Hello everyone. Welcome to flatexDEGIRO Analyst Call, Second Quarter 2026 Conference. Please note that this call is being recorded. After the speakers' prepared remarks, there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Thank you.
I would now like to hand the call over to Achim Schreck, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. Many thanks for dialing in and a warm welcome to our analyst call relating to our Q2 2026 results, which we published yesterday evening, post market close. My name is Achim Schreck, I am heading the IR team here at flatexDEGIRO. With me today are our CEO, Oliver Behrens, as well as our CFO, Dr. Benon Janos, who will lead us through today's presentation. We also have with us Dr. Thomas Lindner, our Global Head of Finance, as well as my IR colleague, Laura Hecker. As usual, we would like to provide a short run through the presentation before we open up for your questions. You might have seen already from the published documents that we are already voluntarily adopting the new reporting standard under IFRS 18, which will become mandatory next year.
For those who are not yet familiar with the new standard, we have provided additional information on our website, including a video in which Thomas is explaining the key changes resulting from the adoption of IFRS 18. You find all this information in the reports section of our IR website, where we have created a separate tab just for IFRS 18. In the appendix, you also find two overview slides today showing our financial performance over the last six quarters. To increase transparency, we are showing this overview in both ways, so under the new IFRS 18 standard, as well as under the historic IF1 standard, which at some point then will of course be discontinued.
During today's presentation, we will only make a few references to those changes where necessary, but please do check out the additional material on our website and get in touch with the IR team for any follow-up questions you might have on IFRS 18 today.
Without any further ado, I am very pleased to now hand over to Oliver. Oliver, please go ahead. The floor is yours.
Thank you, Achim. Good morning, everyone, welcome to the Q2 analyst call. We had already started into the year with a record first quarter, the same strong momentum has continued throughout the second quarter. In some areas, it has even accelerated. With Liberation Day in April 2025, we were faced with some rather tough comps this quarter. Yet we managed to further increase the number of trades by over 20%. Yes, it is fair to say that we have benefited from the current market environment. Volatile markets are generally good for us, it is not just that. Our customer growth is structural, as we are benefiting from secular trends, serving the needs of millions of Europeans to use capital markets for building wealth in a convenient, transparent, and very cost-efficient way.
We earn the trust of our customers by delivering on our promises and providing stable and secure access to the markets when it matters most. In return, our customers entrust us with growing parts of their private wealth, resulting in increasing average trade sizes, higher cash balances on our platform, and most visibly, customer assets on our platform having crossed now over the threshold of EUR 100 billion. Once again, our customers have added over EUR 5 billion of fresh money to our platform over the last six months alone. The underlying foundation is our business model is growing in strength day by day, which is also what gives us further confidence in our ability to successfully explore the opportunities lying ahead of us. For the time being, we are doing this without having to add cost in any meaningful way.
In fact, our operating expenses even declined slightly during the second quarter, while our top line grew by more than a quarter. As a result, net income grew by 55% to EUR 61 million in the quarter and to EUR 115 million in the first half year. Both impressive record numbers in their own right. flatexDEGIRO is going from strength to strength, even more than what we had anticipated before. Consequently, we increased our full year guidance, first before the end of the second quarter, now a second time when it comes to net income. I will elaborate more on the further upgraded guidance at the end of today's presentation, before I hand over to Benon for the financial details of our Q2 development, I would like to briefly touch on some of the opportunities I just mentioned lying ahead of us.
flatexDEGIRO strives to establish itself as the European platform for building wealth. As such, we are one of the key beneficiaries from the significant catch-up continental Europe still has to do when it comes to capital markets participation over the coming years. In this context, savings plans or automated investments, as they will be called in our international markets, is an important entry-level product for us. During the first quarter, we enhanced our offering at flatex by adding fractional shares to the assets available for such a recurring savings plan investment. With over 1,000 eligible stocks, more than 6,000 further ETF and fund products, and saving rates starting as low as EUR 25. We offer our customers one of the best products in this area in Germany and Austria.
In Q4, we will now begin to roll out this product to our DEGIRO markets, starting in our most important market, the Netherlands. At the same time, we are obviously putting a strong focus in Germany on ensuring that once the German pension reform becomes effective in January 2027, flatex will not only be ready but will make a very strong and price-attractive offering to this new customer segment. To take one likely question from the Q&A upfront, no, we will not communicate the potential pricing today, but repeat what we have said before. While it is strategically very important for us to attract this customer group early on, the short-term P&L effect will be very minor. Savings plans and German pension accounts are two key focus areas that are easy to single out.
As important is also the constant improvement of the underlying customer offering to drive customer engagement by leveraging our proprietary technology and wide market access. Our strong position in the European retail market is recognized not only by our customers, but also by renowned companies seeking capital market access to retail investors. For the SpaceX IPO, flatex and DEGIRO were not just one of many local distribution partners. We were one of the four key brands, alongside Revolut, Interactive Brokers, and Trade Republic, that was highlighted in the local IPO prospectus in Germany, the Netherlands, France, and Spain. Under the front-page headline, "Create a brokerage account." Probably the strongest endorsement from an issuer you could hope for during a strongly retail-focused IPO.
With this, let me close my opening remarks and hand over to Benon for the financial details. Benon, the floor is yours.
Thank you very much, Oliver, and good morning everyone from my side as well. Thanks for joining today's Q2 results call. I trust you all had the opportunity to review the presentation and the materials we shared. Therefore, as usual, I will not walk through every single slide in full detail this morning, but rather focus on the key developments and drivers behind our performance and the additional transparency we are now providing under IFRS 18. Before I go into the details, let me briefly touch on this IFRS 18. With our H1 2026 results, we are among the early adopters of the new reporting standard. We view this as an opportunity to further enhance transparency and comparability for investors. While the overall financial performance, especially revenue and net profit, does not change at all, IFRS 18 introduces a more granular presentation of our income streams and profitability metrics.
As a result, today we are providing additional disclosures, which we believe offer a clearer view of the key drivers of our financial performance. Throughout the presentation, I will highlight these changes and explain some of the refinements to some of our KPIs. Let's now turn to our commercial performance on slide nine. You have seen our monthly KPI releases, so I will keep this also brief. Q2 once again demonstrated strong client engagement across the platform. While customer additions normalized, trading activity remains above prior year levels. Settled transactions increased by 22% year-on-year to 21.9 million, highlighting continued customer activity despite the strong comparables from Q2 last year, and especially Liberation Day in April 2025.
Another encouraging indicator of client engagement is the average trading activity per customer, which increased by 6.3% to around 25.1 trades in the first six months of 2026, compared to 23.6 trades in H1 of 2025. At the same time, customer assets under custody reached a new record high, surpassing EUR 100 billion for the first time, driven by both strong net inflows and positive market performance. Let's move to net cash inflows on slide 11. In the second quarter of 2026, net cash inflows reached EUR 2.0 billion. This was below the exceptionally high Q2 2025 level of EUR 2.5 billion, which was impacted by the Liberation Day market environment, but still represents a strong inflow level. For the first half of 2026, net cash inflows amounted to EUR 5.2 billion.
In H1 of 2026, 100% of net cash inflows were reinvested, compared to a historical average of 95% and around 85% in the first half of 2025. This reinforces that our existing and new customers are not only bringing assets to the platform, they are also actively deploying them into securities. Turning to slide 12 and our revenue development. Overall, revenue momentum remained strong and was again supported by both core income streams: commission income and interest income. Commission income benefited from a larger customer base as well as higher trading activity among our clients. Interest income showed strong growth despite a lower interest rate environment compared to last year. This was driven by continued strong net cash inflows, higher customer cash balances, increased utilization of our margin loan book, and the further expansion of our treasury activities.
By the end of Q2 of 2026, our treasury book stood at EUR 1.3 billion, with an average yield of around 2.3%. Before going deeper into the commission per transaction KPI, I would like to spend a moment on slide 13 because it is an important change in our disclosure. With the adoption of the new IFRS 18 standard, our revenue disclosure becomes at the same time more granular. Commission income is now split into two categories: transaction-related commission income and other commission income. Transaction-related commission income captures income generated from brokerage activities, including income from crypto trading on a net basis. Going forward, this will form the basis for the calculation of commission per transaction. Other commission income primarily includes administrative fees, connectivity fees, and commission income from securities lending on a net basis.
In the second quarter of 2026, transaction-related commission income amounted to EUR 102 million, while other commission income amounted to EUR 5 million. This refined disclosure gives investors a clearer view of the revenue directly generated from trading activities and separates it from other commission-related revenue components. Going forward, we will calculate commission per transaction based on transaction-related commission income rather than total commission income as under the previous methodology. This clarification provides a more accurate measure of the revenues generated directly from trading activities. It also reduces the unusual seasonal distortion we typically see in the first quarter when connectivity fees and certain other administrative fees are recognized and temporarily uplift commission income. As a result, the KPI is now reported on a technically lower but more meaningful and comparable basis.
Under the new methodology, commissions per transaction amounted to EUR 4.64 in Q2 of 2026, broadly stable compared to EUR 4.62 in Q1 of 2026, and meaningfully up from EUR 4.39 in the second quarter of last year. In a nutshell, the revised calculation provides investors with a cleaner view of the monetization of client trading activity and improves comparability across reporting periods. For transparency and comparability reasons, slide 15 shows the previous calculation of commission per transaction based on total commission income. Under the previous methodology, commissions per transaction would have amounted to EUR 4.89 in Q2, compared to EUR 5.09 in the first quarter of this year, and EUR 4.69 in Q2 of 2025. Here you can see the seasonal Q1 peak pattern I just mentioned.
Let's now turn to slide 16 and the additional transparency we are providing around net interest income or NII, a metric that has become an increasingly important focus for both investors and analysts. The new disclosure not only aligns our reporting more closely with the way other financial institutions typically present and assess earnings performance, but also provides a clearer view of the contribution and profitability of our interest-related activities. Gross profit amounted to EUR 145 million in the second quarter of 2026, up 27% year-over-year and 4% below the exceptionally strong Q1 2026 level. Net commission income came in at EUR 90 million, an increase of 31% year-over-year, while net interest income reached EUR 50 million, up 21% year-over-year and 8% quarter-over-quarter.
What we have effectively done, we've taken the historic cost of goods sold and are now splitting them into the three relevant categories: commission expense, interest expense, and other operating expense. Now on to operating expenses on slide 17. Overall operating expenses decreased year-over-year, driven primarily by lower personnel and marketing expenses. Personnel expenses amounted to EUR 24 million in Q2 2026, down 21% compared to EUR 31 million in the second quarter of last year. Current personnel expenses declined by 11% year-over-year to EUR 25 million, reflecting the positive impact of workforce measures initiated last year, which more than offset general salary inflation trends. Second, and more significantly, expenses for long-term variable compensation amounted extraordinarily to negative EUR 1 million in the quarter, compared to EUR 3 million in the second quarter of 2025.
This was mainly driven by the regular assessment of accrued expenses for long-term variable compensation based, as always, on an expert opinion, as well as the early repurchase of outstanding stock appreciation rights under the old 2020 SAR Program. We highlighted this previously and as announced, this SAR buyback program was initiated in May to mitigate the volatility in our long-term variable compensation expenses caused by the legacy stock appreciation rights. The higher-than-expected acceptance rate of the repurchase offer to our employees also reduced future compensation expenses. Marketing and advertising expenses came down significantly quarter-on-quarter to EUR 9 million in Q2 of 2026 compared to EUR 21 million in Q1 of 2026 and EUR 7 million in Q2 of 2025. Other administrative expenses amounted to EUR 14 million in Q2 of 2026 and remained broadly stable.
Overall, the quarter once again demonstrated the scalability of our platform and our ability to translate strong revenue growth into disproportionate earnings growth through disciplined cost management. On to the bottom line on slide 18. With IFRS 18, operating profit is introduced as the new central earnings measure. It is largely comparable to our previous EBIT line item with only minor differences arising from certain accounting reclassifications. Importantly, operating profit now follows a standardized IFRS definition, enhancing comparability across companies and sectors, and we actually very much welcome this new framework. Historically, we have actually took less focus on the EBITDA line, and this is pretty much exactly what we are looking for, a standard approach for all companies on a standard definition. In the second quarter of 2026, operating profit amounted to EUR 85 million, growing more than 50% year-on-year.
Looking at the net income line, Q2 delivered another record result for our group, with quarterly net income exceeding EUR 60 million. This is supported by strong revenue growth across both commission income and interest income, combined with disciplined cost management. Net income reached a new all-time high and came in well ahead of analyst consensus expectations. This again highlights the significant operating leverage embedded in our business model, operating leverage that continues to expand. After two exceptionally strong quarters, this also translated into a record first half of the year, with net income reaching EUR 115 million. This achievement is the result of the trust our customers place in us, the strength of our business model, and most importantly, the dedication and commitment of our employees across all locations and functions.
Now, I would like to hand back to Oliver, who will walk us through our updated 2026 guidance following these record results. Thank you, over to you, Oliver.
Thanks a lot, Benon. I mentioned earlier that the positive momentum of the first quarter was very visible in Q2 as well. We already saw good trading activity and significant cash inflows during the quarter, which solidified our positive view on 2026 and made us increase our guidance in June to revenues of approximately EUR 650 million and a net income of approximately EUR 200 million. That means that on both levels, we expected to already achieve the midterm targets that we have set ourselves for 2027. I know that with our strong performance in Q1 already, these targets were sometime already labeled as conservative by numerous market participants. If you go back just 18 months to the beginning of 2025, when we first issued these targets, they were actually called rather ambitious in most sell-side reports.
Having pulled forward these expected delivery of these financial ambitions by a full year tells you quite something about the journey we have embarked on. As you will have seen from yesterday evening's update, we have now been able to even further increase our net income expectations to up to EUR 230 million. In addition to the already clearly visible strong top-line development, the second quarter results provided a much more solid basis for sustainable lower operating costs going forward. This is particularly true for personal expenses. As Benon explained in more detail already, the measures we have taken in 2025 now start to show in the P&L, and the impact of the long-term variable compensation will also be lower. Nevertheless, we are of course mindful of the fact that our business model is naturally linked to factors such as market volatility.
Market volatility can go either way, and our ability to adjust short-term is limited. The expected net income range of EUR 200 million-EUR 230 million does take this into account. Meaning, if we were to see a reasonable slowdown of trading activity in the second half of 2026, we would still expect to reach the lower end of the range. At the same time, in order to move towards the upper end of the range, we would probably need more market tailwind in the coming months. Not impossible, but clearly not a conservative scenario either.
Let me stop here and open the floor for your questions on the quarter. Maybe Achim, you can take over again and run us through the process for the Q&A now.
Thank you, Oliver, and thank you, Benon, for running us through the Q2 presentation. We would now very much like to take your questions. For this, I will hand it back over to the moderator to briefly reintroduce the process for the Q&A before we are then starting with the first question. Moderator, over to you, please.
Thank you. We are now opening the floor for question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. That's star followed by one on your telephone keypad. Your first question comes from the line of Andrew Lowe of Citi. Your line is now open.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. The first question is just on your customer trading behavior. Could you please provide the mix of U.S. share trading in Q2 and how that compares to Q1 2026 and the full year 2025? Avanza and Nordnet, in their Q2 results, flagged that there was a higher mix of U.S. share trading, particularly in the latter half of Q2, and that was driven by AI and semi stocks. Given that these stocks have sold off quite a lot in recent weeks, I'd love to hear if you could provide any color about how consumer behavior has evolved in July so far. Has there been a marked decline in the share of U.S. share dealing? Similarly, could you provide a little bit of color about how the average trade size has evolved in recent quarters?
I seem to recall that you said that your average equity trade was EUR 6,000 in Q1 2026, and that compares to about EUR 5,000 in 2025. I'd love to hear what that figure was in Q2. Just a follow-up on your securities lending and third-party deposits. Could you provide a little bit more color on the volumes and revenues in those businesses in Q2? Specifically within the securities lending, are you still happy with the 20 basis point net margin from that business and the 20%-30% utilization of securities under custody over the longer term? Thanks very much.
Maybe. Should I start, Oliver, with the first?
No, go on.
On U.S. trading, I'll maybe start on the development in the second quarter. Then we go from there. During the first quarter this year, we saw a continued shift from U.S. equities to European equities, which actually started more than a year ago. The share of U.S. exchanges, which had reached peaks of roughly 25% by the end of 2024 and further moderated to around 15% by the end of Q1, versus then 20% by the end of Q4 of 2025. However, in the second quarter of 2026, the volume of stocks traded at U.S. exchanges increased compared to Q1 of this year. Consequently, the share of U.S. exchanges and total trading volume also increased to an average of roughly 20% during the second quarter.
The average ticket size of U.S. trades continues to also rise, which then helps us benefiting in FX revenues, for example. We also have tailwinds from things like the SpaceX IPO in many countries. That's on the question of the U.S. stocks trading. Then maybe I'll jump into the average trade size. We continue to see a positive trend. What I can give you is basically a good comparison of 2025 to 2026, the first half, which as you rightfully say, was around EUR 6,000 at the beginning of the year. For the first half, our average is, for the entire group, approximately EUR 6,400, compared to EUR 5,600 roughly for all of 2025 on average. We continue to see a nice lift up in the average notional volume of an order.
In a way, it follows a little bit also the growth of the assets under custody. The more money clients make, the more money they put on the platform, the bigger the trades get. It's also clear if the market would retrace at some point in time, the average order might also follow that size-wise. It's a personal comment. You ask on sec lending and Deposits as a Service. We have not disclosed so far all the details of the revenues. We always said in 2027, we want to have somewhere between 5% and 10% of recurring income. I can tell you that securities lending, obviously, we have a little bit underestimated the effort required to talk to customers about the benefits of this. In terms of results, we are exactly on what we factored into our planning.
We also said that we will go live for DEGIRO Germany to offer sec lending through DEGIRO Germany to German customers, as the German regulatory framework is a little bit more complex. We believe for clients that are looking to earn interest basically on their share portfolio, this offer would then be somewhat unique to the German market because we can use our German branch of our Dutch subsidiary to offer sec lending into the German market, which we feel would make a difference for those clients seeking those business profile. In terms of Deposits as a Service, I think we stand now somewhere at EUR 11 billion or EUR 12 billion in that business. Total volume. The Hamburg Commercial Bank went live at the end of March, so they are collecting deposits. Obviously, the deposit market with Chase and others entering is getting more competitive.
Nevertheless, we still have EUR 3.5 trillion of deposits that, based on the Bundesbank report, earned an average coupon of 0.6%. There is a market out there. CRD VI regulation supports our business idea. We expect to go live with another bank either late this year or early next year to basically broaden our offering there. For those who are not familiar with this business, you can look up Hamburg Direct Bank, or PBB, Pfandbriefbank Direkt or Kommunalkredit, and so on. Those are all clients where we provide the entire service. This, by the way, does not require any capital on our side as we operate within their balance sheet. It's a full outsourcing model. I hope, Andrew, this answers your questions to your satisfaction.
That's really helpful. Really great details. Can I just ask one very quick follow-up, if that's okay?
Sure.
On the securities lending. You're going to offer it through your German branch of DEGIRO. Is that only available to DEGIRO customers, or can you leverage that branch into your flatex customer base?
Well, if the flatex customer wants to open another account with the DEGIRO branch in Germany, we will not stop him from doing that.
Fine. Okay. They're kind of separate bits. Okay. Very clear. Thank you.
Yeah.
Your next question comes from the line of Grace Dargan of Barclays. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Maybe one on costs and then coming back to customer performance. Maybe first on the cost, it was obviously a very strong performance. I guess, how should we be thinking about the evolution of personnel expenses from here? More broadly, how should we be thinking about the shape of the overall OpEx base in Q3 and Q4? Are there any lumpy pieces? How should we be thinking about the shape of the marketing spend?
Secondly, on customer additions, obviously you've controlled that marketing spend really well, you've seen the normalization in the customer additions in Q2. How are you thinking about balancing those two elements going forward? Do you have any appetite to increase your kind of customer acquisition costs to drive further customer additions or yeah, how are you thinking about balancing that? Thank you.
I'll start with the OpEx costs and then cover the line items which are not marketing, and will then hand over to Oliver for the marketing part. We do not expect any surprises in the second half of the year. It's business as usual. We think we will continue to benefit from a reduced personnel spending line compared to what we have seen last year, for example. The number of employees that we have is not moving meaningfully, so we expect today, until the end of the year, a total cost of maybe EUR 100 million to EUR 105 million, something in there. On top of that, you have a layer of variable compensation, which will again not reach the levels that we have seen last year due to the fact that we, for example, bought back some of the outstanding virtual shares that our employees headed.
On the administration cost line, no major surprises there. We will see a small inflation movements in there, but there are no cost items that will trigger a EUR 5 million additional spending or anything like that. I think the admin cost line and the personal cost line are well under control. For the marketing questions and the marketing cost line, I'll hand over to Oliver.
I think you saw that marketing expenses have normalized in Q2 in a way, and we expect this trend to continue, notwithstanding the fact that, of course, marketing expenses and the outcome of client acquisition is also a relative function of how much the competition is burning. Some of our competitors have a significant marketing budget, and we don't know how much they will burn when the others follow the depots introduced in Germany. We will monitor the situation very carefully. We have set our budgets and what we expect to spend in this case, has been described. You should not expect any negative surprises on our side. This is all factored into our guidance, with the usual caveats on markets and so on. Hopefully that makes sense.
Thank you.
Thank you. Grace.
Your next question comes from the line of Christiane Holstein of Bank of America. Your line is now open.
Hi, good morning, everyone. Just a couple of questions for me. Firstly, on competition in Germany, I know you were saying before customer acquisition is very much dependent on what's happening in the broader market and what competitors are doing. I was just wondering if you could provide a little bit more color on what you've been seeing in Q2. Are you seeing any pricing pressure on existing products? I know this has been a focus of the market in the past and just wanted to see how you're thinking about this after Q2.
Sorry, price pressure or price increase? I didn't hear the end of the.
Pressure on existing products. My next question is then also on marketing expense and customer acquisition costs. Customer acquisition costs normalized in Q2, which was great. Although marketing guidance does still imply quite a step down in Q3 and Q4, assuming a stable customer growth. I was just wondering how you're thinking about this, and if you are comfortable with the remaining marketing budget going into product launches for the German pension reform.
My final question was just on the opportunity from PFOF ban coming in from 1st of July. Are you expecting any positive benefits from that? Thank you.
First of all, the marketing expenses, we feel comfortable that we will be able to achieve the expected client growth from here. We also expect the government to do a little bit of a marketing job for us at their cost because they want the population to participate in this retirement savings account. The tone from the government towards investing will be more positive. That should help the overall market environment. The penetration rate in this country is still way below the Americas or Sweden and so on. There's massive growth opportunity for everybody. Price pressure, we do not see because PFOF ban was already alive in most of our markets, so we are already at the low side of the pricing in most of the markets.
In Germany, you had some of the players that offered everything for zero for everybody. They struggle to make money. In the new offering of Trade Republic, they basically doubled the price from one to two, with some additional features. We don't see at the moment a significant price pressure happening. What did I miss on your question? Is PFOF an opportunity? I think the introduction of PFOF in Germany as well will create more transparency on pricing. I think it will also create more transparency through EBA and BaFin in terms of more transparency on, let's say, excessive bid-ask spreads or other things where clients could get ripped off. We follow since many years best execution principles in all our markets, which is highly appreciated by clients.
Right. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Oliver Carruthers of Goldman Sachs. Your line is now open.
Hi there, Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. I just have one question left. On your slide 22, the guidance slide, this looks a little bit different to the kind of guidance slides that I've seen before, where you've given more of some of the building blocks of some of the, I guess, revenue inputs and cost inputs. I think, Benon, you went through some of the cost inputs today just on the call. Is this the new format of how you're going to be guiding the market on a slide basis, or is it more of a function of the fact that we're transitioning to IFRS 18 and maybe some of the items, like CPT, as you said, were maybe less applicable in the old format? Just any steer on how you intend to guide the market going forward would be much appreciated. Thank you.
Oliver, I think you're putting a bit too much emphasis on the layout structure of the thing. Our guidance is revenues and net income, and that's key, and then we will always try to use arguments around the entire story in a way that suits the current moment. There is nothing to read into that. The numbers are the guidance, and then we'll provide additional information as needed to undermine and underline all that. Don't read anything into what we show or don't show on the slide compared to a previous version.
Okay, understood. Just maybe for the avoidance of doubt, could you just help us understand how we should think about marketing spend in the second half of this year? Thank you.
Well, marketing spend, we have a budget of EUR 46 million, that is the plan to spend that. Maybe it's going up and down by EUR 2 million to EUR 3 million, that's about it.
All right. Very clear. Thank you.
Your next question comes from the line of Christoph Greulich of Berenberg. Your line is now open.
Looks like we have a lot of people.
Good morning, thanks for taking my questions. It's three from my side, please. Firstly, I wanted to quickly follow up on the costs. I mean, you already went through quite a few of the moving parts. I was just wondering on the D&A line that went up by, I think, almost 20% sequentially in Q2. Just wondering if that is a one-off thing, or if that around EUR 13 million is the new normal quarterly level that you expect. I wanted to also quickly follow up on your comments on the guidance. If I remember correctly, let's say your underlying assumptions on the cash deposits has been, let's say, an element that led to maybe a somewhat conservative guidance in the past or in the previous quarters.
Just wondering if you can give any color on what's your underlying assumption on cash deposits from here now baked into the new guidance. Lastly, I wanted to ask on the customer growth. I mean, the intensified competition in Germany has been pretty well flagged. I was just wondering on the DEGIRO side, we've also seen a bit of a slowdown year-over-year. Are there any kind of countries or specific markets that stand out that have contributed to that? Thank you.
Yeah. Maybe I'll start, Christoph on your first line, first question on the cost structure. We actually took a one-off management buffer as a precaution for our two retail real estate funds of EUR 2 million. That's a one-off. For the first time, we deviate from the net asset value that a third party is calculating simply as a precautionary measure. There were no signals, nothing in there, but we just thought it prudent to potentially put in a EUR 2 million line into that. That's why the D&A line has moved, and we don't expect that to repeat in the next six months in every month. It's a one-off.
On the cash deposit side, the hardest part for us is to make an estimate as to how much of the cash inflow that we have gets transformed into purchases of stocks. We try to get a feeling for that, but in the end, life is always different than our assumptions. To recall, every single euro that came onto our platform was reinvested this year. 100%. That's a pretty high ratio. The average is more like 95%, but we had an unusually low ratio last year of 85%. Money continues to come in strong and even now during the summertime, we have net cash inflows onto our platform, which are higher than what we've seen historically. Ultimately, we simply don't know whether equity purchases are being made or not.
With respect to our assumptions for the rest of the year, the range of EUR 200 million-EUR 230 million , there are some elements of the cash deposit line. A flat or maybe even slightly declining deposit base would potentially be more an input for the lower end of the guidance, where a slightly rising or maybe meaningfully rising one would be one for the upper end. Last year, our deposit base grew 40%. This year, we're not on track for the same 40% growth as of today, with the biggest swing factor really the reinvestment rate and not the actual money transfers onto our platform.
On customer growth, maybe I'll hand over to Oliver.
Our plan is between 10%+ customer growth. Obviously, every month is not the same, and the numbers fluctuate slightly. We continue to believe that we, especially with the enhancements of the platform, can continue to grow like this. I think we also need to take into consideration that in some parts of Europe, jobless rates are increasing. Also, rising interest rates and very attractive offers, let's say, those of Chase and some other banks at 4%, also make people think twice. The underlying trend might fluctuate in the short term, but in the long run, we stick to our growth projections and believe that this overall trend, also supported by the governments to create a 401 pension system comparable to the U.S., will stimulate the growth of savings plans.
That's why we are preparing for this in shares and in funds, as well as in other countries. We will enhance our offering there and strongly believe that the trend of growth will not go away. The relative penetration rates across Europe are, in Germany, around 14% of households holding equity, and in the rest of Europe, it's rather closer to 10% or 11%. That compared to the U.S., which is at 65% or so, signals, I'm not saying we will get there, but from here to there's a lot of room for upside.
Your next question comes from the line of Ian White of Autonomous Research. Your line is now open.
Hi there. Thanks a lot for the presentation and for letting me ask some questions. Three for me, please. First of all, on marketing, I think you were fairly candid earlier this year that the execution hadn't gone as well as you were hoping in the first quarter. I'm keen, therefore, to understand what specifically you might have changed or that you might intend to do differently on marketing later this year. Basically, how confident could we be that these capabilities have been upgraded with a view to maybe a more competitive environment around the pension opportunity, especially in Germany? That's question one.
Question two, what progress have you made on the DEGIRO integration so far? I'm specifically interested in what additional cost savings that you might be able to extract from that as it's completed. Just wondering what's already in the bank, basically. You talked a bit about this for 2026 earlier in the call, but what's the outlook for headcount growth into 2027, please? Is the personnel count still a declining figure into next year, or should we start to think about an inflection as we get into 2027? Thank you.
Thank you. First of all, the additional spend which we did in Q1 were mainly focused on higher brand recognition in Germany, which does not immediately translate into customer growth. Maybe there was a miscommunication on our side as well as Spain. At the same time, the competition spends massively on investments and customer growth, which basically blurred our investment. That is the outcome of the analysis. The pension reform will lead to everybody, every Moe and Joe will be interested in those clients. People are basically keeping their cards close to their chest to wait for the last minute how they want to play this. The reality is there's about up to 40 million accounts, 40 million Germans that would be eligible to open such an account. There's a significant play, and everybody wants to grab a significant market share.
At the same time, the prices will go very low, and the contribution to revenues bottom line will be almost invisible for the next couple of years. Nevertheless, you need to participate in this business, and we are confident that we will get our fair share. Integration, the DEGIRO platform is a continuous topic in all our meetings in the management board and the supervisory board, and the IT team is confident that they will close this by end of 2027. There can always be some delays, but regardless of that, there's very good progress. It's a topic that has not been addressed by previous management, and we are also confident that this will lead to very stable headcount into 2027, and thereafter, we have not made any public statements.
We will look to have updated capital market communication for February 2027, and one can probably be a little bit more clear on some of those matters. We definitely have no appetite for significant headcount increase.
Thanks for that. On the marketing, can I just clarify then that in terms of, I guess, why it would look different in terms of the 1Q 2027 versus 1Q 2026. In your mind, is it simply the go live of the reform now or will mean there will be an addressable market basically in 1Q 2027 that wasn't there in 1Q 2026? Will you actually change how you approach marketing once the reform's actually gone live?
There's definitely a new market because the new product, which is subsidized by government donating every investor up to EUR 500 per annum. That in itself should trigger almost everybody to basically participate. Yeah? The big question in those pension plans is if it all sold online or do people need advice? We have a call center. We are reachable. Clients can talk to us. There should be a benefit. Everybody will offer something, there will also be guaranteed products by the insurance sector, it's a bit foggy.
Okay, thanks very much.
You're welcome.
Your next question comes from the line of Alex Bowers of KBW. Your line is now open.
Yeah. Hi. Sorry for another question on marketing, but just two from me on that topic. In terms of Q2, the EUR 96 customer acquisition figure, can you give a breakdown in terms of was there an improving trend over the quarter as you went through the quarter? Do you think you can kind of get back to a FY 2024, 2025 level of spend? Do you think that it's just a structurally more expensive market to operate in now? I know it's still a bit of time until 2027, but what are your kind of early thoughts on the level of budget you need in 2027 for the German expansion and for continuing to maintain that sort of 10%+ customer growth level? Thanks.
Well, we haven't made the budget for 2027. Let's say directionally, I think the number will be maybe 50 or rather 50 than 40, yeah? What was the second part of the question?
The first part, just in terms of Q2, did you see any kind of improvement throughout the quarter in terms of marketing efficiency from kind of start to the end?
Well, you just look at the numbers. The value for the bucket increased, yeah. Again, it's not an isolated question if we do marketing better or worse. It's a question of what the others spend at the same time and how the visibility of your offering gets. Yeah? We are expanding our marketing teams. We have had for 10 years, more or less, nobody for PR and so on. I expect an improvement of our marketing quality, but we have not measured or factored that in. That is a question or an answer we intend to provide during the course of next year when things are running and we have our first experiences in the outcome. Yeah?
Thank you.
Thank you so much.
It will not have a meaningful impact on headcount or expenses because we intend to save those additional spends in other areas of the organization. The net result will be as forecasted. Which means no major surprise.
Thank you. Apologies. Would you like to move over to the next question?
Sure.
Thank you. I'd now like to call Andrew Lowe from Citi. Your line is now open.
Hi, thanks. I've got a couple of follow-ups, if that's all right. The first one was on net interest income. Avanza, during their analyst call, flagged that the average cash balances when you look at a daily average were higher than the monthly data that we get suggested. I was just curious if that was also the case for you guys, and maybe if you feel like that was partly driving the interest income beat. Anything funny to flag there?
The other follow-up was just in answer to Oliver's question about the marketing budget. I think you said that you had the marketing budget of EUR 46 million and that it might go up by EUR 2 million or EUR 3 million. Can I just clarify that I think the marketing budget that you've previously talked about is EUR 44 million , which is--
You are so right. I already factored in the EUR 2 million to EUR 46 million .
I see. Okay. All right. No, that's really clear. Thank you very much.
You should be sitting next to me and whisper in my ear. Thank you for that.
Yeah. Perfect. On the interest income?
Yeah. On the NII line, maybe two comments, Andrew. Yeah, there is an intra-month effect in there a little bit, yeah. You're right. This is like precision that you're now referring to. Yes, that's definitely the case. Don't forget that we also have plenty of corporate cash, and that happens also to pay interest. That's a line item that sometimes falls through the cracks in an Excel sheet. We continue to accumulate cash basically, and that also pays interest.
That's really helpful. Could you clarify how much interest income you're earning on your corporate cash? I think, is it something like EUR 3 million a quarter, something like that?
It should be lower out of the top of my head.
Okay, fine.
It's lower than that, but it's probably.
That's all overnight at the ECB, presumably.
It's high of EUR 10 million on a full year basis.
Very helpful.
As of today.
Thanks so much.
Thank you. I'd now like to hand the call back to Achim Schreck for closing remarks.
Maybe Andrew on the interest side. We bought a couple of bonds, like EUR 1.5 billion. There is a duration of two years roughly, so that is reducing interest rate volatility. At the same time also the margin loan book has increased slightly, which is also benefiting interest income.
Yeah. Thank you, Oliver. Thank you, Benon, for your answers. We hope that have been helpful for you. Of course, a big thank you for all the questions asked during the call. Any follow-ups, please feel free to reach out to the IR team with Emma, Laura, and myself. I am happy to go through any details. Same to be said for any modeling questions on the IFRS changes. With that, thank you very much. We wish you a great day, and goodbye.
Thank you for attending today's call. You may now disconnect. Goodbye.