for the next, I would say two, three years.
Okay, thank you. One follow-up, if I may. Q2 margin was fairly low, but I guess it's the result of the lower top line. Is it correct that you expect significantly better EBITDA margins in Q3 and Q4?
Keep in mind that Q2 was absolutely the quarter where we did our merger. All this, what I said, that we digested during Q2 through the P&L will not show up anymore in Q3.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question is by Charlie Mayne, Goldman Sachs. The line is now open for you.
Morning, Mo. Thanks for taking my question.
Hi, Charlie.
Just one on the basis for the Vision 2026. I believe you said originally that the basis was 3,000 extra clients per calendar day. You're now aiming for 2,000-2,500 per calendar day for the full year 2021. I was just hoping you could help us to understand where the delta lies between those two numbers. Thanks.
Charlie again, the 3,000 clients per day is on the long-term vision. The velocity that we see will definitely also increase over the next years. I doubt that we will grow on a daily average this year with the speed of in three years. I believe in three years, we will grow faster per day than we do today. Again, the guidance was given out the beginning of or during the first half and has nothing to do with our long-term growth. What we always said is to meet our Vision 2026, we have to grow on average by 3,000 clients per day. What we've seen in the first half is that we actually met that requirement already now, not in two, not in three, not in four years. With an increasing number of clients, our speed of growth will also increase.
I'm 100% sure about that because you have a higher awareness, you have a higher structural targeting of markets. When we become market leader in further countries, the awareness will increase, and so on and so forth. For this year, we are not aiming for 2,000 clients or 2,200 or 2,500. We have just the clear guidance, and that would end up to say, to meet that guidance, we need, whatever, 250,000 clients on give or take 100, 120 days. We would need 2,000 clients at least on average per day over the next six months to meet our guidance. We feel, again, highly, highly convicted to reach that.
Okay, thank you.
You're welcome.
Our next question is by Christoph Greulich, Berenberg. The line is now open for you.
Good morning, Mo.
Good day.
Thanks a lot for taking my questions. A couple of questions from my side, if I may. I would like to start and come back to the stock appreciation rights plan. Could you let us know: what is the total fair value as of June? Based on your current numbers, how large will be the charge in the H2 P&L ?
Sorry, how big is the charge in the?
In the P&L for the second half of the year, and what is the total fair value as of the end of H1?
The total fair value was, if I am not mistaken, preliminary EUR 105 million. The total fair value of the plan, based on a stock price of EUR 180 and the EPS somewhere in the consensus range. As of that, EUR 64 million-EUR 65 million have been provisioned for. Two-third of the plan has been provisioned for. If this continues as it is, that means if we end up with the same share price at the end of the year and no consensus change, I expect to have roughly 20% to be provisioned over the second half. Another give or take EUR 20 million.
Okay. That also means that if the share price will be lower compared to as at the end of June, or the EPS would move down, that it would also mean a reduction in the fair value.
Yeah, absolutely. It's a very simple, straightforward option plan, which is based on the EPS and the stock price. If stock price decreases compared to the June 30th on 31st of December, that means that we will build lower provisions or even might release again provisions.
Okay. That's clear. With regard to the customer growth, when we look at the decline between Q1 and Q2, I was just wondering, have there been any positive outliers from a regional point of view? Meaning, have there been any countries which have seen an acceleration customer growth in the second quarter?
Compared to what? To the first quarter?
Exactly, yeah.
Good question. Let me look it up. Where we did very well is France, where we took over the market leadership now also in terms of number of new clients, not only in trade. There we are progressing very well. We will look it up and Achim might come back with some information. Although again, we will not disclose figures on a country-by-country basis.
That's clear. You have on page four, the customer growth delta to some of your main peers. I was just wondering why that fluctuated so much the seasonal patterns should be the same for all the players in the market. Do you see any clear reasons why the delta has been so big, let's say around Q4 last year, Q1 this year, compared to where it stood at the end of Q2?
That's a good question that unfortunately I cannot answer if I look into the figures. What we see is that the amplitude depends on very much on the strength of the quarter itself, right? Or month itself. The stronger the month itself, the more we outperform our peers. This has most probably to do with the European footprint, that when we are strong in a month, per se, if markets go positive in a certain month with respect to growth, to customer growth, that we are managing to outgrow our peers. In normal months and weaker months, we rather have a relatively stable development.
That makes sense. Regarding the EBITDA margin. We had this 54% in Q1, and if I remember correctly, 50% was kind of understood as the new floor level, and the trajectory was towards the 60%. Now Q2, we've fallen back below the 40% level. I was just wondering, how we should think about the margin floor level from here on, and what kind of trend do you see for the full year?
Nothing has changed. Absolutely nothing has changed. We'll continue with the same numbers that we had last Friday before we disclosed today's figures. Our expectations have not changed at all because Q2 was absolutely what we expected. That again, I can just repeat myself. If my expectations were absolutely fulfilled, there's no reason to adjust my forward expectation. The expected values for the half year, and especially for Q2, were almost perfect in line what we have guided internally. This is again, why we don't see any reason to adjust our full-year guidance or full year expectation. We will continue to believe that we will, in 2021, be somewhere in the high 40s around 50%, for sure. That over the next years, we will aim step by step for the 60%.
Again, given certain one-off effects that we digested through the P&L, in H1 2021, especially in Q2 2021, to be fair, because we haven't had these figures in Q1. This seems to be lower than what others might have expected. But knowing about these costs, knowing about these structural expenses that happened in Q2, it's absolutely in line with our full year expectation as well.
Okay. Just for modeling purposes, could you give us an idea how big the D&A charge was in H1 and how much of that was acquisition-related?
Which charge? Sorry.
The D&A, the depreciation amortization one.
We haven't disclosed it yet because the annual report is not disclosed yet. Let's wait until the report is out, because this is again, couple of topics with the intangible asset depreciation and amortization after the Purchase Price Allocation of the DEGIRO. I don't want to give you now any figures that might end up different in four weeks. They should not. But all in all, the one-off in the D&A itself was give or take EUR 2.5 million.
Okay. You also mentioned that all the synergies are now fully implemented. What does that mean in terms of additional cost savings in the second half, which you did not yet have in the first half?
We are a step further. With IT, I always said this is a process. This is nothing that happens today or tomorrow. With the introduction of Tradegate, with the implementation soon to happen of ETP, product partnerships, we believe that we will have then 85%-90% of the synergies in place. On the cost side, it means that we will continue now to release low-hanging fruits or to harvest low-hanging fruits. This starts obviously with admin costs. This has also to do with personnel costs. We had a lot of changes in the personnel costs. This is also why we adjusted for this one-off cost related to the merger, the change in management, the change also in the second level of people. You know about this. Ends up very often with costs. To release contracts and to release responsibility. This has been done to the vast majority.
This is something that we don't expect anymore for the second half either. That it will definitely not be worse than in the first half. The customer.
Last question from my side. You mentioned that you will start the development of the next trading apps in the second half of this year. What kind of development cost should we expect for them?
To be fair, as of today, I don't have a value.
A kind of ballpark number, like in what range we are?
We were not talking about a double-digit million amount, for sure not.
Okay. Great. Yeah, that's all from my side. Thanks a lot for the answers.
You're welcome.
The next question is by Frederik Jarchow, Hauck & Aufhäuser. The line is now open for you.
Hi, Mo. Thanks for taking my question. I just have one question, and it's also regarding the Q2 number of trades. On a year-on-year basis, you were flat, made flatexDEGIRO, while the peer, Avanza, for example, was up year-on-year 46%, despite the fact that you clearly outgrow Avanza in terms of number of new customers. Maybe you can give us an explanation for this weakness compared to the peers. Thank you.
To be fair, I don't know how to answer it because I haven't looked into Avanza that deep to see why their number of trades were compared to the last Q2 better or worse. Maybe you could also say that Avanza was worse off in Q2 than flatexDEGIRO, and so that they have increased the number of trades compared to Q2 while we were flat. No clue to be fair. Again, for us, this is what we expected. Given our data and given our expectation rate, this is what we forecasted for ourselves and met.
Maybe it has to do with the fact that Avanza is rather having more stable trades due to many savings profiles that we don't have in that case and to that extent, especially not in Europe, but because we don't also either focus on this type of investment as of today, but rather want to grow as a broker all over Europe. That could be an explanation that they have a higher level of retained trades, or that Q2 2020 with Avanza was weaker than with everyone else.
Mm-hmm. Yep. Makes sense. Thank you.
You're welcome.
The next question is by Benjamin Kohnke, KBW. The line is now open for you.
Morning, Mo. KBW, in fact. Yeah. Thanks for taking my questions. Well, a couple of small amounts, please. First one, relating to your credit book. Know you're probably not willing to give any detailed numbers, but maybe just high-level comments as to how that developed, let's say, both on the retail side as well as the maybe non-brokerage loan book. Any sort of anomalies that we should factor in here or just a sort of normal development? In line with that, just with regard to your IT segment, any sort of things we should consider there or just a very normal development as well?
With respect to IT services, to be honest with you, it's not contributing any more to any P&L line. It's minor importance. Nothing special happened. With respect to the credit book, we're still going on with our strategy, super successful. No anomalies at all. No significant write-offs on any of our structural credit books. Openings are coming back in time. We managed to increase the credit book. This is something that you will also see in the detailed figures with the reported accounts, that we have increased the interest income on the credit book because of obviously also consolidating the DEGIRO margin book. Yeah, as an increasing number of clients, that results also in increasing number of clients using margin loans. All in all, we are absolutely happy with the development of the credit book.
All right. Thanks. Just a quick follow-up. Could you just confirm what you said during the strategy day that you're still on plan to launch a crypto offer in the course of the second half of the year?
We didn't say that we will launch it. We said we are currently in a deep dive due diligence to implement cryptocurrencies. We highlighted a couple of times that the biggest issue has been the custody of cryptocurrencies. Until today, we have had not found a solution that gives us the confidence, the full confidence to provide cryptos to our clients. That might change on a monthly basis, because we all know that the momentum in cryptos is super high. Things change every week, things change every month. If we find a good solution, a proper solution that does not put any risk on us as a company with respect to the custody of the client's assets, we are happy to launch it. Everything is prepared technically and commercially. The only thing is that we have to find the regulatory solution for the custody of cryptos of our clients.
Right. Well, thanks. Just turning that around, your 2021 guidance then on the customer side and as well as on the trade side does not really include.
No
sort of crypto.
Not at all. Crypto was never in our guidance included. We gave our guidance at a point in time where we did not discuss any cryptos.
Thanks, Mo.
You're welcome.
As a reminder, if you want to ask a question, please press zero and one. There are no further questions. I hand back to Mr. Chahrour.
Yeah. Thanks again for joining the call. Thanks for your questions. I hope we were able to give you a deeper insight of the results. Looking forward to the next months and quarters as much as you do. Again, let me close that call with these sentences. We are absolutely happy and satisfied with the work of our people, with the results we have achieved in H1. Again, it is a record H1 in our history of the company. We are super convinced to meet all our guidances and expectations on the short term as well as on the longer end. Yeah, looking forward to speaking to you soon, seeing you soon. Take good care of yourself, have a great week, and thanks for joining the call.