Hello, everyone, and welcome to the Plus500 half-year 2024 results. My name is Emily, and I will be coordinating your call today. After the presentation, you will have the opportunity to ask any questions, which you can do so by pressing Star, followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I will now turn the call over to our host, David Zruia, to begin. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our 2024 half year results call. I'm David Zruia, CEO of Plus500 , and I'm joined today by Elad Even-Chen, our Group CFO, and Owen Jones, our Head of Investor Relations. We have delivered a further strong performance in the period, with continued operational, financial and strategic progress, and I would like to thank my colleagues across Plus500 for their hard work and collaboration. I will take you through the highlights for the first half. Elad will then take us through the operating review, and then I will run through our technology in a bit more detail. Before Elad covers the financial highlights, and then I will conclude with the summary and outlook section. We look forward to taking your questions at the end. There are five key takeaways from today's presentation.
We have made tangible progress on our strategic initiatives, leaving us well-placed for future growth. Our internally developed proprietary technology continues to be crucial in driving product innovation and a best-in-class trading experience for our customers. We delivered another strong financial and operational performance during the first half of 2024, with an increase in revenue and EBITDA. Our track record of delivering attractive shareholder returns continues, and today we are announcing a significant additional shareholder returns of $185.5 million. The group's balance sheet has never been stronger, with own cash of over $1 billion for the first time and no debt, as it has been since the very beginning. With these fundamentals in place, Plus500 remains well positioned to capitalize on both short-term market conditions and medium to long-term growth in our end markets.
Plus500 is a technology company at its core, and the group's vision is to enable trusted and intuitive access to financial opportunities for customers around the world using our technological advantages. To achieve this and reinforce our status as a global multi-asset fintech group, we will continue to invest in our technology to broaden our product range, expand into new markets, leveraging our global brand awareness, and reinforce our leading position across all devices, including mobile and tablets. Delivering on these strategic pillars will strengthen our offering and ensure we are well positioned to grow further. As can be seen in slide six, we offer our services to over 27 million registered customers across more than 60 countries. This sizable and established customer base represents a significant source of both current and future value, and we are determined to drive activation, retention, and monetization of these customers.
Our localized product offering and global operations are supported by our market-leading proprietary technology, our robust financial position, and our portfolio of 13 global regulatory licenses, which we aim to increase over time. Together, these drivers combine to provide a superior offering for our customers, giving us a competitive advantage. Shown here on slide seven are some of the financial and operational highlights for the period. The group delivered revenue growth of 8% and EBITDA growth of 6% versus the same period in 2023, which is an extremely good performance.
Our focus on attracting higher value customers, enabled by our marketing technological initiatives and the effective retention of our existing customers, has led to an increase year on year in both the average deposit per active customer to a level of close to $8,400, and the average revenue per user was $2,264. During the first half of 2024, we had approximately 176,000 active customers across our trading platforms. Plus500's ability to drive growth and innovation while delivering attractive shareholder returns year after year is based on our proven strengths when it comes to attracting, retaining and deepening our engagement with customers. We continue to invest in our technological capabilities and our people during the period to help deliver new products, facilitate deeper relationships with our customers, and improve our offerings.
As a result of our retention efforts, 64% of our OTC revenue was derived from customers who have been trading with Plus500 for over three years, which is a tremendous achievement and a record for Plus500. Customer deposits reached $1.5 billion during the period, and the strength of our mobile offering was once again highlighted... with 87% of OTC revenue being generated from mobile or tablet devices. Our strong results for H1 2024 build on the excellent track record that we have established since our IPO in 2013.
Since then, Plus500 has generated $3.4 billion in cash from operations, $2.7 billion in aggregated net profits, and of that, the company has returned approximately $2.3 billion, which includes the $185.5 million announced today, and the $75 million announced in February 2024, and paid in July 2024 to shareholders, to $1.5 billion in dividends and $0.8 billion in share buybacks. Such shareholder returns position Plus500 as the best-performing stock over the last 11 years in the FTSE All-Share on a total return basis, an achievement that we are extremely proud of. ESG and sustainability form a core part of our business, spanning our research and development teams to our customer service and support teams.
We are committed to being carbon negative by 2030, and we are looking at ways to reduce energy usage, particularly in our data centers. As part of these efforts, in H1 2024, we moved our headquarters offices to a newer and greener building. We always strive to provide the highest level of care and service to our customers, employees, and communities in which we operate. Our customers benefit from access to a wide range of educational tools and a free, unlimited demo account. For our employees, we are focused on welfare and well-being, alongside career development opportunities and building greater diversity within our teams, and in our communities, we contribute to charitable donations, both monetary and in-kind, as well as by empowering employees to undertake volunteering activities.
I will now hand over to Elad, who will take us through the operating review for the first six months of 2024 .
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. It is a pleasure to be speaking with you all again after another successful period for Plus500. The operating review section will include an overview of our operating performance and a look at our growing business in the U.S. futures market during the first half of the year. We're extremely pleased with our operational delivery and strategic progress during the period, which is underpinned by the group's proprietary technology and robust financial position. The highlights include substantial progress in the U.S. futures market within the B2B institutional and the B2C retail propositions. Further product launches, including Knock-Out Options in Japan, improved results from the group's key markets, such as in the UAE, and continued focus on deepening engagement with our customers.
As a result, we delivered a strong financial performance for the half, and we are well-positioned to execute our strategic roadmap in the medium and long term through continued organic investments in accretive bolt-on acquisitions. All of which are doable, thanks to our strong fundamentals underpinning our business and thanks to our highly flexible business model, cost base, and agile organizational culture. Slide 13 shows that Plus500 has established itself as a global multi-asset fintech group in recent years, offering a wide range of products, services, and instruments across its OTC, futures, and share dealing verticals. The transformation from a single-product company to a multi-asset fintech group has been enabled by the group's superior proprietary technology and its ability to quickly develop new technological offerings for new audiences through additional product lines. Such diversification of our business has been highly successful and will continue doing so over the coming years.
Our OTC business covers a range of seven asset classes. The futures business can be split further into a B2C retail offering and a B2B institutional offering, which provides clearing, execution, and SaaS services. We can also see here Plus500 Cosmos, which is a new client portal for our B2B customers, which we will come back to in greater detail later in the presentation. On the right side of the diagram, we can see our share dealing platform, Plus500 Invest, which enables the group to provide its customers with a holistic approach focused on diversification and wider choice. On slide 14, we can see that our active customer base during the first half in 2024 was approximately 176,000, and we onboarded more than 56,000 new customers. We continue to invest in customer retention technologies, resulting in our customers staying with us for longer.
ARPU continued to improve at more than $2,200, and average deposit per active customer had improved as well to the level of approximately $8,400, reflecting a strong and more valuable customer profile to which the group nowadays caters. Our revenue stream remain diverse, and we will continue to invest in our diversification strategy in the future. Moving ahead to slide 15, where we cover the customer tenure and longevity of Plus500's customer base. As you can see, since 2019, there is a very clear trend of retaining our customers for longer time periods, driving higher lifetime values and enabling the groups to generate a greater share of revenue and profits from long-term customers. This reflects the high quality of earnings, as we are not being dependent on driving revenue from new customers only.
Such significant improvements within the longevity of Plus500's customer base is reflected through the blue shaded area on the pie chart. For example, in H1 2024, 88% of OTC revenue was generated by customers who have been with us for more than a year, while 31% of the OTC revenue was generated by customers who have been with us for more than five years. This is an excellent achievement, as the equivalent number from 2019 was just 11%. More specifically, the progress we're presenting you today has been enabled by our focus and investment in our retention technologies, which deepen the relationships we have with our customers, and by our relentless focus on providing them with the best customer care and most innovative trading platforms.
In the next few slides, I will cover more closely our U.S. growth opportunity, applicable to the futures and options and futures products. Shown on slide 16, the U.S. is a major strategic market for Plus500 and a multi-year growth opportunity. Before I dive into the progress we have made during the period, I would like to highlight that for the first time, we're sharing with you today the magnitude of segregated client funds, which the U.S. clients hold with us. It was approximately at the level of $300 million at the end of the period. This is already more than we hold for our entire OTC operations. In the B2B business, we made good progress in developing our institutional offering and established our position as a market infrastructure provider, offering brokerage execution and clearing services.
Our status as a full clearing member of several exchanges has enabled us to build strong relationships with regulated introducing brokers and institutional parties. In the B2C business, our unique customer offering continues to gain good traction with customers, and our marketing initiatives in the U.S. have been supported by our partnership with the iconic NBA Chicago Bulls, with whom we have been working on several successful projects through our multi-year partnership. We will continue to allocate substantial financial and personnel resources to the U.S. futures business as a whole, as we capitalize on the opportunities we see in this attractive market. Plus500 entered the U.S. futures market three years ago. Since then, we have expanded our operations by bringing a substantial amount of technological know-how and engineering expertise, as reflected on slide 17. Our market position in the U.S. is strong and developing quickly.
Plus500 US is regulated by the CFTC and is a member of the National Futures Association and the Futures Industry Association. Plus500 US also holds full clearing memberships with the CME Group exchanges, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, and Eurex. I would like to note that the international clearing memberships that we currently hold represent a highly important and valuable asset for Plus500. They enable us to continue the international expansion of our futures businesses, and therefore, we are working to expand our global footprint through obtaining additional ones. This objective will be supported by our extremely strong financial position and expertise in applying for new clearing memberships. Additionally, as part of our B2C offering, we are proud to have the Plus500 Futures platform, which was launched a few months ago and is already gaining good traction, driven by its omniset solution, which customers find extremely compelling.
Our licenses, memberships, strong balance sheet, partnership, and innovative platforms leave us well positioned to generate continued shareholder value. Overall, our expansion into non-OTC products was a key pillar of our strategic roadmap, and one against which we are delivering real progress. Moving to slide 18. As a reminder, a few months ago, Plus500 launched a new, innovative, easy-to-use trading platform tailored for the retail futures market. This platform is being offered today only in the U.S., but in the short to medium term, this offering will expand into other international markets. The platform is designed to be intuitive, with various operational characteristics which are new to the market.... During the period, we added several new features to the mobile app, including price alerts, increased the number of futures contracts, and added new payment methods to enable a richer user experience for our customers.
The omnibus solution that Plus500 Futures offers, which is the ability for our customers to register, deposit, and trade through one venue, continues to be highly attractive. Continuing to Slide 19, which highlights another important part of our futures offering. T4 is our trading platform in the U.S. futures market, aimed at more professional, sophisticated traders who trade on futures and options on futures. Consequently, it offers customers enhanced trading features, such as a wider product range and professional functionality. The T4 trading platform was relaunched on mobile and tablet devices during the first half of 2024, and it contains new functionalities within the platform, including enhanced technical analysis tools and embedded risk protections, such as auto liquidation. The new mobile app also aligns to the group's design protocols and represents our ongoing commitment to providing customers with a best-in-class trading experience.
On slide 20, we can see the outcome of our continued efforts invested in expanding the U.S. offering. Our most recent example of how we drive innovation is the launch of Plus500 Cosmos, an innovative client portal made during the second quarter of 2024 . The launch of Plus500 Cosmos represents a significant step forward in our efforts to digitalize the futures market, and we're proud to be at the forefront of this. Plus500 Cosmos lies at the core of our U.S. offering for B2B customers and is designed to serve as an all-in-one platform for introducing brokers. Cosmos empowers end customers and IBs to access, analyze, and manage the trading activities seamlessly with new risk management tools alongside the operational, treasury, and technological tools embedded within it. I will now hand back to David, who will take us through our technological stack in more detail.
Thank you, Elad. Turning to slide 22. From day one, our proprietary technology has been a significant competitive advantage. Our global customer base benefit from the strength of our system architecture, which can facilitate significant levels of volumes from all across the globe in a reliable and scalable way. Additionally, during the period, we continued to enhance the development of new retention tools, front-end features, and related technological solutions to enable an enhanced user experience with an increased level of localized features being offered to our customers located in more than 60 end markets. Moreover, the ability to respond rapidly to news and market events, regulatory developments, and customer feedback is a key advantage which we enjoy, thanks to our proprietary technology stack. Over the next few slides, I will cover in more detail the various pillars of our unique technology.
On the next slide, slide 23, I will cover the various technological components which we have developed and continue to develop in-house. Our technology supports all our domains, such as operations, products, marketing capabilities, and customer service. This means our technology can deliver a broad range of specialist services within each of these areas, such as search and data analytics in marketing, payment processing, and customer onboarding. Our domains are built using our own technology, and they are highly integrated with one another, giving a holistic technological view of our operating system, where none of the domains is competing to optimize itself at the expense of another. Our system architecture, therefore, enables us to operate with agility in highly regulated markets and underpins our global multi-asset offering. Moving ahead to slide 24.
Our proprietary technology allows us to support our customers at every stage of their journey and supports all our different domains, including customer acquisition through our marketing technology, registration through our established CRM system, payments through our proprietary cashier, which offers various payment methods with a localized offering, as well as through our unique product offering. In summary, Plus500 is focused on developing and delivering the most innovative and established technology, which provides our global customer base with a localized, intuitive, and secure trading experience. We offer over 2,500 different underlying global financial instruments across more than 60 countries and in 30 languages via our product portfolios of OTC, share dealing, and futures, as can be seen on slide 25. The graphic user interface and the general user experience of all four different products available by Plus500 are similar in order to provide a best-in-class, easy-to-use experience.
Plus500's new technology stack for the U.S. futures market, available across various platforms, serves both retail, professional, and institutional clients. This includes the Plus500 Futures, the T4, and the Plus500 Cosmos, along with advanced clearing, risk management, middle office, and execution technologies. For retail clients, our mobile technological solutions offers an intuitive trading experience, making futures trading accessible to all applicable traders. We also provide access to our trading academy for a fully informed trading journey. For institutional clients, we offer enhanced control over the end-to-end process. Plus500 Cosmos leads industry innovation with the customer portal, featuring advanced risk management tools and trade monitoring services. With these advancements, Plus500 has established itself as a key market infrastructure provider in the futures and options on futures industry. Turning to slide 27, Plus500 is a market leader in the mobile space, and this position is again enabled by our proprietary technology.
It provides our customers with a reliable, robust, and seamless trading experience across mobile devices and tablets. There are many benefits to the way we have developed our unique system architecture and product offering. A core part of that is how well our trading platforms are supported on mobile and tablet devices, with many of our customers adopting a mobile-first approach to trading. Plus500's customer experience is a seamless between mobile, tablet, or web, and each interaction is designed to have the same look and feel. This, in turn, helps to lower customer churn and provides a more consistent trading experience for our customers all over the world. As a result, over 87% of our OTC revenue was generated from customers trading with us on mobile or tablet devices, and over 83% of OTC trades took place on mobile or tablet devices in H1, 2024.
This highlights Plus500's industry leadership when it comes to mobile-first services and our consistent focus on innovation. Slide 28 presents some of the ways in which we support our customers and enable our customer-centric approach. We provide our customers much more than just trading platforms. For example, we also provide them with access to Plus Insights and our recently revamped trading academy. Plus Insights is our proprietary big data analytical tool that is designed to provide customers on our OTC trading platform with access to real-time and historical trends and contexts, using data from the group's extensive customer base. During H1, 2024, we relaunched our trading academy for our OTC customers to include new educational materials, including webinars on different trading strategies.
Finally, for this section, on slide 29, as an example of our technological capabilities enabling a localized approach, in the second quarter of 2024, we launched a new product for our retail customers in Japan, known as Knock-Out Options, which are popular products in the large retail trading market. We launched this product in response to customers' feedback following a period of internal development. It is another great example of our ongoing focus on product innovation and how our local offerings are supported by our global platforms and expertise. I will now hand over to Elad, who will take you through the financials before I return with the summary and outlook section.
Thank you, David. Slide 31 covers the financial highlights for the period. The group delivered meaningful growth in revenue, EBITDA, and basic EPS year on year, driven by its strategic positioning, proprietary technology, and improved customer acquisition trends during the period. Average deposit per active customer increased significantly by 30% to approximately $8,400 during the period, compared to H1 2023, which reflects the focus on higher-value customers and our investment in retention technologies. We maintain our lean and flexible operating model, and our extremely strong financial position continued to improve. This culminated in the group holding over $1 billion of its own funds for the first time, allowing us to announce on a very attractive shareholder returns of over $360 million so far in 2024, including the $185.5 million announced today.
On slide 32, we can see the continued financial progress achieved during the first half compared with the first half of 2023. The group generated revenue of $398.2 million in H1 2024, representing growth of 8% year on year. The EBITDA delivery was also strong, benefiting from the group's lean and flexible cost base, with the group generating an EBITDA of $183.9 million in H1 2024, representing growth of 6% year on year. This robust delivery, combined with the ongoing share buyback program during the period, led to a basic EPS of $1.9, representing growth of 18% year on year. I will now take you through our financials in more detail.
Slide 33 shows the breakdown of the group's income statement in more detail, comparing H1 2024 to H1 2023 and to H2 2023 for completeness. Revenue grew by 8% year on year and by 11% sequentially, both of which are very encouraging. Selling and marketing costs rose as activity levels in our end markets increased, and as we continue to invest in our businesses. On the next slide, I will cover costs in more detail. Slide 34 illustrates our cost base in more detail, which was well controlled year on year. Higher levels of volatility globally were seen at the beginning of the year, before falling back towards the end of the period. This explains the increase in marketing expense seen year on year to approximately $85 million.
Payment processing costs decreased by around 8%, which serves to illustrate the highly flexible nature of our cost base. On the other hand, commission fees rose to $22 million, which can be attributed to the growth of our U.S. futures businesses. Most of our cost base remains variable in nature, which continues to be a key financial strength for Plus500. On slide 35, we can see the group's balance sheet, including the record level of our own cash, which we hold. Our extremely strong financial position is a source of great support for all of our activities, giving us the ability to invest responsibly where we see opportunities and to enhance our shareholder returns where appropriate.
As a result of our strong financial position, we continue to be well-placed to pursue further organic investments and targeted bolt-on acquisitions where we identify growth opportunities and value for our stakeholders. Plus500 has remained debt-free since inception, and for the first time, the group held cash of over $1 billion at the period end, following shareholder distributions of more than $2 billion over the last 11 years. This is a milestone that personally I'm very proud of, as it positions us extremely well to continue executing against our roadmap. Slide 36 presents the cash flow statement. Plus500 remains a highly cash-generative business, supported by lean cost base and proprietary technology. Since our IPO in 2013, our average operating cash conversion has been at the level of 100%.
In the first half of 2024, cash generated from operations was approximately $178 million, and as a result, cash and cash equivalents at the end of June stood at over $1 billion for the first time, as mentioned. On slide 37, I will cover our capital allocation approach. When it comes to capital allocation, the board's objective is to maintain a balance between maximizing shareholder returns, making strategic, organic, and inorganic investments to drive future growth, and developing a sustainable business over the long term. We think about our balance sheet as having two broad categories: required regulatory capital, including working capital, clearing and risk management funds, and surplus capital.
The quantum of the first category was approximately at the level of $550 million as of 30 June 2024, while the second category was approximately at the level of $450 million. These surplus funds will continue to be used to invest in future growth and to deliver enhanced returns to shareholders through share buybacks and dividends. Slide 38 shows our significant track record of delivering shareholder returns. Our shareholder returns policy states at least 50% of net profits are to be distributed to shareholders via dividends and share buybacks, and at least 50% of those distributions will be made through share buybacks. This policy will continue to apply to net profits on a half-yearly basis and will continue to be based on a 23% corporate tax rate for both interim and final distributions.
The board will also consider executing special share buybacks or dividends on a half-yearly basis, dependent on fiscal year results, as well as on investment and growth opportunities. Accordingly, we are pleased to announce today an additional shareholder returns of $185.5 million, comprising $110 million in share buyback programs and $75.5 million of total dividends. Thank you all, and I will now hand back to David for his final remarks.
Thank you for that summary, Elad. Let's now move to the summary and outlook section. As we have shown, H1, 2024 was an excellent period for Plus500, which included further strategic, operational, and financial progress. It builds on our existing track record of delivery, which goes back to our IPO in 2013 . Since then, Plus500 has generated $3.4 billion in cash from operations and $2.7 billion in aggregated net profits. Moving now to slide 41, we chose our strategic roadmap. Our strategic roadmap is clear and is one we formulated back in 2020 to enable Plus500 to become a multi-asset fintech group.
The transformation from being a technology business with one single OTC product offering to a multi-asset fintech group, which offers a variety of products to both B2C and B2B customers, is a testament to the group's unique technological capabilities and agile approach. Looking ahead, Plus500 will pursue innovation, growth, and diversification through the exploration of new products and markets. Our current strategic initiatives include the expansion of our futures business in the U.S., the establishment of operations in the UAE, and the enhancement of our presence in Japan. Moreover, a critical strategic priority for the group is to deepen customer engagement and enhance customer retention. We have made significant strides in recent years by developing and deploying advanced retention technologies, and we remain committed to further improving their performance. We will also intensify our efforts to strengthen and broaden our offering in existing markets.
This will involve the introduction of innovative OTC products where applicable, and the continued assessment of market advancements to ensure our offering remains cutting-edge and highly attractive to our customers. We have established a strong track record of growth, innovation, and have delivered attractive shareholder returns while continuously improving our operations. Utilizing our industry-leading differentiated technology, we are dedicated to attracting and retaining additional higher-value customers, building on the momentum to date. Maintaining a strong financial position is paramount, supporting all aspects of our growth plans and enabling us to provide our shareholders with both attractive and sustainable returns. The board and executive management team have established a strategic roadmap that clearly outlines Plus500's growth objectives, which we are consistently and effectively executing against. In the short term, Plus500 remains strategically well-positioned to capitalize on changes in market conditions, which present our customers with opportunities to pursue their trading strategies.
Driven by this strong strategic positioning, we expect that our revenue and EBITDA for the current financial year will be ahead of current market expectations. Looking farther ahead, the opportunity to drive growth, scale, and compounding value creation is significant. We have strong fundamentals underpinning our business. We are attracting and retaining more customers while putting great focus on customers' longevity. We operate a flexible business model, cost base, and agile organization, and able to respond to customer needs rapidly and to succeed. Moreover, our disciplined approach to capital allocation and track record of value creation leaves us strongly positioned to deliver for our stakeholders. In the medium to long term, we will continue to invest in our strategic roadmap initiatives and our class-leading technology to deepen customer relationships and invest in our people. This is all supported by our robust financial position and highly cash-generative business model.
Thank you for listening, and that marks the end of our presentation. We will now move on to take your questions. We have a facility to take questions over the phone, or please post them on the webcast facility, and Owen Jones, our Head of Investor Relations, will put them to us. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question today, please do so now by pressing star followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. The first question comes from James Allen with Panmure Liberum. Please go ahead.
Hi. Morning, guys. Congrats on a good set of results for the first half. I've got two questions, if I can. First question, do you plan for any other new product launches in Japan or any other geographies? Second question, on the U.S. B2B business, so Plus500 Cosmos allows institutions to log in and see trading positions all in one place, and also provides collateral services. And then, I guess you also own the whole value chain from IB to exchange in that B2B business, both of which are kind of key differentiators. But besides those two points, is there anything that you see as key differentiators in the U.S. B2B market that gives you an advantage over the incumbents? Thanks.
Thank you. As to the first question, so yes, new products. First of all, in Japan, we are expected to launch our full product offering at the end of the year until the end of the year. I remind that currently we initiated the product in Japan with the Forex offering and the knock-out options on Forex only. And we are about to release our multi-asset account until the end of the year. This is with Japan. In addition to this, we are working on additional products, and we will of course announce to the market when applicable.
Hi, good morning, James.
So as for the B2B, I think you could have seen today that our reference point for the Cosmos, it's very much one that brings innovation. Innovation from the technological standpoint of view, the ability to bring the visibility to the various kind of IBs, the regulators, introducing brokers, the institutional parties, a real new CRM system that enables cash in, cash out, treasury capabilities, risk management, and various other means. This is kind of the uniqueness, the technology stack of Plus500. This is the one to lead the way.
Perfect. Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Edward James with Cantor Fitzgerald. Please go ahead, Edward.
Morning. Thanks for taking my question. I've just got a couple, please. With the H1 results pre-announced in July, at least the headline figures where you maintained guidance, can you therefore kind of just take us through the thinking of upgrading guidance today? And is that a signal that Q3 has started stronger than expected, maybe helped by a little bit of increased volatility of late, and that the slowdown in activity seen at the end of Q2, partly due to the Euros football tournament, was truly as kind of a short-term phenomenon and trading activity has re-accelerated? And just as a second question, the U.S. business is clearly performing well.
Can you provide a little bit more color on that to kind of understand how much of the active user growth or the new customer growth is attributable to the U.S. business, and what portion of the overall group it is now? I know you previously stated it was not an insignificant part of the business, and has it grown enough to put another label on it? Thanks.
Hi, good morning. So as for the numbers and the post-close announcement that was issued in July, very much the practice was also historically where and if applicable, such indications obviously come from the board perspective, on the back of the interim results. And very much as you've mentioned, obviously, it reflects the status of the business, the belief of the board as a whole, that indeed the strength of the business is there. And accordingly, and we provided the quote, that we do see numbers should be above market expectations.
As to your second questions, I can elaborate at this point of time that we have a few thousands of active customers in the U.S. Indeed, it's part of the contribution to the numbers that we announced today.
We expect to elaborate more about the numbers in the U.S. at the end of the year.
Thanks.
Our next question comes from Ian Watts with Autonomous Research. Ian, please go ahead.
Hi, there. Thanks for taking my questions. A few from my side, please. Maybe I could just ask for a little bit more on Plus500 Cosmos. I'm interested in particular how the sort of idea and design for that product came about. Is that something that was developed in collaboration with a number of users, for example, or just something that you perceived to be lacking in the market? That's question one, please. Question two also, maybe if I could just ask to see how much detail you're prepared to give on the U.S. businesses. How much revenue did the B2B and B2C segments contribute in 1H 2024? If you're prepared to share that detail, please.
Just lastly, I wondered if you could help me unpick the tax line a little bit. You're still getting the PTE benefit of the 12% rate in Israel. Can you help me to understand a bit of detail around how we are getting to a 19% group tax rate in that context? I get that it's a blend of different jurisdictions, but I thought most of the profit was in Israel and also in Cyprus, where the rate's also very low. Can you just help me understand how we're getting to the 19, please? That would be helpful. Thanks.
Thank you for the question, Ian. So as to the U.S., I'll start with the second question. As we mentioned, we will elaborate in more details about the numbers in the U.S. with more KPIs at the end of the year. Regarding the Cosmos, so when we started the journey in the U.S., and we identified the opportunity in the B2B, we started to meet potential IBs, introducing brokers, institutional clients, and we identified that there is a missing part in the industry, which is a proper client portal, which this is the Cosmos. This client portal, the Cosmos that we developed internally, we did it together in collaboration with some of our customers and potential customers.
We learned what is missing, what they would like to see and have, and we developed it. This platform basically provides all the solutions to the IBs and to their customers from the online onboarding, online depositing, many types of dashboards that they can see, many things they can do, many activities that now, in most of the industry, you need to do it by emails, by requests. So all will be automated in the Plus500 way, in one system. Obviously, we went live with the Cosmos, but it's still, we have more features to come, and we will keep upgrading the products and innovate it.
Hi, and good morning. So as for the tax reference point, very much, you're right.
The blended figure is at the level of approximately 19%. Reasoning straightforward, as you've mentioned, according to the Israeli Authority rate of the 12%, but more specifically, on a global basis, we have operation in the U.S., in the U.K., in Australia, and so. So this kind of brings you also to an upper level of another couple of few percentages, like another 3%-4%. And then also you come across with FX impact as very much the books, the local books are not always in U.S. dollars as a given, right? So you do have the FX exposure that is from the tax local liability, from a U.K. sterling perspective or the Aussie dollar, and so on.
This is life, so one drives the other. It's always also the FX impact together with the blended increase, more than 12, 13 operations across the globe, that drives as well the different level of tax rate.
Okay, thanks. And just on the tax rate then, would you... Do you see this as a sort of normal level for the group through to FY 2026, I think, when the PTE-
IIA.
Authorization comes up for renewal?
Sure. I always indicated to the market that the 20% is the relevant reference point to have, and more specifically, as the U.S. figures will continue to grow very much, one will drive the other, so another percent here, another percent there, so very much, I'm aligned with the area of the 20%. This is what was discussed historically, and very much this is the case.
Okay, thanks.
Thanks.
Other questions on the phone lines, and so I will hand over to Owen to take any webcast questions.
Morning. Thank you. We have a couple of questions that come in via the webcast, slightly more broad in nature. The first one is, with regards to volatility during the first half. In particular, the question references volatility in, some of our larger FX pairings. For example, the dollar/yen, was volatile during the period. How does Plus500 benefit from changes in, in volatility? That's the first question. Second question, again, headline level, can we outline some of our contingency plans that we have across the group, in the event of any outages, for example?
Sure, thanks, Owen. So as for the level of volatility, I think this is very much the area of the strength of Plus500, presented this time, and also over the last, I would say, few quarters. The ability to generate very strong set of results, also when market conditions are not within their peak. And we're all familiar with the fact that the VIX was at the level of its lowest peak over the last five years, and still very much Plus500 was in a great position to deliver that set of results. It connects also to the retention technologies that we're having. It connects very much to the customer support, the increased service that we provide today.
It connects also to the technological stack that we've added over the last couple of years. So altogether, you see the greater level of appreciation of the customers, and as a result, the longevity of the clientele has increased significantly. So if we're looking more specifically from the element of the vol, yes, one will very much drive the other when it will come back and be more active. And yet again, when it's not there, not necessarily we're being dependent on new customers only.
Owen, can you please repeat the second question?
Sure. It was to do with what contingency plans we have in place across the group for different scenarios.
Yes. So, obviously, as a global company, over the years, we've built a global operation. The company is Israeli, but the operational headquarters is located outside of Israel, and most of the operations of Plus500 are being managed from Bulgaria, from Sofia. Our servers are located in the U.K., and we have redundancy teams for all the crucial operations around the group. Basically, nothing depends in any specific country.
Thanks, David. No further questions from the webcast at this time, so I'll hand back to Emily.
Thank you. As we have no further questions, I will hand back to David for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thank you, Owen. Thank you, everyone, for your questions. As we have illustrated today, Plus500 has a clear strategic roadmap, and we made excellent progress against this during the first half of the year. Plus500 remains strategically well positioned in all of its markets, and the board and management look forward with confidence to the remainder of 2024 and beyond. Thank you, everyone.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us today. This concludes our call, and you may now disconnect your line.