Paweł, please go ahead.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Paweł Wieprzowski on behalf of Wood & Company. I'm pleased to welcome you to the fourth quarter conference call with the management board of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Today, the company is represented by Mr. Marek Dietl, President of the Management Board; Izabela Olszewska, Member of the Management Board; Piotr Borowski, Member of the Management Board; Adam Młodkowski, Vice-President of the Management Board of the Polish Power Exchange, as well as Piotr Kajczuk, Finance Director. Gentlemen, the floor is yours.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to our investors call. It is my great privilege that I can present you the results for the fifth time. I would like to start with a look back at the past five years. We divided the last 20 years into four five-year periods, and we counted up the, I think, most important parameter for every investor is net profit. We can see that 20 years ago we had, like, a PLN 240 million loss or PLN 40 million per year or PLN 240 million for five years time.
We had another period with the average profit per year of PLN 160 million loss and then a period of similar sized profit of PLN 112 million. Last five years were actually quite nice as the average net profit, including this year, was PLN 155 million. The company really progressed in its profitability and the number of shares is constant. The earnings per share are 3x higher than it used to be 20 years ago. After this historical remark, let me move to this year milestones and most important achievements. Last year was marked by quite a decent number of IPOs.
Want to say global phenomenon, by the way. We are not the only venue in the world which enjoyed quite a sizable number of newcomers. We had also a nice growth of trading volumes for our equity order book, and also of trading for electricity and gas. We also managed to complete some of our strategic projects last year. We have a fully running agriculture market now. We have two pieces of our technologies ready. The TCA tool and GPW STORK, which is a surveillance system. Also our indexator, index calculating tool, which is particularly important for our index factory, what I will refer to it later. We are almost done with our GPW data project, which is focused on XBRL technology. We are all.
We are very close also with Global Connect. Giving access to local investors for the global equities. We are nearly completing the acquisition of Armenia Stock Exchange. We also progressed very nicely in our private markets of blockchain distributed ledger technology. This year we're gonna start with the first trading of first tokens. It will be tokens on fine arts. We also developed GRC software for our issuers and of course for ourselves as well, and for other companies. It's raised a great interest. The software is not ready yet, but there is already a queue of potential clients who are ready to sign the agreement. First module will deploy this year. We're also progressing in our trading platforms both for equities and for bonds and for the energy.
Actually we merge this bond trading system and equity trading system. They are now developing parallel as one system with multi-asset functionality. We are less advanced in securities lending platforms. We came across important regulatory constraints. Last year we also started Polish Digital Logistics platform and the dynamically inserted ads platform for your television. It's called Telemetria Operator. We started a process of building up clearing house for equities international one together with our Hungarian partners. Well I move to the right-hand side of the slide, and here you can see some of our core business activities last year. We extended the Analytical Coverage Support Program 3.0.
More and more companies are covered by the analysts and we are sponsoring that. We also help our brokers with the technology support program, where we give discounts for those who are advancing their technologies. We also supported IPOs. We have this additional program, GPW Grow, which is we have third edition running, and it's always fully subscribed, so we have full set of students there. We had out of this student group we had a first IPO already. We also simplified the alternative listing procedures for our regulated market together with the brokers and depository. We are more and more advanced in the structured products. We have 2,500 of them. We have also new ETFs on our market.
The product offering is much, much broader. We also engage in the promoting and building up the market, like we are involved in capital market development strategy run by the Polish government. We have three big stock exchange initiatives together where we cooperate with the stock exchanges from the region but also with EBRD. We hold number of conferences like Innovation Day, Gaming on the Exchange, Business in the Genes, it's about biotechnology. One of our key focus for the last year was the ESG thing. We updated our best practices to comply with high ESG standards. We developed and published together with EBRD ESG reporting guidelines for our issuers. We also published guidelines for the integrated reporting.
We had a kind of competition for the ESG leaders to gain momentum for the issuers and to prize those who are performing best in the ESG space. Ourselves, we also developed our ESG strategy until 2025. First of all, we wanted to have this set strategy and to show our ESG faith, but also we wanted to show the best practice for other issuers. At TGE and our Polish Power Exchange, we had, as I mentioned, this agriculture market fully running. We built up agriculture market council to have a contact with the market participants and to improve our end-user experience.
We also launched a kind of a training platform where people can learn how to trade on our agriculture market. Our GPW Benchmark, as I mentioned, we have a technology now which allows us to build up kind of a index factory. We have plenty of new indexes, and we can also build customized indexes. We grow our customer base for that. We also work on interest rate benchmarks and an interest rate benchmark congress was organized by us. We are the center of competence for Poland when it comes to indexes and benchmarks. I would like to leave the floor to Izabela and Piotr now for a presentation of our key financial results. Thank you for that.
Thank you, Marek. Hello to everyone. In my part of presentation, I would like to guide you through the business elements of the financial market in more details. Looking at the trading volumes on our equity market, on the main market, in the fourth quarter of 2021, we can say that it was a really good quarter, however, a little bit worse than the fourth quarter of 2020. We should remember that the last quarter of 2020 had extremely heavy trading. It was the period where in October we had the debut of Allegro company, the second debut in the whole Europe in terms of IPO of value.
A lot of investors they were interested in this company, and this was a result of heavy trading in the shares of Allegro. Plus, in December, the heavy trading was connected with other companies of our blue-chip index, CD Projekt, and it was connected with some news around this company and its game. This is the company from Gaming sector. On the main market, electronic order book turnover value in the whole 2021 exceeded the turnover value from 2020 by 5.5%. There are several factors that positively influence the trading volumes in the previous year. First of all, I would like to mention new clients.
We managed to connect again and some new local and remote exchange members. A couple of our exchange members have decided to expand their activity to new segments and products. Also, I would like to underline our new contracts with independent software vendors and external administrators. It is very important for us because these guys, they offer connection to the market to the group of potential clients. Through them, we can reach this group of the clients, and we can encourage them to be active on our market. As our CEO has just said, this was the year with many IPOs and debuts of the companies on our growth markets.
On the main market, we had 16 new companies, including the biggest IPO in 2020. Pepco company from the commerce sector. Also want to mention inflow of the fresh capital to equity funds. It was connected with the inflation pressure in our country. Some of our citizens, they also decided to allocate some of their capital to the equity funds. Plus the high activity of our retail clients. This is, I would say, the current trend. And also active foreign clients.
Just to give you the overview of the structure of our trading. The local institutional they generated 21% of the trading volumes, and retail clients 22%, and foreign 57%. As far as the NewConnect market is concerned, this is our SME platform. The trading volumes were roughly back to the pre-pandemic values. I would like to mention two factors of such situation. First of all, the year 2020 was specific in that sense that the pandemic sparked interest of investors in so-called Covid winners, companies from sectors like technology, gaming and also healthcare sector.
The second reason is that the NewConnect is a natural kindergarten for the companies and those which are the biggest on the NewConnect and the most liquid. They decide to be transferred to the main market. We had four transfers from NewConnect to the main market. Of course, as I mentioned, it is I would say desired phenomenon and it is very natural. This is the reason of decreasing turnover on the NewConnect. Looking at our other product lines, so we can say that there was in 2021 the increased interest of our investors in structured products. The number of ETP across 2,400 different products.
We have six issuers of these products. The most popular structured products were those based on German DAX index. Also as our CEO said, the ETF offer expanded in 2021 by four new funds based on two foreign indices, S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100. Also two of our indices from WIG family. It is sWIG80 Total Return Index and WIGtech Total Return. Passive investment, in our view, becomes more and more popular in Poland. The trading volumes slightly dropped year on year. It was connected also with some specific of 2020, where the ETF based on WIG20 Short was...
This ETF was very popular while the market was bullish and short products allowed to earn on bullish markets. The liquidity is supported by market makers, but also by the liquidity providers which operate within the HVP programs and their share in equity turnover increased up to 15% in the fourth quarter of 2021. Okay. The next slide is dedicated to the derivatives market. On the derivatives market, we had a growth of trading volumes year on year. The structure of trading changed. The trading volumes on our flagship product, futures based on WIG20 Index, dropped.
It is because of the lower volatility on the equity market. You can see the graph on your left-hand side in the bottom. The trading volumes on currency futures increased significantly. It was the top future product or group of future products. Because we have various currency pairs as the underlying for futures. 2021 was the year of currency futures, we can say. The liquidity is also supported by market makers, plus active HVP program. The next slide, please.
This is about ESG and we treat ESG as an integral part of the business because ESG reporting is strongly expected and I would say now demanded by analysts and shareholders. It is why we treat it as a part of our business. At the end of the previous year, 2021, the Warsaw Stock Exchange published the ESG strategy until 2025, where we presented our goals and ambitions based on three pillars. Environment and climate, employees and society, and governance.
What I would like to underline here is our ambition related to the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions by 50% by the end of 2025 in Scope 1 and Scope 2. We want to become emission neutral by 2030. Of course, we also include the Scope 3 our climate policy. However, collecting and processing data is more difficult for Scope 3. We have decided to begin from reporting Scope 1 and Scope 2 and the indicators will be included in our integrated report this year. Of course, also this year will be the first one when we start to collect the data for Scope 3 reporting.
The whole capital group, all our companies, they are involved in ESG strategy implementation. We are just preparing the annual operational plans for every company. As I mentioned, the first reporting related with the new strategy will take place together with the publishing of our integrated report this year. We are going to report based on the highest standards or GRI standards. We will base our reporting on the guidelines which we prepared together with EBRD. The next slide, please.
We would like to underline that Warsaw Stock Exchange is also involved in supporting the other market participants in adapting to ESG. We are active in this area. Our CEO already mentioned some of our activities like the Code of Best Practice 2021, which also includes ESG factors and our guidelines prepared together with EBRD. We take part in various events and also in competitions related to ESG. What is very interesting, we promote green bonds on our market.
Together with the International Finance Corporation, we offered the special program to support the issuance of green bonds. In the first edition, three companies from Poland, the winners, will be offered support in drafting issue documentation. Also they will have covered the cost of obtaining of a green certificate. We plan further editions and we hope that very soon, we'll have more and more green bonds listed on our platform in Warsaw. Thank you very much. Yeah, Piotr, the floor is yours now.
Thank you, Izabela. Now we talk about the financial results. Worth mentioning that the fourth quarter of the last year was, let's say less successful compared with the last quarter of the 2020, because the trading revenue was down by 7.6%. It was mainly due to the lower activities of investors on the commercial market, and it was combined with the higher revenues on the commodity market. If you look on the total 2021, we had a record high revenues at the level of PLN 407.6 million. So it was very successful year from this point of view. Operating expenses in the fourth quarter were up by 13.1%, while in the whole 2021 year they were up by 11.3%.
This increase was mainly driven by the higher external services expenses and employee costs. EBITDA in the fourth quarter was down by 15.6%, while for the total year it was lower by 4.6%. What is also very important for us, and we are very proud of it, that the net profit for the whole 2021 was up by 5.9% and it was the record high in the history of the exchange. There was only one year that the net profit was higher. It was 2018, but in that year we had a one-off big profit because we sold our stakes in Aquis Exchange. Without this one-off, the last year was the best in terms of the net profit.
The next slide, please. The EBITDA margin for the fourth quarter of the last year was at the level of 51.3%, and the net profit margin was 38.5%. Next slide, please. As we said before, the financial market was doing slightly worse as compared with the 2020. The trading revenue on the financial market was down by 17.4% in the last quarter of the last year. It was connected with the lower value of trading and lower average transaction value. There was a different structure of investors. The participation of the retail was lower and it resulted in a lower average fee on the stock market. The next slide.
Listing revenue for the fourth quarter, it was down 29.5% year-over-year, but in fact for the whole year it was higher by 6.4%. In the fourth quarter of the last year, there was, as you can see, the lower introduction fee. Normally it is at the level about PLN 1 million. It is only PLN 8.1 in the fourth quarter, but it was a one-off event. It is technical accounting. We changed the accounting rules for the introduction fee for bonds and this was the one-off result of this change in the fourth quarter. In the next quarters you can expect the introduction fee at the level about PLN 1 million.
From this perspective, the last year was very successful because we had put together 16 new listings on the main market and 32 new listings on the NewConnect. It was a very vibrant primary market and listing market in Warsaw. The next slide. We have a constant growth of our market data revenues. In the fourth quarter it was higher by 6.2% year-on-year. We acquire new clients for our products for licensed exchange product, but also for the commodity market and GPW Benchmark. We are very glad with this diversification. In the fourth quarter we had a record number of data subscribers. It was a very good year from this perspective. Now I'm handing over to Adam Młodkowski, Board Member of the Commodity Exchange.
Thank you, Piotr. Hello, everyone. Adam Młodkowski from TGE speaking. I would like to present you a short information about the results on commodity market in Q4 2021. Total electricity turnover in Q4 2021 was 61.8 TWh. It means an increase 1.8% year-over-year and a decrease 0.6% quarter-on-quarter. The spot turnover volume was 8.5 TWh and the forward turnover volume was 53.3 TWh. Finally, total electricity turnover in 2021 was 225.2 TWh . It means a decrease 7.4% year-over-year. I would like to underline that the turnover on the spot market was the best in TGE's history.
On the gas market, total turnover in Q4 2021 was 43.2 TWh It means an increase of 7.4% year-over-year and a decrease of 2.6% quarter-over-quarter. The spot turnover volume was 8 terawatt-hours and the forward turnover was 35.2 TWh . Total gas turnover in 2021 was 180.8 TWh, which means a decrease of 90.6% year-over-year. It was also like on the spot electricity market, the whole turnover on the gas market was the best yearly result in the history of our exchange. On the green certificates markets, property rights turnover in Q4 2021 was 7 TWh.
It means an increase 10.6% year-over-year, and an increase 55.1% quarter-on-quarter. On energy efficiency property rights turnover in Q4 was 26.6 kt. It means almost 9% decrease year-over-year and 32% increase quarter-on-quarter. In the last year our RES property rights turnover volume was 25.9 TWh. It means a decrease 4% year-over-year. Energy efficiency property rights turnover volume was 108 kt. It means 43.5% decrease year-over-year. The next slide, please. Revenue from the electricity, gas, and property rights market. We noted an increase from trade in electricity in Q4 2021 to PLN 5.4 million.
It means an increase 1.6% year-over-year. We also noted an increase of revenue from trade in gas in Q4 2021. Revenues from this business line was PLN 3.6 million. It was 5% higher than Q4 2020. The TGE group achieved also an increase of revenue from trade in property rights to PLN 6.8 million by 11.6% year-over-year. Our revenue from other fees paid by market participants was PLN 4.4 million, which means a significant increase year-over-year by 33.2%. The next slide, please. The last one for my presentation. Revenues from clearing.
Revenues from this activity increased in Q4 2021 to PLN 13.9 million from PLN 12.3 million in Q3 2021. Means an increase 9.6% year-over-year. It was driven mainly by an increase of turnover in areas property rights. Revenues from the operation of the register of certificates of origin in Q4 2021 increased to PLN 5.6 million. This is + 1.4% year-over-year, and it was also driven by increase in segments related to green certificates and guarantees of origin. That's all for about commodity markets. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you, Adam. Thank you very much, Adam. We are coming back to the financial information about our Capital Group. Operating expenses were up by 13.1% in the fourth quarter year-on-year, and was mainly due to the higher total employee costs. The employee costs increased because we employed more head count in our strategic projects. We started two big strategic projects in the fourth quarter, one is Telemetria Operator on the media market, and the next one is a logistic operator in the transportation area. We employ new people in these two projects that resulted in a higher employee costs. Also, the external services were higher, and this increase was driven by higher e-advisory costs in our strategic projects, and also by the higher cost of promotion and market development.
We also organized some events, marketing events connected with the 30th anniversary of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Generally, operating expenses in the total 2021 year increased by 11.3% year-on-year. Next slide, please. Share of profit of entities measured by the equity methods in the fourth quarter 2021. As every quarter, there is a solid participation of revenues by our subsidiary, National Depository for Securities. It was in the fourth quarter, the participation was higher by 8.7%. As we've had many questions concerning this company, National Depository for Securities, please note that we attached an additional slide in our presentation. It was slide 25 with the account statement of the National Depository for Securities and the main business lines.
You can check what is the result of the KDPW for the last and for the 2022 year and the main business financial information about this company. The next slide, please. Our consolidated financial statement. It is worth mentioning that we paid dividends in August last year at the level of PLN 104.9 million which was PLN 2.5 per share. Also at the beginning of this year, in January, in fact, there was a maturing of one series of our bonds. We bought PLN 120 million our bonds from investors. The next series of our bonds will be matured in October this year, and we are not planning to roll it out.
We will buy this bond from the investors. It was the last slide in our presentation. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now be moving to the Q&A part of the call. If you're dialed in via the web, you may ask a voice or text question. If you are dialed in via the telephone, you may ask a question by pressing Star two on your keypad. That's star two on the keypad for any voice questions. We will now give a moment or so for any questions to come in.
If there are no questions. Yes? May I?
Yeah. Perhaps if you happen to have any questions, please go ahead, Paweł, with a couple that you have.
Perfect. Gentlemen, thank you so much for the presentation and insight into the fourth quarter results. I have a couple of questions. First of all, probably one of the key elements of your equity story is the dividend and the strategy ends this year. How will you approach the dividend policy going forward? Because until this year, you've been paying gradually increasing dividend per share. That's after PLN 0.1 per share every single year. It's roughly 5% growth year-on-year in dividend per share. Do you think this will be the approach to your new dividend policy in the new strategy?
Thank you, Paweł , for this question. We are just about to hire a global consulting company for strategy review and preparation for the strategy beyond 2023. We don't know yet what will be the dividend strategy. Of course, we have to integrate the dividend strategy into our overall corporate strategy. Our investors have been quite pleased with our, let's say, stable dividend policy, so they knew upfront what the dividends will be. When we were planning the dividend level, we had not expected so strong cashflow. This cashflow is driven, on one hand, from the very good operational performance, but also from the much lower CapEx than we expected for our strategy.
As you raised overall EUR 50 million in free grants. Actually by this amount, our CapEx is lower than we expected back in 2018. Combining this lower CapEx, no M&A until now and/or small loans, looking forward, there might be advice from our consultants to increase the dividend. The model, I presume, will be the same. Gradually we're gonna increase our dividend and maybe this delta distribution dividend will be different due to our strong cash flow situation. I don't know. For this year it's well defined that we stick to our minimum dividend level and for the future guidance. I don't know. It will be a part of our strategy.
Sure. Fair enough. Thank you. My next question concerns, I think it's one of the most promising of your strategic initiatives, i.e., Global Connect. So do you have any kind of considerations when this project can be launched? And how many foreign shares are you planning to add to your offer?
Izabela, if I can ask you to elaborate on this question. Thank you.
Yes, sure. At the moment, we have a correspondence with the Polish FSA, and it is related to certain organizational issues of the market. Our goal is to launch the market within two months from the green light that we see from Polish FSA. As we have informed earlier, we, as an exchange, are ready with everything to the market launch. However, we have external partners like market makers and the brokers who will offer this market to their clients. For us it's very important that they have all the final rules and final model of the market.
It is why we need to wait for Polish FSA and for their green light. With our Global Connect, we follow the examples of similar markets in Europe, like the market in Austria or in Germany. Let's take the example of Austria. They started in 2017, and currently they've got 800, i.e., the 800 foreign companies, and their shares are traded on their foreign market. In our assumptions, we are going to start with a few companies, few items, because it will be a kind of pilot period test for all market participants in the real environment.
We think that we can have several dozen items just corporate, I think up to 30 by the end of this year. We expect that the number of companies will expand relatively quickly. I consulted it with our partner and the market maker and the future market maker. We think that several hundred companies it is the number possible by the end of 2024. This is of course they are the estimation, but looking at the history of other markets and also the assumption is that it will be fully automated process. I think that
Adding the new companies, it will be relatively easy.
Before I proceed with my next question, I see that we have a question from one of the call participants. I'll permit myself to just read it. What are your plans for the maturing debt? Are you looking to refinance it?
We mentioned we have a very good plan. We have a very good cash position. We have plenty of cash on our balance sheet. In fact, we are not planning to issue additional bonds, and no, we are not going to refinance this bond series.
I think this answers this question. Could you please elaborate a bit about your acquisition plans as far as the Armenia Stock Exchange is concerned? Any kind of update on this front?
Well, when it comes to the whole documentation and the due diligence, everything is done. It requires a final decision and signing. Under the current circumstances, it is very difficult, you know, to travel to close the deal. We are ready, but this is not completed yet. The priorities are now, of course, the personal business, but also helping out Ukrainians. We have, for example, recently initiated a kind of incubation project for Ukrainian startups from the fintech space. We are quite busy at the moment with some extra work. That's why the deal has not been concluded yet.
Okay. Perfect. Two interconnected questions. The first one, could you please provide us with your OpEx and CapEx guidance for this year? Since they, I assume that they'll be quite inflated amid the introduction and implementation of several strategic initiatives. Could you please provide us with your consideration regarding revenues from these strategic initiatives this year?
I will start with the revenue side, and then I will ask Piotr, our CFO, to elaborate on the OpEx and CapEx. Revenues, PLN 3 million is already sitting in the results from the last year, but still below our expectations. This year we hope for crossing the mark of PLN 10 million. PLN 10 million, PLN 11 million, PLN 12 million would be a great achievement. When it comes to the continued strategic initiatives, as we call it, self-diversification, we were very successful in the last few years in our core business. We grew our core business model is also part of our strategy, and we are very successful in defending our market position.
I remember back in 2018 our share in the trading of the Polish stocks went down to below 70% and now it's over 90%. We're happy with that. Generally the quality of our order book has improved in the recent years. But our diversification efforts, first the pandemic then the war, it's a little bit tricky gaining new clients for new products if you cannot fly over to them and so on. We are underachieving in that respect, but we hope to rebound this in the following years. Piotr, over to you regarding CapEx and OpEx.
Yes. Thanks. We are planning CapEx at the level of PLN 50 million, maximum PLN 55 million . 60% of this CapEx will be for new business projects. Regarding OpEx, we expect that it will be higher than for the last year, but it maximum 15% higher than for the last year. N Maximum 15%.
It seems that this will be the year with the highest OpEx and CapEx. Later on we should expect CapEx dropping and OpEx probably flattening rather. Right?
Yes.
Okay. Perfect. Yeah. Please go on. Go ahead.
We will expect, as our CEO said, from these two big projects, revenue from the registry operator this year and from the Telemetria next year, several million PLN in revenues.
What are considerations regarding IPO pipeline for this year?
Iza, if you can take over that.
Of course, you know, the environment, I'll say it's very demanding and showing that there will be nothing but more negative, I'll say. We have some estimations related to IPO pipeline and it is of course connected with first of all the number of prospectuses waiting for approval with Polish Security Commission , and there are 11 companies with the prospectuses in FSA. This is the one figure. Then, of course, we have some other meetings with the interesting companies, and they're just in the process of selection of their advisors and prospectus preparation.
Also, taking into account the two debuts which happened already in 2022. We can say that all together we can expect somehow 12 debuts on the main market. We have also a semi-platform, NewConnect, and here we had five debuts this year. According to our best knowledge, we can expect just from 15 up to 20-something or even 30 debuts this year. Of course, assumption is that we will not have some even worse situation with the war and pandemic and all this stuff.
As for today, we are quite, I think, optimistic or realistic about IPO market.
Okay. Standard. Let's keep our fingers crossed for the optimistic scenario. 30 new names at the trading of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. We have one more question coming from our chat. Maybe I'll just read it. What is the updated share of investors in trading shares on the main and futures market?
Iza, if you can handle that.
Yeah, just, I think that yeah, it was probably a part of the presentation or one part of the presentation. But I will, of course, repeat it. On the equity market, on the main market, the foreign investors they generated 57% of the trading volumes. Retail clients, 22%, and local institutional, 21%. On derivatives, it is a little bit different. Just a moment. I will check it if I have it. Yes. Just maybe, on the. Yeah. Okay.
In case of futures contracts, we have foreign investors that generated 27%, and individuals, so retail clients, 32%, and institutional, 41%. This structure has been changing in the direction that there is a smaller percentage for retail clients, and higher for institutional clients. I would like to underline one thing, that within the institutional part, we include also market makers and the participants of our liquidity programs. It is why it is growing, because we have active liquidity providers on our derivatives.
Perfect. It's a very detailed answer indeed. Concluding question from my side. Poland proved to be now half of the emerging markets Europe, following Russia's exclusion from the MSCI Emerging Markets universe. Now Poland is something like 45-46% of the MSCI Emerging Markets Europe Index. Do you think that we can absorb, given the significant liquidity of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, part of the trades that were done in Russian stocks? Do you think that Poland, Polish stocks may serve as a proxy trades for Russian stocks? Have you heard about any potential investors leaving our region because of Russia's demotion from the emerging markets index?
Quite tricky and complex question, but maybe, Iza, you will be able to handle it.
Yeah. Let me start from the second one. To be honest, we haven't heard, and I hope that it will not happen. Of course we are in everyday contact with our clients, but currently there is no such signs from their side. Related to the first part of your question. Because of removing Russia from MSCI indices, so that's true that the share of Poland increased in three main indices, so Emerging Markets Europe, MSCI Emerging Markets Europe, and Africa and emerging markets world. It is not the typical rebalancing. For a rebalance to happen, in my view, the question is whether money currently invested in Russia would be able to leave.
The Russian stock market has been closed since the 25th of February, and Russia's central bank just has ordered brokers not to execute the sell orders from foreign shareholders. There is also a ban on Western companies taking money out of the country. At this moment, in my view, it is unclear how the funds, especially passive funds, would be able to sell their shares and get their money back. I think that without the liquidation of their position, there is very likely to be no rebalance flows across the rest of emerging markets.
However, I think that this change in MSCI emerging markets could have potential positive effects for Poland, but in the future when there will be the new flows to these stocks. Then of course it is a significant increase of share of Poland, especially in MSCI Emerging Markets Europe Index.
Perfect. Let's keep our fingers crossed for higher inflows into the Polish stock market. It seems that we don't have any further questions. At least I don't see any. I believe we can conclude the call. Gentlemen, thank you so much for delivering the presentation. Let's keep our fingers crossed for strong volumes this year, and I'll speak to you soon after the first quarter results. Have a great weekend. Stay safe. Take care.
Take care.
Thank you very much.
Thank you. Bye.
Bye-bye.
Thank you very much. Goodbye.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Thank you very much. This concludes today's call. We'll now be closing all the lines. Thank you. Goodbye.