Good morning, everyone. I'm David Zruia, Plus500 CEO, and I'm joined by Elad Even-Chen, our Group CFO. Thank you for joining us today for our half year results. Slide two shows the agenda for today. Once the presentation is over, we will be happy to take your questions. I will start today with a brief overview of our business and our key growth opportunities. Slide four shows the key takeaways for the period. In the first half of 2023, Plus500 delivered a strong set of operational and financial results, despite lower volumes across the wider financial market. The main highlights were double digits revenue and EBITDA growth against the presenting half year. We made continued progress against our strategic objectives, harnessing our class-leading technology and market-leading capabilities to become more diversified, both geographically and by product.
Our successful geographic expansion continued in the half, further building on our success in the U.S., the UAE, and most recently, in the Bahamas. We also launched our innovative proprietary technology in the U.S., Plus500 Futures. We once again recorded a strengthened cash position, owing to our highly cash generative and high-quality earnings model, which has enabled the company to deliver compelling value for our shareholders during the period. You will have seen in today's results announcement that we are returning an additional $120 million to shareholders, which is comprised of new share buyback program of $60 million and an interim dividend of $60 million. Let me start with our performance highlights. Our financial performance was strong, with double-digit growth in revenue, EBITDA, and EPS against H2 2022.
H1 2023 provides a more meaningful comparator versus H2 2022, given the significantly heightened volatility experienced in H1 2022 across financial markets following the geopolitical events. The increased EBITDA margin demonstrates the strength of our highly flexible cost base. We were also pleased to see further rise in the average deposit per active customer to approximately $6,450, highlighting the continuing trust and confidence our customers have in our trading platform. Customer income, a key measure of the group's underlying performance, remained consistent. Before we move on, I'd like to pause and consider how Plus500 has evolved from a business that provided a single OTC-based product, seen here on the left-hand side of the slide, into a diversified group you see today on the right.
We are now a business which offers a wide range of products, services, and instruments across the OTC, share dealing, and futures verticals. Many of you will recall the new strategic roadmap we announced three years ago to diversify our business. This slide shows how much progress we are making. The strategic plan has led to our first three acquisitions in the US and Japan. Furthermore, it has allowed us to obtain new licenses in countries as dispersed as Estonia, UAE, and most recently, in the Bahamas, and enabled us to launch a number of new technologies and products. The success we have achieved on our roadmap to becoming an established global multi-asset fintech group are very much evidenced through today's presentation. Our diversification strategy has delivered significant rewards for us and for our shareholders.
On the left-hand side, you can see the benefits that our diversification strategy has brought to our business. Even in counter markets, we are able to benefit from the inherent strength of our operating model, thanks to our diversified revenue streams. On the right-hand side, you will see the financial benefits that this approach is bringing in the form of greater predictability and visibility to our financial performance, reduced risk, more opportunities, and the ability to deliver returns through the cycle. As we look back over the past 10 years, the fruits of these strategic decisions are clear. This year marks the 10th year anniversary since our IPO, and it's worth reminding ourselves how far we've come. We are proud to have delivered consistently outstanding performance, returning approximately $1.9 billion to shareholders, representing approximately 83% of the cumulative net profit generated during that time.
This puts us amongst the top cohort of companies on a total returns basis in the FTSE All-Share Index. Before I hand over to Elad, I want to touch on sustainability. Sustainability remains a core part of our business. We are making good progress across a number of key areas. On environmental issues, we have committed to achieving carbon negative target by 2030, and are looking at ways to reduce energy usage, particularly in our data centers.... On the social side, we remain committed to providing the highest level of care to our customers, employees, and our community. For customers, we go to great lengths to ensure they are properly educated about how to safely get the best of, out of their platform, through various tools such as educational content, insights, and demo accounts.
In our communities, we aim to make our contribution through charitable donations, both monetary and in-kind, as well as by employees volunteering. For employees, we are focusing on career development opportunities and building greater gender diversity within our teams. Finally, from a governance perspective, we are proud to now have gender parity on our board and our highly experienced board members, led by our chair, Professor Jacob Frenkel, Chair of the G30, bring a variety of experiences as we strive for flawless governance in our group. I will now hand over to Elad to discuss our operational performance during the period.
Thank you, David, and good morning, everyone. I'd like to start by highlighting some of the key factors that contributed to our strong operational and financial performance in the first half of 2023. We now have 13 international operating licenses, more than 25 million registered customers, three distinct product categories, market leadership position in key strategic markets, and over 500 employees around the world. This asset, supported by our strong balance sheet and lean operating model, helps to drive our growth and enable us to generate value for our shareholders. Slide 12 summarizes the great strategic progress we delivered during the first six months of the year. The US represents a huge growth opportunity, and we're very pleased with the strong and growing position we have in the US futures market, both from a B2B and B2C perspective.
Our best-in-class technology and innovation are what differentiate Plus500, we continue to invest in developing cutting-edge products and services to be offered on a worldwide basis. The next slide, slide 13, shows the depth and breadth of the international licenses that we have obtained in recent years. The wide range and quality of these licenses underscores the international nature of our business and our status as a trusted market leader, ultimately serving as a key differentiator for Plus500. Against a constantly evolving regulatory landscape, we have a robust framework in place to enable growth and to ensure we remain aligned with the relevant regulatory requirements in the various geographies in which we operate. Our industry is highly regulated. Our product, OTC, share dealing, and futures, are globally regulated by IOSCO, with major regulators in each territory driving alignment with this global regulation.
We're excited about our growing portfolio of licenses, with the most recent licenses obtained in 2023 from the DFSA in the United Arab Emirates and from the SCB in the Bahamas. Our portfolio of international licenses represents a unique and valuable asset for the group. Considered together, these licenses serve as an economic moat around our business, heightening also the entry barriers to the industry. Additionally, our expertise in obtaining regulatory licenses leaves us well positioned to secure additional licenses in new territories. Turning to slide 14. Our performance was propelled by the efficiency of our proprietary technology, strategic investment, and continuous endeavors to foster deepened engagement with valuable long-term customers. Of note, over half of our OTC revenue in the first half of 2023 was derived from customers trading with us for more than three years.
Customer deposits were at the level of $1.1 billion, which highlights consistently high customer loyalty and confidence in our products. We continue to lead the mobile and tablet space with 87% of our OTC revenue in the first half of 2023 being generated from customers trading on mobile or tablet devices, underscoring our market leadership position and our continued focus on innovation in this area. On the next slide, I will cover our growth opportunities in the U.S., a major strategic market for Plus500. The U.S. was again a noteworthy highlight for our business in the first half of the year. With regards to our institutional offering, we made good progress in developing our position as a market infrastructure provider, offering brokerage execution and clearing services.
Our status as a full clearing member of the CME Group exchanges and the Minneapolis Grain Exchange has enabled us to build strong relationships with additional introducing brokers and institutional parties. This effort has in turn been supported by our marketing collaboration with the iconic NBA Chicago Bulls, where we have been working on a number of successful initiatives through our multi-year partnership. During Q1, 2023, we also launched a new B2C proprietary trading platform, Plus500 Futures, an intuitive futures trading platform specifically tailored for US retail traders. Both Plus500 Futures and TradeSniper ensure we have a highly differentiated proposition in this market, with high levels of automation and technological integration.
Plus500 Futures' fully holistic solution of onboarding, depositing, and trading includes features that are available for the first time for retail customers in the US futures market, which to the best of our knowledge, is a first for the industry. We will continue to allocate substantial financial and personnel resources to the US as we build an end-to-end one-stop shop that caters for U.S. retail investors. Our active customer base of over 175,000 customers remained at a consistent level to the previous period, despite a period of low activity across financial markets. Encouragingly, more than 60,000 new customers were onboarded during the period. Average revenue per user was approximately the level of $2,000, again, demonstrating the unique strength of our technology and our broader customer offering.
Customer loyalty and longevity remain an enduring driver of our success, with 55% of OTC revenue being derived from customers who have traded with us for more than three years. This marks a new record for the business and is an important marker of our high-quality client base, considering this ratio stood at just 20% four years ago. Slide 18 sets out the returns we're able to generate from our highly targeted marketing activity. The graph shows the cumulative average revenue from OTC active customers since their first deposit in 2018. You can see that during the period between 2018 and the first half of 2023, the cumulative average revenue is more than $4,000. This demonstrates not only the trust customer place in the group's trading platform, but also their high quality, long-term value to us.
It also reflects the value of our global client base, who choose to trade with Plus500, thanks to our best-in-class proprietary technology, engineered for optimum usability, high functionality, and reliability. I will now hand back to David, who will share some details on our technology.
Thank you, Elad. Our technology is what sustains our significant competitive advantage. Our technology is fully developed in-house, and therefore, we can deliver the most innovative trading platforms to our customers wherever they happen to be. As a result, our global customer base enjoys the strength of our back-end system and systems architecture, alongside the front-end and related technological solutions which are unique to Plus500. Additionally, having our self-developed technology means that we pay no license fees, no royalties to third parties, ensuring we can rapidly respond to news and market events, regulatory developments, and customer feedback. Our technology is a key differentiator for us, so over the next few slides, we would like to give you a taste of what makes it unique.
On the next slide, slide 20, you can see that we offer our customers a range of trading products, including our market-leading and long-standing OTC product, alongside our new and exciting products in share dealing, as well as futures and options on futures. To our OTC product portfolio, we offer over 2,500 different underlying global financial instruments across more than 50 countries and in 30 languages. Our proprietary share dealing platform, Plus500 Invest, continues to drive the expansion of our product range and geographic footprint, as well as improving customer retention and further diversifying our revenue base. Our trading platforms are supported by innovative technologies. For example, PlusInsights is the new proprietary big data analytical tool designed to provide customers on our OTC trading platform with access to real-time and historical trends based on the group's broad customer base. On to the next slide.
As we operate in a highly regulated environment, we have had to think incredibly hard about how we build our tech platforms and how we add to them. Every element of our technology is seamlessly interconnected across our operations, product, and marketing capabilities, and supported by robust systems architecture. This means our technology can deliver a broad range of specialist services within each of these areas, such as search and data analytics, marketing, payments, processing, and customer onboarding. In addition, the ability to rapidly add new tools, features, and financial instruments for product offering, enables us to speedily address customer needs and new regulatory requirements. The platform has been purposely built to support the needs of our customers through constant investment, innovation, and to make trading as user-friendly, fast, and reliable as possible.
Our platform has been designed to allow us to support our customers at every stage of their journey with us across our marketing, operations, and the trading products we provide. The key components include customer acquisition through our marketing technology, registration, onboarding, authentication, and CRM, payments, as well as through the product offering itself. There are many benefits to the way we have developed our unique technology architecture. We make the customer journey agile and secure, meaning that our customers stay with us for the long term. Our technology also allows for tailored localization, market by market, giving us a real advantage with customers in their home market around the world. As a group, we also benefit from this support. Financial regulations change all the time, so having a platform which can quickly adjust to new legislation means we can keep our customers running continuously.
Thanks to the way the platforms have been built, we have total visibility over customers' behavior, which allows us to adapt quickly and easily to their needs. I will now hand over to Elad, who will discuss our financial results.
Moving on to the financial overview, starting on slide 25 with the financial highlights for the period. Our consistent operational performance drove robust financial results in the first half of 2023. Total revenue increased by 15% against the second half of 2022 to $368.5 million. EBITDA increased by 17% over the same period to $174.1 million, with EBITDA margin of 47%. Turning to slide 26. Revenue during the period was supported by growth in trading income and interest income. As a consequence, we achieved yet another robust EBITDA performance, supported by the efficiency and adaptability of our cost structure, which I will elaborate on slide 27. We continue to invest in marketing activity to seize those opportunities that deliver attractive levels of ROI.
We also continue to invest in our staff to ensure that we continue to bring the brightest and the best talent to our business. You can see here that the majority of our cost base remains heavily weighted towards variable costs, with 70% of our costs being variable during the period. This is a key financial strength for Plus500, in an uncertain and dynamic economic environment, which enables us to remain disciplined and agile on cost. Turning to the balance sheet on slide 28. Since inception, we have sought to perform in an efficient and responsible manner by generating strong returns for our stakeholders and by maintaining a robust balance sheet free of any debt or loans.
Our balance sheet continues to display a remarkable strength, with cash balances of approximately $850 million at the end of the period, supported by our attractive operating margin, which enables us to generate high returns. As a result, we are well positioned to pursue further organic investment and targeted acquisitions where we identify growth opportunities. Slide 29 covers the cash flow. With cash generated from operations of $130.4 million after investing $214.1 million. As part of the share buyback program and the share purchase took place on June 13, 2023, cash and cash equivalents at the end of the period were approximately at the level of $850 million. Plus500 remains highly cash generative, supported by low levels of capital expenditure due to our automated processes and technological capabilities.
I will now discuss our approach to capital allocation on slide 30. The board is continuously evaluating the surplus capital attempt with a focus on maintaining a balance between maximizing shareholder return, making strategic investments in future growth, and securing sustainable business continuity in the long run. Specifically, the board's objective is to uphold adequate levels of accessible capital for our essential regulatory obligations, working capital needs, risk management, and hedging and clearing activities. We estimate that our current required capital is approximately at the level of $550 million. Our surplus capital was approximately at the level of $300 million at the end of the period, and will continue to be used to invest in future growth and to deliver returns to shareholders with share buyback and cash dividends.
It is evident that both of our required capital and surplus capital will evolve over time, influenced by many of internal and external factors. On that note, I will cover shareholder returns on slide 31. In the 10 years since the company's IPO, Plus500 has returned approximately $1.9 billion to its shareholders, and as you can see from the chart on the left, this represents approximately 79% of the cumulative net profit we have generated during that time. We have also announced today an interim dividend of $60 million, representing $0.7344 per share, and a new share buyback program of $60 million, which will commence following the completion of the existing program.
This new share buyback program is in addition to the current outstanding program, which was announced earlier this year. All in all, shareholder returns of approximately $360 million have been announced so far in 2023. According to the shareholder returns policy, the company will continue to return at least 50% of net profit to dividend and share buyback programs, and at least 50% of the shareholder return distribution will be made by way of share buyback. This policy will continue to apply to net profit on a half-yearly basis and will continue to be based on a 23% corporate tax rate for both interim and final distribution. The board will also consider executing special share buybacks or dividend on a half-yearly basis, dependent on fiscal year results, as well as on investment and growth opportunities.
I will now hand back to David for his final remarks.
Thank you, Elad. Let's now look at the outlook for Plus500 on slide 33. The board remains confident about the outlook for Plus500 and optimistic about the group's performance for full year 2023 and beyond. Our focus remains firmly on harnessing the strength of our high quality operating model and the growth opportunities ahead of us, both organic and inorganic. Our cash generative earnings model, combined with our continued strategic operational and financial position, ensure we are well-placed to deliver sustainable growth and strong returns in the medium to long term as an established global multi-asset trading group. There are a number of reasons for this confidence in our longer-term outlook. Firstly, our position in the US gives us a foothold in what is a growing market, underpinned by exciting structural tailwind. As we leverage our best-in-class technology and apply to the market, the upside opportunity is considerable.
We have touched on interest income, and with the global interest rate environment shifting, we are likely to see some benefit. Our geographic expansion forms a key part of our growth strategy as we strengthen our customer proposition and become a more diversified business, taking the Plus500 platform to more markets around the world. Our proven ability to obtain new regulatory licenses demonstrate this strategy in action. When it comes to our proprietary technology, this is the linchpin of our operation, fueling our competitive advantage. We are excited about the opportunity ahead to add more products, more asset classes, more instruments, and in doing so, to bring the world of trading to more people. With our proprietary technology providing a firm operational and commercial foundation, we have a clear strategic roadmap, which we are delivering against.
We will continue to enter new markets, launch new products, expand our product offering in existing markets, and deepen our engagement with customers, which will ultimately deliver growth and value for the business and our shareholders. That's all from us. We'll be happy to take your questions now. Feel free to ask us questions directly over the phone or post them on the webcast facility, and Owen Jones, our new head of IR, will put your questions to us. Thank you.
Thank you. I'd now like to pass it over to Eoin Jones for any written questions.
Morning. Thank you for your questions. We've got a few that have come in from the webcast. I'll start with Nick Anderson at Liberum. He has two questions. The first is on the U.S. business. He says, "We've seen the continued positive progress on the build-out of the U.S. business in the first half. Is this progress in line with management expectations, and what do we see as the next phase of development?" His second question is relating to client cohorts. He says, "We have delivered continued good progress in growing revenues from key client cohorts, for example, 55% of OTC revenues now coming from clients who have traded with us for more than three years. What do you attribute this positive progress to? Is there anything that you're working on in this area that you can share to drive further improvements?
Yeah. Thank you, Owen. It's David here. Absolutely, the progress in the US is completely in line with our plans. First of all, we have done a soft launch of two platforms. The first one is the TradeSniper, and the second one is Plus500 Futures. We see very positive momentum, and we are about to have a full launch of this product, meaning to ramp up the marketing and start onboarding more customers once we completed the QA and testing the environment on production, on live. This is with the B2C. With the B2B, as we mentioned earlier, we have now a full clearing member in CME, and in other e-exchanges. Within the...
Also we, we added the clearing technologies that we have developed, as well as execution with the T4. We are onboarding more and more professional customers, and in general, more customers. We see the run rate of revenues also increasing month by month. Of course, that in the future, we will elaborate more about this. We, we keep the next phases, as mentioned, this is for the second part of the question, is to ramp up the marketing, to keep onboarding more customers, to keep adding more features to our products offering. Basically, just to summarize, we are on track with everything, and we see the outlook as very much positive.
Hi. Good morning, all. It's Elad. As for Owen, your second question, which was focused on the cohort itself. As you could see also on the numbers themselves, within the deck that we launched this morning on slide 17, very much, we indicated that 55% of the first half of 2023 revenues was generated by customers that were with us for more than three years. More specifically, the portion that from the customers that were with us and are with us for more than five years, actually, was and is about 32%. About a third of the revenues is from customers that are very much sticky customers, are with us for the longer term.
What we can learn from it is that due to the technological development that we're having associated with new initiatives, first of all, is the premium account service. Plus500 put a great level of focus over the last 12-18 months on the premium account development, including the retention technologies that we brought alive. We're running over massive, massive databases, and thanks to the AI and big data capabilities that we developed through the Google Cloud machines. We can see that the churn level also has reduced compared to 2022. Very much we're having today, 25, more than 25 million registered customers, and from fresh perspective, it's more than, like, 10+ million registered customers over the last three years.
Very much we can see that level of attraction, that level of usage from those users within also the demo accounts and the usability of the trading platform. It is important to mention that from a premium account service, Plus500 still caters all the customers on the same level. All tariffs are the same from treat your customer fairly. We're not differentiating one customer versus the other, as opposed to potential other peer group, and very much we're proud to be within that position, that we cater all the customers accordingly. You could see that as we continue also to diversify our proposition within new instruments, new platform, new products, the customer very much appreciate it, and it goes within our leadership, within the mobile devices.
85% of the revenues and transactions and so are coming from the mobile devices, and Plus, not by coincidentally, is leading the mobile space.
Okay, thanks, guys. Our next question is from Stuart Duncan at Peel Hunt. A couple of parts to this question. He is asking about the competitive landscape, and can we discuss this in a bit more detail? In particular, in the US market, both the retail and the institutional, how do we think we're going to compete against the incumbents in this area? Can we give a sense at all of revenue contribution from some of the new areas, like the US opportunity and Plus Invest? When would you expect these opportunities to become more material to the group?
Thanks for the question. Very much the US, when you are assessing the opportunity out there, it's being split, as you just mentioned, into two buckets. The first one is for the B2C. When Plus500, they assess the opportunity in the US, we, as always, went for bringing something new, something innovative, and to develop a new proprietary technology. What we've done is actually that we developed a piece of software that caters today new abilities to deposit funds through, or to open an account in a quick manner, or kind of to get an access on demo accounts and various other kind of characteristics that are not within the industry.
When we're kind of comparing Plus500 to the other peer group, with all the knowledge and the expertise from the technological point of view, also from a marketing side, we truly know that we're going to lead the space of the futures in the U.S. Yes, very much it's a big milestone, but where and when we are kind of assessing already the KPIs, we feel very comfortable that according to the strategic milestones of Plus 400, we'll be within that position. Now, as for kind of the B2B area, we're progressing very well. When we're saying we're progressing very well, it's like going into the understandings of what we're doing behind the scene.
We truly build a new piece of company behind kind of, the radar, under kind of a very scrutinized level of environment, having the ability, first of all, to clear institutional bodies on all the exchanges. Also, of course, the CME, the Minneapolis Grain Exchange, but also from ICE and other kind of, exchanges on international basis. Today, we're already catering a significant amount of IBs, regulated IBs, and also institutional bodies, and thanks to that, we see great advantage compared to the bodies that are coming with debt, with loans, and also with less technological capability. Those parties in the US, they appreciate what we bring to the table. Even if, kind of, you are sitting with old school parties, they do see the added value of getting the service from Plus500.
From the execution side, very much as well, we're kind of going to launch a new set of platform of the T4, and this is kind of going to happen in the next few months. As well, their new innovative solutions will be kind of be available for the institutional bodies.
Okay. Thank you. The next question comes from Zach Wertz at Autonomous. He's asking about the FCA's Consumer Duty program. Can you provide your views on this, and how do we see it impacting the business going forwards?
Yes, absolutely. Obviously, we have completed the implementation of the necessary changes to our processes as part of the FCA Consumer Duty legislation. Obviously, there is an impact on, on, on the onboarding funnel, but as it- it's already embedded, some of it is already embedded within the numbers that we announced today. I think Plus500 was always, over the last few years specifically, but always conservative, and implemented more measures than necessary. We are quite positive about the outlook. We will keep, I- we, we think that it's very much positive to protect the customers, and, and, we'll keep implementing the required legislations, and we are very much positive about the outlook of our business in the UK as well.
Okay, thank you. We have another question here relating to our regulatory capital. Do we provide a breakdown of this? Does the company's strong balance sheet provide a good backdrop for us to continue our expansion into new markets?
Sure. Actually, we have a dedicated slide in the investor deck, slide 30, and it covers that element. You can see that we as a board, we estimate that we would like to have, at all times, at least $550 million in order to cater the business needs. More specifically, it's not just the regulatory capital, which actually is the lower bar of this threshold, but actually, as well, the working capital element, the risk management and the hedging component, and of course, the clearing services for the U.S. futures market. Altogether, we feel very comfortable with the balances of the 550, in order to continue, from a business continuity perspective, to continue to operate and to develop the business.
In addition to that, we've mentioned very specifically, that we have a buffer of at least $300 million to come across and to be aligned with our shareholders and with our stakeholders, and to continue to distribute both buybacks and dividends, thanks to the fact that we have a very healthy balance sheet, without any debt or loans. Due to the fact that the valuation of the company is nowhere compared to where we, as management, as a board, we believe it should be, very much we can see the fundamentals of the business, both from operational perspective, geographical expansion-wise, product expansion-wise, and therefore, we know that the buyback element reflects the mission that we're after.
Okay, thank you. We have a couple of questions here from some of our retail shareholders, which is great. Looking at our customer numbers in general, and as the company continues to expand into new markets, how should we expect this number to develop, the, the number of, of customers in total to develop as we expand into new markets?
Yeah. Absolutely, as, as we always mentioned, Plus500, performance is very much related also to the volatility in the markets. Obviously, when there is more volatility and more interest in the financial news out there, it drives more traffic in the internet, in general, in Google and other venues, and it allows us to cater, to attract more customers to our platform. Obviously, over the last, the, the last, few quarters were, we were with lower volatility and less, relevancy of, financial searches, out there. With all the, expansion to the new market, the new geographies, we create, the fundamentals, to bring more customers in the future.
Obviously, that, when volatility will improve, we will be able to cater more customers even than in the past. This is how we see this. We are very much positive about the outlook of this, as well.
Okay. Final question from the webcast, and I think it's, it's been a popular topic previously, which is our hedging policy. Have we made any, any developments on this during the period? Do we expect our thinking in this area to evolve in the future?
Very much, that's the case. Plus has kind of revised or reviewed again, its hedging policy a couple of years ago, and we do conduct a level of hedging as, and if needed. We are very much assessing the situations in the capital market, and based on the volatility, based on the exposures, we may conduct hedging in the market. I believe that the numbers speak for themselves. You can see the, the, the strong set of the results.
If you are looking on the longer term of the horizons, if it's from 2010, even up to this year, we're neutral on the customer and trading performance almost, and very much as well, if you are comparing the year of 2020, the year of the COVID, until today, again, very minimal, de minimis number is associated with the market PNL, which I can't say the same with the other peer group. Plus demonstrates, again, its superior technological edge, also within the risk management framework, to be in a position to properly manage the exposures and not to burn hundreds of millions of dollars with a hedging mechanism, which there is no need for it.
Thank you. The first question from the conference call, comes from the line of Ben Williams from Shore Capital. Please go ahead, Ben, your line is now open.
... David and Owen, good morning to you all. Thanks for your answers. David, you, you teased us with talking about your emerging US businesses and the possibility of more disclosure, obviously, as they grow. Can you give us a rough sense of, you know, when you think it might be appropriate to give us more granularity on the US businesses? Also, could I ask if you might commit to maybe medium-term targets for the US business, in the way that IG did when it had new business lines? Thanks.
Obviously, during the Capital Markets Day of last year, we shared with the market that we expect to have revenues of about $250 million from the US operation within three to five years. We hope that next year we will already share some numbers. In the meanwhile, we didn't share with today's report and with the market, so we cannot elaborate further. As mentioned, it looks very good from our side operationally. The run rate is, is increasing months by months, according to our plans.
Thank you. That's very helpful.
Welcome.
Thank you. There are no additional questions waiting at this time, so I'd like to pass the conference back over to the management team for any closing remarks.
Yeah. Thank you everyone for your questions. Just to sum up, Plus500 delivered strong performance during the first half of 2023. Supported by a very strong balance sheet and continuing investment in growth opportunities, we remain extremely well positioned for the future. We look forward to updating the market on our program in due course. We would like to thank you all once again for taking the time to be with us today. Thank you.