Good morning, everyone. Welcome to our half-year press conference, 2024. We are here at our headquarters in Gland, and I am together with our CFO, Yvan Cardenas, and the two of us will bring Yuh to the presentation this morning, and then also be available for the Q&A session that will follow the initial presentation. So I hope you had a chance to download the PowerPoint presentation. Otherwise, you can just follow the presentation here, and I will directly start to page number 4 that gives the main numbers for this first half-year results.
It was an exceptional half year, the best in the history of Swissquote, which is, we used to say that because half year after half year, we are able to improve our bottom line, our top and bottom line, and this has been the case now since six consecutive half years. More if we forget about the year 2020 and 2021. That is the special COVID years. But Swissquote is a company that is growing since many years. But this first half year has really been mind-blowing in terms of revenue and profit. Look at the numbers here. The revenue grew by 19.3% to CHF 316 million, pre-tax profit to almost CHF 170 million.
So that's a +35.9%. We also had a strong increase of net new monies to CHF 3.8 billion. And fundamentally, the company is also growing in terms of new accounts since we have been able to welcome more than 36,000 new clients and new accounts at Swissquote. So all in, an exceptional half year with record numbers in all dimension. If we look on what we consider as being the fundamental growth, because all the rest is a little bit of market volatility, but what is making our day is the two most important things, which is client growth. And you can see this here on the right side of the chart.
You see that it's growing and growing since, since, since many, many, half years to more than 610,000 clients now. So that's a jump if we compare it with H1 2021. That's almost 33% of growth. And this in a situation where the average assets per account has been stable to around CHF 100,000, now CHF 111,000 here at the end of the year. Of course, pushed a little bit by very good markets that we had in the first half. If we go on the net new money side, CHF 3.8 billion, that's better than 2023, and better than 2022. If you forget about this inorganic growth in the first half of 2022.
So this is within the boundaries we have set ourselves as a target. Remember, we say that usually we want to grow between CHF 6 billion-CHF 7 billion of net new monies. And here, with CHF 3.8 billion in the first half, we have more than achieved our initial target. So very good numbers, and it gives us a lot of hope for the coming half year. And also proof that our products and our service level is appealing to many clients. Where do we grow the most? Here, these are the four main geographical locations where we do grow. So of course, number one is Switzerland. This is our home base, and this has always been a very strong contributor to net new money.
And here in the first half, Europe, and mainly our bank in Luxembourg, has had strong growth with almost CHF 1 billion of net new monies in the period. And then we have Middle East Asia, where we have one, which is one of our stronghold, and the rest of the world, a little bit lower. That depends a little bit on the market dynamics. This picture may be a little bit different in the second half, where we see other growth avenues. But again, Switzerland and Europe are the most two important contributor to our assets, and this is in line with our global strategy.
If you look at net net revenues now, at CHF 316.9 million, so it's, it's a well-diversified picture. Looking at the five revenue segments we are publishing, so all revenue segments has contributed to to these higher net revenues, with with two exceptions, the eForex and the interest revenue, which are which are flattish compared with H2 2023. So in the case of interest revenues, this is kind of normal, even though the the balance sheet has grown, so the client has put more cash. The you you're aware that the interest rates have come down a little bit. We had have had a few rate cuts in the period, and this explains why it has stayed flattish.
So one has compensated the other, so more cash, but lower interest rates. In the eForex side, it was a half year with low volatility, but we think that we have quite a high potential because the eForex assets, which at the end of the day is the fuel that you put into the trading machine, is at the record level of CHF 673 million. So this also gives us good hope that as soon as volatility is coming back in the currency markets, that they will have, again, growth in this sector.
Now, looking at the clients' assets of CHF 68 billion, so that was the situation at the end of June, so at the end of the first half. It's mainly in securities, so our clients are mainly invested in various different securities, up to 86%, and the rest, 14% is cash. And you can see here on the right side of the charts, the evolution of our total client assets up to these best results ever of CHF 68 billion. Now, it's fair to ask, since we are already in August, what's the situation after the market crash we experienced last over the last week?
So currently, and that was the situation of last Friday, we are at CHF 66.4 after the market impact. So of course, like every other bank, we had an impact on the market crash, but many of that has been recovered the day after when the markets recovered. So nevertheless, we have. This is the highest client asset we ever had. And also, if you look at the margin on assets, so which is the revenue divided by the clients' assets with almost more than 100 basis points, this also is a very good number, which is at the highest level of our bandwidth, which is between 90 and 100 basis points.
If you look at the net revenues by customer profile, and especially concentrating on the customer domicile here on the left side, you see that Switzerland is still the biggest contributor, but all the other markets have now improved and increased. With Europe, as I said before, being the second largest contributor with 19%, and then we have the Middle East, the Asia region, which is with 13%. So this picture does not change a lot. It's compliant with our strategy and the places where we would like to grow our business. If you look at the net revenue by customer type, it's about two-thirds or three-quarters B2C business. That's the historical business of Swissquote.
We started as a retail bank many years ago, but as you can see, we have really improved the institutional business and the B2B, and the B2B2C now represents 26%, and this is also a picture that hasn't changed a lot compared with the previous half years. If you look at net revenues by asset class, you know, so it's a very nice picture. I like it a lot, the one on the left. It shows that we're making money with various revenue classes. So the first one, of course, here, being the cash, that's the situation with interest rates and the reversal of the situation since we went out of the negative interest period.
But then comes fixed income and the foreign exchange, and you can see here, ordered by the highest percentage, the various revenue segments. Crypto assets, mainly, was worth to mention, we had quite a good half year, and it represents 11% of the total net revenues. So the trading with crypto assets has been very active in the first half. If you look at the net revenues by nature, which is transaction and non-transaction based, it's still the non-transaction base represents 54%.
So of course, it's triggered by higher interest revenues, but our target is to have a balanced situation between transactions and non-transaction based, probably over the long term, over the very long term, when interest rates will reach their final level. We think that it will balance between 60% and 40%, so 60% being transaction-based and 40% non-transaction based. So that's part of the way we forecast our revenue in the future. Now, total expenses, this is a main topic for the management of the company. We want and we need to have our costs under control.
It goes against a little bit our entrepreneur spirit, because we have so many ideas how we could further develop the company, that we have to refrain a little bit on hiring new employees. We are absolutely in our targets. We have set targets for CHF 295 million total costs for the year. And if you look now what happened in the first half, with CHF 147.2 million, we are exactly at 50% of what we want to achieve. We don't see any reason why the growth should or the cost should grow over the second half. This is our target, to keep the costs under control.
It's remarkable that we have achieved the highest revenue without a strong impact on our cost. So that's part of the business model is once you have built the system, you have to maintain it, and you have to build additional systems, but the marginal new clients will not contribute directly to the cost. If you look at where the costs are coming from, that's of course that's mainly payroll and related. And then marketing represents the; this is here in orange, represents the smaller part of our cost. The rest is operating expenses and of course, depreciation of our previous investments. If you look at the headcount, so you see that this is a tech company.
So we usually say we are a tech company with a bank license, that still applies. And you see that 36% of our total headcount is in technology, and that's no surprise for a tech bank like we are, and the rest is distributed between sales, trading, marketing. And then, of course, like every bank, we had to beef up our compliance and risk staff, which goes in line with our geographical expansion and the compliance service we want to render to our clients. So profitability has grown. As I said before, this is the highest number ever achieved, CHF 320 million. Remember, a few years ago, we forecasted CHF 350 million of pre-tax for 2025.
Now, we think that we will reach CHF 320 million of pre-tax in 2024, so we are absolutely in line with our twenty twenty-five target, which really, I think is good news. So if you look at the profitability here, you can see it over the last half year, the way it did grow. So as I said, it's the sixth consecutive bottom line growth since the first half of 2022. And here, derived from the CHF 68 billion of assets we had at the end of the first half, we are generating about 100 basis points on the revenue. And out of that, we are generating 54 basis points of pre-tax.
So a very strong, cash generating or profit generating machine and organization. Now to finish, let's have a look at our balance sheet. So first of all, the balance sheet has grown by more than CHF 1 billion from the 31 December 2023 to the 30 June 2024. And what has grown is the customer deposits. If you see here on the right side of the chart, the... In all currency segments, the client's deposit has increased, mainly in Swiss francs, from CHF 4.3 billion to CHF 4.9 billion, and you see the same thing happened in other currency, which is very good for a bank that is not tuned for saving accounts.
We are a transaction-based bank, but clients apparently like our services, and this is the reason why they deposit so much cash with the company. What are we doing with the cash? Well, we have a very cautious approach, as always. About CHF 4.8 billion of our total assets are held with central banks or are placed very short term. That's a large part, and this also explains why we have such a good liquidity ratio. So, again, a very cautious approach, investment strategy with our balance sheet. If you look at the investment portfolio here, it has grown by about CHF 0.5 billion, from CHF 2 billion to CHF 2.5 billion, a little bit more.
Of course, we are, we're trying to capture the higher revenues, and we are going a little bit longer with our investment portfolio. That's part of our strategy. Also, the loans to clients has grown over the period of more than 20%. So we went from CHF 800 billion to CHF 1 billion for the first time. Also, speaking about the billion, if you look at the total equity, we have now almost reached CHF 1 billion of equity, and this also is a very strong number. Now, this is a little bit complicated chart, but it's not the first time we are showing it to you, so let me comment it.
On the, let's start with the CHF 68 billion we have on the upper left corner. So CHF 68 billion, 40% is in cash, the rest are investment securities. And the securities do generate trading and revenue, net fee and income revenues, so everything, less the interest and income, and this represents CHF 207.1 million. Now, the 14% that represents CHF 9.8 billion, so 37% of that part is used to finance our margin lending portfolio, up to CHF 1 billion, and then the rest are the investment securities. As mentioned, this is CHF 2.6 billion, and you see here, that's the distribution of our investment securities we invested in.
So it's 99.8% of that is, of course, investment grade, and then, about half, 53.4% are HQLA investments. So a very solid and a very sound and secure investment, investment securities portfolio. Now, the rest here, the 63%, if I go back to the central picture, this is the liquidity portfolio. So 63% of CHF 9.8 billion, this represents CHF 6.2 billion. And you see here the distribution in the various currencies, and also to mention that we, the interest rates are decreasing. We had two rate cuts in Swiss, in Swiss francs, down from 1.7 - 1.2. The US dollar is stable, and euro, we had one rate cut from 3.9 - 3.66.
So that is in line with our forecast, and we do forecast for the rest of the year additional rate cuts, especially on the dollar. So that's part of our, that's part of our the way we forecast our revenues. Now, these all together, so then the net interest income together with what we earn on the margin lending portfolio and the investment securities portfolio, represents the famous 109.8 million, added to the 207.1. This gives the 316.9 million, which is the revenues we achieved in the first half of 2024. Speaking about equity, yes, close to CHF 1 billion, that's a solid number. Expressed in terms of Tier 1 capital ratio at 25.9%.
This is, of course, much higher than the regulatory 11.2% we should have as in our Tier 1 bank. So it's a solidly capitalized bank, much higher than the average Tier 1 ratio of the Swiss banks, I think, which is about 18%. And also this, of course, is accumulated profit over time. And this also explains why we can finance a payout ratio of 30%. At least that is what happens in 2023, but there's no reason this will change for 2024. Okay, now almost the last slide, guidance 2024. Given the good numbers in the first half, we have revised our guidance, and we initially had a target of CHF 300 million pre-tax.
Now, given the good numbers in the first half, we are increasing this target to CHF 320 million. And on the revenue side, our guidance was CHF 595 million, and here also we are able to increase this to CHF 615 million. You see that it's the CHF 20 million additional revenues almost goes bottom line, since the costs should not be touched by the higher revenues. And now, a look on how we build our guidance for the full year. So we are building this on an estimated client money of CHF 71 billion.
So that's basically the situation we had at the end of the first half, plus the anticipated CHF 3 billion of additional net new money we do forecast for the year, so that gives us 71. And then we are distributing this CHF 71 billion in the various margins, now calculated on total assets. We think that the crypto assets was well, the growth was significant in the first half, but we have a certain level of caution in the second half. But that's what the market, the crypto market is about. It's very volatile and, but our ambition is to have a cautious forecast for the second half.
This is why we think that for H2 2024, we will have a smaller revenue than in H1. For the interest rates, we also think that the rates are set to decrease in the second half. But overall, the net interest income should remain close to our initial target when we did the full year 2024 forecast. Then on the same thing, same situation on the trading side. The year started on a positive note for securities. The investor sentiment were quite good and, but let's see what will happen in the second half. We still have this growth potential on the eForex side.
Again, it's the highest client money deposits we ever had, so this sooner or later should transform into additional revenue. And if the markets are again becoming more volatile and more active, not only on the eForex side, but also in the securities, then you will see here an uptick of revenues. But anyway, cautious forecast for the second half. That's the way we do we build our guidance, and with CHF 320 million of pre-tax, this is already a nice, a nice growth that we can announce today. Okay, here. Yes, these are the appendixes. I will not comment them at this stage, but of course, if you have some questions, I would be happy to respond to it.
Maybe just have a look at the one here. This is an important one. It's so Swissquote is growing in our domestic markets. I remember a few years ago when investors were asking if we have reached our highest level possible in the Swiss market. At that time, maybe it was true because we had a very simple and a very basic service levels. We were only dealing with trading on Swiss securities. Since then, our service level and the various offers to our clients has increased a lot. So this also gives us hope that we can grow the business in Switzerland dramatically. If you look at the big picture, so how wealthy and how big is the Swiss market?
We are speaking about CHF 1.8 trillion of financial assets. From this CHF 1.8 trillion, Swissquote has a market share of 2.1%, so a tiny, small market share. But we think that the quality of our products and our services give us the opportunity to grow this market share further over the next years. It's not the end of our growth story in Switzerland. I would say it's maybe just the beginning, and also the market is consolidating. Some banks are disappearing, but Swissquote is solidly installed in the Swiss market landscape, and we think that we will be able to to expand our our services even further and to benefit from additional growth in in Switzerland. Last but not least, let's have a look on you.
So this is our joint venture with PostFinance. It's, it's working really well. I think in the meantime, we have become the number one in the Swiss market. We now have more than 235,000 clients, and you also see that the asset growth is in line with the number of clients. We even have the impression that it's growing faster, and now we have reached CHF 2 billion of assets by the end of the first half, 2024. So a very nice, very nice success story, and soon, soon to become profitable and then have a margin, a profit margin contribution to the overall Swissquote revenues. Okay, now, the last two slides are the key figures as usual, but that would conclude my presentation.
And then, of course, now we are happy to enter the Q&A sessions. I'm sure you may have a lot of questions for us.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you've entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners are on the phone are requested to use only handsets. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Haley Tam , UBS. Please go ahead.
Oh, morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. It's Haley Tam from UBS. I had two, please. Could I check on the cash? I think it's now 14% of client assets. I think that's below the 15%-20% range we've seen historically. So I just wondered if you are expecting that to go back up, or should we consider this to be a continuing falling trend as interest rates continue to fall? And then the second question was just on the strong flows in Europe. Congratulations on that. Could you give us some color on the regions, though? Is it Belgium, Netherlands, France, et cetera, you previously highlighted? And could you remind us, please, of your where you're winning those clients from in those countries? Thank you.
Thank you a lot, and Yvan is happy to, to take this question.
Hello, Haley. Thanks a lot for the questions. Well, good one for the 14%. What I have to say, we slightly below the 15%. In my opinion, it's more a matter of a significant market impact. So if you calculate, we had a market impact, close to CHF 6 billion - CHF 7 billion. Crypto assets have doubled in terms of market value. And, you know, therefore, despite we had a good inflow of cash, because we can see the balance sheet really did increase, when it remained stable in 2023, I think, it was not enough to compensate such a market impact.
So I still expect in the future to be between 15%-20%, probably closer to 15 than 20, but it's more at a point in time, market impact is a bit significant, and therefore, when we can compute the ratio, it's slightly below the 15%. So I would not change my moving forward my assumption of 15%-20%. On the European inflows, no particular change. You know, the top countries where we get money are always the same, Benelux, Germany, France. So no particular change, but it's important to highlight this is probably the highest organic inflow we ever had in Europe.
So things are a bit moving in Europe, and we much closer to the net new money we want to achieve there.
... Thank you. That's very clear. And is there any comment on where you're winning those clients from in Europe?
Oh, I think it's the same. So Benelux, Germany, France, these are the biggest contributor of new clients in Europe. It goes-
Sorry, sorry. I was not asking clearly. I think in those countries, what is the... Are there particular mainstream banks you're winning from, or these new clients to investing overall? Just to understand that.
Okay.
Thank you. Sorry.
No problem, no problem. No, no, it's new, it's new clients. I mean, that is the, it's really the client growth that is triggering the, the net new monies.
Thank you.
Thank you.
The next question comes from Daniel Regli , ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everybody, and congratulations to the good H1 results, and thank, thank you for taking my questions. I have a couple of questions on first, the margin guidance on page 20. So I just noted that the numbers in terms of basis points of clients' assets have changed a bit. I mean, crypto assets, I think you explained it well, but the other changes, are these mainly driven by the higher client asset base, or has there anything changed in terms of your expectations on absolute terms of these revenue lines? And then also kind of into the same kind of category or direction, can you talk a bit about client activity in H2?
Obviously, you mentioned the volatility driving assets or client assets down, but has this had a positive impact also on client activity and securities trading, and obviously, the securities trading margin, in the first kind of 1.5 months in H2? And then on net interest income, you said, "Close to our initial target," which was obviously, when I remember it correctly, slightly higher in 2024 versus 2023. Do you still expect a slightly higher net interest income, or are we now kind of, you know, on a level where you would expect more like an in-line-ish result, which could, tend on both directions? And can you also maybe talk a bit about your expectations for interest income in 2025 based on the current, developments on the policy rates, et cetera?
And then last but not least, can you talk a bit about on net new money growth? I heard you say, CHF 6 billion - CHF 7 billion being the net new money target, when I remember it correctly. You previously always were talking about CHF 7 billion, so have you lowered your ambition for net new money growth? Particularly after we have seen CHF 3.8 billion in H1, this would sound a bit odd to me. And can you maybe also talk a bit about what, exactly drove the strong pickup we have seen in net new money in Switzerland, where you were up, like, CHF 2.5 billion, in net new money?
And then also about the mid- to longer-term outlook on net new money, should we kind of imagine this more to be an absolute growth number of CHF 6 billion or CHF 7 billion, whatever it be, or do you think more in relative terms, in terms of a percentage amount of assets under custody or as client assets? Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks. Lots of questions. We... I may ask you to to repeat a few of them, but we are-
Yeah, of course. No problem.
So let me take the last one on the net new monies. So it's true that our basic forecast is CHF 7 billion, and with CHF 3.8 billion, we are, we have more than achieved this in the first half. But it's just out of experience, if I look back a little bit in the previous half year, so sometimes we have been at CHF 3 billion, at CHF 2 billion, so it's, we cannot always control, of course, how much assets is coming in. It's also sometimes a little bit of market dependence when there is a lot of things happening to the market, and people are eager to transfer more assets. So this is why we have this, let's say, this boundaries of CHF 6 billion or CHF 7 billion , but I would be disappointed if we would have less than CHF 7 billion now-
Mm-hmm
... in the 2024, and also really disappointed if we would have, if I would have less than CHF 6 billion . No, we don't express this in percentage. It's the, it's simply out of experience, we have this step of growth. I remember in the very early stage, we had this CHF 1 billion net new monies as a target. Then it went to CHF 3 billion , and now we are at CHF 7 billion . If it continues like this, then of course, in the new forecast, we will uplift these net new monies. So why has it been better in the first half? I think there was a Credit Suisse effect. It's coming now, so we...
I remember people were a little bit disappointed that we did not get Credit Suisse assets in the beginning, but that's not the first money that was flowing out of Credit Suisse. This was more institutional money that, where we were not the right recipients for that. But now that the merger is taking place, we can see here and there that that former Credit Suisse clients are also looking to diversify their their bank relations, and we think that we we are getting a part of that. So that would be good news, because then it would mean that there is a lot of additional potential for the rest of the year and maybe also the year to come. And then, about the margin, the basis point margin, so this is the one on page 20. Maybe here I give over to Yvan.
Yes, with pleasure. You spot it right, Daniel. That's mainly because the client assets, they increase, and therefore, it, you know, mathematically speaking, it impacts a bit the margin on assets. I don't see a major change in the assumptions, but if you look back at our full year presentation, the end value for client assets was 65, now we have 71. So this is basically, you know, pushing down the basis points we do calculate. And to summarize in a nutshell, the new guidance, 2024, this is more or less what we have achieved in H1, plus half of the initial guidance. So we basically, for the second half, we think it's better to be a bit more cautious, and we basically come back to our initial assumptions in terms of activity, et cetera.
We have, you know, summer season now, so crypto assets have somehow slowed down in May and June, so we believe it's a better forecast to come back to this initial guidance divided by two. You had a question about the client activity in July. Well, cannot comment too much, but for the time being, I would say we positively surprised, so the summer seasonality is lower than what we would have expected in July. But, you know, we still have five months to go, so we'll see how it develops in the future. But it's true that volatility should bring more activity at Swissquote, and we recently faced more volatility.
Mm-hmm. And then I can't remember the third question you have, sorry.
Interest income.
Interest income, yes.
Mm-hmm. About the interest income, so, what we aim to say is, if you take the initial guidance and the net interest income that we had in this initial guidance, we believe that we will achieve the same number despite interest rates have decreased. So this is what we try to say in our slide. So we expect rates have been cut in CHF and Euro. We expect more cuts to happen in H2, but despite these cuts, because we have more cash deposits than initially expected, we should get the number we had in the initial guidance, 2024. This is what we aim to say. For 2025, that's a bit difficult to assess, you know.
I would love to have a clear view on interest rates for 2025, but it's true that we may face a decline in interest income. That could be of something like probably 10%. This is what we would have in mind currently. That being said, we still are paying interest on some balances of customer accounts. This is one of the mitigation measures we could have for 2025. We have decreased what we pay on CHF accounts, but Euro and USD have remained intact, so we still have this measure. The day rates really start to decrease in USD and Euro. We have this measure that could compensate somehow the decrease. This is what I can say at this point in time.
Mm-hmm. Daniel, was there an additional question, or?
No, maybe just a quick follow-up. I remember you talking about in March about having like CHF 4 million - CHF 5 million in crypto revenues for January and February, and then March seems to have been a pretty good month. But obviously, given you have achieved this CHF 35 million in H1, the trading and transaction activity was then back to the CHF 4 million - CHF 5 million in the rest of the month. But are we now even below this CHF 4 million - CHF 5 million , or are we still more or less at this CHF 4 million - CHF 5 million run, monthly run rate?
Well, if you look at market data, July was pretty good. You know, when I look at volumes on various crypto exchanges, July was somewhere between February and March. The question is, you know, the visibility that we have. So, you know, you may remember on crypto assets, we always try to, you know, to avoid any downside risk in our guidance. So I'm relatively comfortable we can reach what we have forecasted for H2, and if things are better, then there is an upside bonus. But, I would answer this way, we're relatively confident to reach H2 forecast on crypto assets income.
Okay, very clear. Thank you so much for the explanation.
Thank you. Next question.
Next question comes from Grégoire Hermann, Berenberg. Please go ahead.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for taking my question, and congrats on the good results. Three questions, please. The first one would be on the market effect on the assets under custody. Just a bit curious to know what is basically the impact from FX and simply the market, because it seems like the market effect has been quite high in the first half of the year. The second question would be on the net new money from new clients. I think in the past, you gave this figure.
Can you please, if possible, give the split between how much of the net new money is from new clients in the first half of the year, and how much is from existing clients? Last one would be maybe on the robo-advisory accounts. I mean, obviously, you've had a good growth in trading accounts, but I think there has been quite a good figure on customer growth for robo-advisory accounts. So, can you maybe give a bit of insight of what happened here, please? Thank you very much.
Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay, so for the market effect, so again, I was speaking about the CHF 66.7 billion after the crash. So I'm not 100% sure whether I got your question right. So the... Oh, the question is, what was the market effect on the CHF 68 billion that we had in the first half? Is that the question?
Yeah. Basically, I mean, if you look at the net new money that you had, I think it's CHF 3.8 billion, and the total assets on the custody that you have at H1, they're like CHF 68 billion. So just the difference between the net new money and the final assets under custody that you have, I think we have a gap of around CHF 4 billion. So just trying to understand it here, if everything of this is FX and or just, you know, higher equities or this kind of of impact.
Well, so if you, if you take the client assets, first of January, you add CHF 3.8 billion of net new monies, you basically end up with a lower number than the CHF 68 billion that we are reporting. The difference is market impact. Here, together, you combine basically market plus FX rates. So it's mainly driven by equity markets that were up. As well, crypto assets, the value of Bitcoin was, like, +50%. So in terms of crypto assets, we have doubled. So they know that the crypto assets, they almost contributed to CHF 2 billion in market impact. So it's mainly linked to the performance of the various asset classes. In terms of FX rates, if you take USD, the...
It improved, but then it more or less moved back to the level of the first of January. So I would see the FX impact as relatively limited. It's more equity markets, crypto market performance, et cetera, et cetera.
Mm-hmm.
And then to your two questions about net new money. So you have the slides here that I just pasted on the screen. So, and this is interesting to see that the distribution of client assets, so about 4% of the CHF 68 billion are coming from new clients acquired in 2024. Now, of course, this is not- this would be, this would then represent CHF 2.8 billion, but they're also part of that is already client growth a little bit. So, I think it's fair to say that out of the 3.8, probably CHF 2 billion of are net new monies that has been generated by new clients that we acquired or that we earned in 2024.
So CHF 3.8 billion in total, CHF 2.8 billion of client assets from new clients in 2024. But there, with the market impact, so I would say that, collectively, the new clients that we hired in 2024 has brought about CHF 2 billion of net new monies.
Okay, that's clear. Thank you. And, maybe just on the robo-advisory accounts growth, please.
Oh, yeah. Yes. So we actually discontinued the robo-advisory. It's no longer a service that we do offer. So we have replaced it with some invest... We call it Invest Easy. So it's still a little bit derived from that, but it has been very much simplified. And there, you see that the growth was quite okay in the first half. So together with the old accounts that are now switched slowly to Invest Easy, we now have CHF 699 million.
I think that our robo-advisory product was really good in the past, but somehow we not exactly tuned to the market needs of our clients. This is why we have simplified it. But we have good growth, and we think that our Invest Easy products will continue to grow over time. You see here, it went from CHF 611 million at the end of December in 2023 to CHF 690 million. So that's CHF 80 million of additional money flow in our various Invest Easy products.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you very well.
Next question comes from René Locher, KBW. Please, go ahead.
Yes. Good morning, everybody. Can I just start with slide 20? So, I guess when I'm right, you are calculating the margin, not on the 71, but more on the average assets with which would be like CHF 64.5 billion. Because if I take the CHF 64.5 billion and the 95 basis points revenue margin, then I end up somewhere at CHF 615 million. But this is how you divide it. That's fine. Okay, that's fine. And interestingly, yeah, I was surprised to see the higher revenue margin in H1. I guess this was also driven by NII and crypto, which offer higher revenue margin. But then you would go for something like 90 basis points in H2, so that's how I end up at the 95 basis points revenue margin for the entire year.
That's the first one. And just the second one, a very strong pre-tax margin for the first time, above 50%. I was just wondering if this is the new normal, you know? So H1 was 53.5. If I take a look at the guidance, then you know have to achieve roughly 52%. So just yeah your view on the pre-tax margin, is that new normal about 50? And very good. Quickly on the costs, on the expenses, I mean, we have discussed this for many, many years, and now it's interesting to see that marketing expenses are broadly stable at CHF 16 million. So I was also wondering, is this yeah where Jan De Schepper is happy, you know, with the CHF 16 million.
There was also that the 6% growth in expenses was partly driven by depreciation and amortization, which increased by 15%, so I was just wondering what's in there? Thank you.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah, I can talk a little bit about marketing, and then I'll give over to Yvan for the rest.
Mm-hmm.
I appreciate the fact that you think that we are too conservative for the second half. No, we have a stable marketing budget, that's true. But this has a reason and an explanation. So we believe that part of the marketing in a company like Swissquote is also viral marketing, and this has to do with the brand awareness of Swissquote and the brand. And we have just made a new brand study, and it was quite amazing to see that we are now in position two.
So the question was, please, write the names of all online brokers or banks that allows you to invest in securities, and then the number one was UBS, but the number two is Swissquote, and the number three is you. So that of course it helps actually keep the marketing expenses low when you have a spontaneous brand awareness in Switzerland that has been built over time with smart marketing investments, then this also explains why we can keep it at that stage and we don't need to go to extreme marketing expenses. So you have to maintain it rather than build up-
Mm-hmm
... the new brand, and this has a positive impact on the costs. So actually, going forward, we may increase a little bit over time, but we don't see doubling, for example. We think that we will stay in the magnitude around CHF 30 million-CHF 35 million of marketing expenses for the years to come. Yvan, for the-
Okay, thank you.
So you had a couple of questions on expenses. Just a small comment. Marketing, it increased by 20% compared to H2 last year, so-
Mm-hmm
... well, it's for me, it's not a small increase. On depreciation, there is somehow a timely increase, if you look at the IFRS financial statement, we have this with this Optima trade transaction that created-
Mm-hmm
... for, for two years, an intangible asset that we need to depreciate. So there is somehow an exceptional item for this year, next year, on depreciation, that is related to the acquisition. I invite you to have a look at the note, and, and if you have questions,
Yeah
... let me know. On the pre-tax margin-
Fine
... well, it was higher than initially guided. For the second half, we are a bit more cautious. It was certainly positive development, well pushed by rates that were still high and recovery in trade activity, in particular crypto assets. So, in this type of environment, I think it's a pre-tax margin that you could probably sustain, but will not change now, basically the assumption that we had for our outlook 2025. So for 2025, we guided for pre-tax margin above 50%. I think we have demonstrated we can achieve it, and it makes the net revenues we need to achieve closer to current levels.
So I'm optimistic to be at a pre-tax margin above 50% next year, most likely well between 50% and 53.5%. This is what can I say, but to the extent to state it as a new normal, I would say we probably need a bit more of time.
Well, that's fine. Now, interesting, just for thought on 2025, if you end up at 71, if I add CHF 7 billion net new money, then I'm at 78 average, would be 74.5, 95 bps revenue margin and 50% pre-tax margin, and then you are too conservative. But, I mean, you know, analysts are always a bit bullish. Not an issue? Okay, thank you very much, and well done.
Granted, usually it's the opposite, though. Usually it's the company that be bullish, and the analysts are conservative.
Yes. Thank you. Okay, thank you.
Thank you very much.
The next question comes from Christophe Beelaerts , BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my question. I would like to go one by one. Let's start with interest income. Can you, please quantify the interest income you have generated in July, please?
Hmm. Well, I expected this one, Christophe. So first of all, I'll just make a couple of comments. We have the positive aspect of the cuts we faced in H1 is that we see that now we capturing again additional cash deposits. We could grow the balance sheet by CHF 1.3 billion, so it's not small. It was flat last year, and in six months we could grow about CHF 1.3 million. So the rate cuts, they certainly have impacted us. There were 2 rate cuts in CHF, 1 in euro. But July 1, we decided to adjust what we serve on trading accounts in CHF, so we have almost decreased to zero what we serve on CHF trading accounts.
So this move will probably neutralize the impact of the last rate cut in CHF. Moving ahead, we still expect rates to be cut in the three currencies for the second half. We basically rely on market consensus, but we see that the balance sheet is growing, so there is a compensating effect. So this is really important to take into account, and we could later on adjust what we pay on euro and USD accounts. For the time being, we kept it unchanged. In July, net interest income was around CHF 18 million-CHF 19 million. This is a rough indication I can give it to you.
Excellent. Then let's continue with crypto. Can you give us an update for monthly crypto revenues you have seen over the last couple of quarters? Sorry, couple of months.
Well, I think I answered it partially with the question of Daniel Regli from ZKB. July was not bad at all. It was probably somewhere the months of January, February, and March. So it was not at the level of March, but still a positive compared to January and February. You can check it with market data. You see that the volumes they have picked up in July. Then the question with cryptos is they’re relatively volatile. So no, it’s always a question of how much time it will last, but for the time being, the situation is in a good trend. This is why I made clear that the second half guidance should be achieved on the crypto assets income.
The CHF 4 million-CHF 5 million you had indicated in the last call is still valid?
Hmm. Yes.
Okay. And then the second question on crypto is on your exchange. What has been the spread income you have generated in the first half of the year?
Well, you can check it in the IFRS financial statements, and have a look, and if you have more questions, I can take them later on. But you can see that we did CHF 35 million of crypto asset income in H1, but now this is split across fee and commission income and trading income. And you have this information in the IFRS financial statement, therefore, you can see basically, you know, the somehow the new mix in the crypto asset income since we have really all the assets on the exchange and now. And we face higher volumes.
You can see that it's not only about fee and commission income, that is what we basically charge to the customers, but as well, what we earn on, you know, on continuously providing bid and ask spreads through the exchange. So have a look, you should have the indication, and let me know if you need more clarification.
Okay, excellent. Then the third question is on excess capital. What are your thoughts, with regards to returning excess capital to shareholders, i.e., paying a special dividend at some point in time?
Well, it's. So we don't have such a plan right now. We have just adopted our dividend policy that would see a payout of 30%. Now, of course, if within a ... Given an amount of time, if we don't find any smart things to do with our excess cash, like doing some M&A, then there will come the moment when we'll have to return it to the shareholders. But we think that it's not yet the moment. We think that there will be opportunities coming to the market, and we have been very successful in the past of acquiring companies. Not the big ones, you know, we're not going for the transformational acquisition, but rather companies that would help us grow faster. And this would then consume part of the excess capital we have. So, but no decision made there other than we're looking out for potential acquisitions.
Okay. The last question is on Yuh. What is the future of Yuh from a financial point of view? Is the focus to make it a cash machine rather short term, or to invest, reinvest profits in marketing in order to boost client wins? What is the strategic idea behind it?
Well, I think so the idea is to continue to invest in the product. It's so that was the first idea, was to become number one in the Swiss market, and then to operate at a profitable level. But of course, we are much more ambitious than that. We think that the growth is due to continue. If you see here on slide 24, you see that it's almost a straight line when you see the number of new clients, and it's even exponential when you see the assets under custody. So I think it's a great product, and we have lots of new ideas how we can make it even better.
So the idea really is not to make it to transform this into a cash machine, but we are still in the investment phase, but happy that it's actually beyond the break-even side, so that would reduce the cash injections from the partners going forward.
Excellent. Thanks a lot.
Thank you, Christophe.
Gentlemen, there are no more questions.
Okay, then, that's great. So again, thank you very much for joining us.