Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Miguel Dias, and on behalf of WOOD & Company, I am pleased to welcome you to the Third Quarter Conference Call with Warsaw Stock Exchange Management. Today, the company is represented by Mr. Marek Dietl, CEO and President of the Management Board, Izabela Olszewska, Monika Kolińska, and Adam Rutkowski, Members of the Management Board, as well as Piotr Listwan, Vice-President of the Management Board of the Polish Power Exchange. Mr. Dietl, please go ahead. The floor is yours.
Thank you very much, and welcome to the Conference on Q3 2021 results. Let me start with a brief overview of the key events from the last quarter. First, I would refer to our core business. We have still quite good trading volumes on the equity market. It's +1% year-over-year. We are especially pleased with our bond market Catalyst, where we have. When we tripled the trading volumes, we are very much satisfied with the derivatives. This market is really taking off with over 45% plus. Last quarter, effectively, we launched on the 1st of November, most of the work was done in Q3.
On our side, it was global market. GlobalConnect is a market which offers international stocks to the Polish ecosystem, to the Polish investors. We have currently two German companies, and hopefully our brokers will bring more international stocks to our venue. We also paid quite decent dividend, a little bit higher than in our dividend policy of 2.74 zloty per share. We start to work with international consulting company on the strategy for the years 2023-2027. From our current strategy, strategic initiatives, our GPW Logistics, our digital logistic operator, is up and running.
The company received a forwarding license. We are very well advanced in negotiations with 2 clients, relatively large industrial groups. We also are done with our GPW Data program, and we start commercialization of the data in the premium models. Some people will be for free, some more advanced parts and data will be charged. In our tokenization and blockchain effort, we keep on running. We finished the 2nd phase of the technology development in our in the R&D part of this project, Spread Market project. We also applied for a crowdfunding license to our market supervisor. We continue development of our platform for tokenization of artwork, of paintings, and we will soon start...
Other tokenization platforms, and we will soon start internal and external tests. When it comes to our GPW subsidiaries, they are quite successful in getting customers for our GRC software. First, we have two modules, governance module and compliance module in place. We are working on our module, risk module, but there are already clients for the first two modules. One client is, of course, our group, and we are implementing this now in all our subsidiaries and our other company. We have also our first fee-paying external clients. It's quite promising that even at this stage, there are some clients who wants to bet on this technology and want to acquire it for their purpose.
Our Indexator, our index calculating engine, is fully integrated and replaced the previous old-style engine. Our GPW Tech is negotiating with some other foreign clients. In one of the tendering procedure, we are at the last stage of the process. We'll see if we're gonna win this or not. TCA tool was not only sold, but fully implemented Kuwait Stock Exchange, and we have several other leads, sales leads, for this set of tools. GPW STORK, our market surveillance tool is rolled out fully in GPW at our venue at our exchange. We are now in the process of RFP the first external client, and this client is also using it in a test mode.
Hopefully, they're gonna buy our piece of software. That was more or less all when it comes to our development efforts. Now I would like to ask Izabela Olszewska to take over the stage and talk us through the business update. Thank you.
Hello. As Marek has just kindly said, I'm Izabela Olszewska, and I'm Member of the Management Board of Warsaw Stock Exchange in charge of sales and business development and ESG. I will have the pleasure to guide you through the next few slides, which presents a business on the financial market of our exchange. The third quarter of 2022 was still marked by the effects of the war, so the high inflation and increasing interest rates and also uncertainty. The general climate around the stock exchange was demanding. Plus, as every year, the third quarter includes 2 months of holiday, and normally these months are more quiet than others.
We can say that the third quarter on financial market was not bad. Pretty good, I would say. The trading volumes on the main markets were slightly lower quarter-on-quarter, slightly higher year-on-year. Just we need to underline that 2021 was a really good year in our history. What is also worth underlining, that the value of trading remains still much better than in the pre-COVID, pre-pandemic 2019 year. The average session trading volumes were, however, below PLN 1 billion.
Just to comment how it is now, it is normally over PLN 1 billion and we hope that it will continue until the end of the year. The average fee was 2.13 basis points. This indicates a larger share than a year earlier of institutional investors and traders which operate under liquidity programs. The share of HVP, so High Volume Provider, high volume funds programs, was respectively over 16% in third quarter 2022 and over 14% in third quarter 2021. In my opinion, it's worth adding that participants of those programs operates on now on more than 140 corporates.
Only, they go, I would say, below WIG80 index, which is really good for other participants of the market, including also institutional investors and retail clients. On the NewConnect market, we had quite significant drop of trading volumes, especially year-on-year. I think that it's quite normal that in times of uncertainty and there is an outflow of money, of investments from more risky markets. The NewConnect market, it's a market of smaller companies with the shorter history on the market. From that perspective, it is more risky. Plus, the biggest and the most liquid NewConnect issuers, they are upgraded to main markets.
This is included, I would say, in DNA of NewConnect. This is in line with. I'm sorry. This is in line with the goals of our SME platform. In the third quarter of 2022, we had 4 transfers from NewConnect to the main market and 1 debut on NewConnect. On the structured products segment, the trading volumes were slightly lower year-over-year and quarter-over-quarter. This segment is very important for us and develops very well. It's very useful, providing investors with instruments that give an exposure to various categories of assets, including various commodities. Some positive information comes from ETF segment.
volumes were up to, uh, 80% year-on-year and +11% quarter-on-quarter. The volatility on the market encouraged investors to trade mostly two ETFs. So one, it is ETF based on WIG20 but with the leverage. So it follows the blue chip index, but with twice as much force. Then the next popular product was ETF based on WIG20 as well, but the short. So it gives the opportunity to achieve positive rates of return when the index is falling. The most important thing is also that the assets under management of ETFs just constantly, they increase
The company Beta Securities, the provider of ETFs, to our market, just announced at the beginning of November that the assets of their ETFs, they increased PLN 4 million Polish zloty. A few comments on IPO and SPO markets. From the beginning of the year, on all markets, we had 21 debuting corporates. Seven on the main markets, and they were only transfers from NewConnect, and 14 on NewConnect. In the third quarter, there were four transfers from NewConnect to main market and one debut on NewConnect.
I think that it's also worth saying that not only in Poland but all over Europe and the world, we observed significantly less interest in IPO. In the period of 9 first months of 2022, the number of IPOs in the world decreased by more than 40% year-on-year. The value of IPO decreased by 57%. The source of this data is EY Global IPO Trends report. I think that it is caused by this uncertainty and because of the war and the effects of the war. Some of the companies decided to postpone the process of IPO. They wait for better market condition and valuation.
According to quarterly information provided by Polish Financial Supervision Authority, at the end of the first quarter, there were 14 prospectors in the hands of PFSA. There's no precise information how many of them were suspended and how many in process. Of course, similar as in the previous years, we the sales team of the Stock Exchange conduct talks with the interesting companies, potential debutants. I think that as soon as the market condition approves, so we'll have the new IPO on our market. I just want to comment also SPO segment because this is very interesting. This market is quite vibrant.
We had many, relatively many SPOs on the main market and NewConnect. Just we can read analysts don't rule out that a larger wave of SPO will come soon. Just the next slide, please. The next slide is about the situation on derivatives market, and the third quarter was very successful for this segment. The overall trading volume increased by almost 50% year-on-year. It is important that the biggest increase concern our flagship product, which is future contract on WIG index WIG20. We observed a big participation of liquidity providers in this segment, so market makers and High Volume Providers.
Their activity provided deeper order book, which is again, very good for the investors, including retail clients. The share in trading volumes of retail clients is very interesting because, to be honest, they built the derivatives market in Poland. Because of the growth of this market, their percentage share in trading volumes decreased. We check it and in nominal values, they trade even more that year and a couple of years ago.
Volatility works well in the futures market, and we can see that the volatility was higher just both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year on index of wide market which is WIG and as well as index of WIG WIG20. The next slide, please. Just would like to also comment on ESG, which is a very important trend on the financial markets. We receive a lot of questions from our investors and analysts. It is why ESG is and will be included in our presentation. Last year we announced the ESG strategy for our capital group.
This year in 2022, we started to prepare the operational plans in every company of our capital group. The mother company and daughter's company, they have now the operating plans how to achieve the KPIs. Also, we try to build the ESG culture in our group. We conduct workshop lectures dedicated to our employees, just to some people that are looking into ESG compliance. We also took some action to implement ESG risk management as a part of our overall risk management system. As an organizer of the trading platform for so many companies, we also just feel this responsibility for education in ESG area.
We carried out education activities in the third quarter, and this is our constant activity. We provide the information on ESG in almost every conference. We are very active in promoting ESG instruments and, like, for example, green bonds market, which we think that it would be very useful for many corporates willing to prepare the green transformation within their organization. Also we promote sustainable development through organizing some studies to show that it's worth doing and also through being organizing or being a partner of competition for ESG leaders. Thank you. This is all from my side. Adam, over to you.
Lisa. My name is Adam Rutkowski, and I'm in charge of finance in WSE management board. On the next few slides, I will present the financial results of the group after last quarter. Okay, let's look at the slide 8. Thank you. In Q3 2022, total revenues amounted to PLN 88.4 million, which means a decrease of 2.4% year-on-year. We achieved relatively high revenues on the financial market, 6.6% year-over-year, due to higher trading volumes. Weaker revenues on the commodity market, where a decrease of almost 17% year-over-year took place. Operating expenses increased by over 20% quarter-on-quarter, and C/I ratio reached 64% after nine months.
It remains within our target on 2022. In Q3 2022, we also recognized a goodwill impairment allowance on the subsidiary company, BondSpot, in the amount of PLN 6.7 million. The allowance was recognized in other expenses. As a consequence of the decrease in revenues and an increase in cost, EBITDA reached the level of PLN 29.1 million, which means a decrease of over 40% quarter-on-quarter. The net profit amounted to PLN 31.1 million, which means a decrease of 13.5% year-over-year. After ninth month, bottom line is near the results than we expected. Next slide, please. Okay.
Charts on the next slide show a clear downward trend in EBITDA margin quarter by quarter to 32.9% and slightly milder decline in the net profit margin to 35.2%. We achieved higher net profit margin than EBITDA margin, among others, due to an increase in financial income caused by an increase in the interest rates and an increase in the value of entities measured by the equity method. What is also important, the 2021 dividend for our shareholders was as Mr. President Marek Dietl did said at the beginning of the presentation, PLN 2.74 per share. It was higher than the minimum amount specified in the dividend policy. The dividends was paid on August the fifth.
The next slide, please. Revenue from trading on the financial market in Q3 accounted for over 43% of the group's total revenues and was resulted from the change in volumes, as Miss Izabela Olszewska presented on the earlier slide. Trading revenues amounted to PLN 38.2 million, which means an increase of 7.5% year-over-year and a decrease of 0.5% quarter-on-quarter. At this point, I would like to underline that the revenues from trading derivatives more than doubled year-on-year revenues from this business line. Listing revenues in Q3 amounted to PLN 5.5 million and did not change year-on-year, while quarter-on-quarter they fell by 1.9%.
Revenues, from the information service, I mean, sales of information in Q3 amounted to 14.3 million PLN, which means an increase of 6.8% year-on-year and a decrease of 2.5% quarter-on-quarter. Now, it's time for the results from the commodity market. I will pass the floor to TGE. Piotr, the floor is yours.
Thank you. Thank you, Adam. Hello, everyone. I would like to present to you the results from the commodity market in the third quarter. On the electricity market, we noticed a slight decrease in turnover quarter-on-quarter. However, on year-on-year basis, there is the decline is already visible because it's over 42%. Decline in turnover is caused by the situation of the electricity markets in Europe, of course, caused by the Russian invasion on Ukraine. The legislations changes at the European and national level, as for example, the risk on abolition of the obligation to trade on the energy on the exchange and other, which significantly regulates the way the market operates currently.
In the face of uncertainty, high energy prices and gas prices, as well as the regular regulatory changes, the risk of the regulatory changes, market participants quite significantly limited their activity on the energy market on our business lines, which are of course energy and gas markets. Drop in volumes on the gas market quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year is significant, 19% and 61% respectively. When it comes to renewable energy certificates, we have recorded a decrease in the third quarter, so quarter-on-quarter over 42%, that finally amount to 5 TWh. This is caused mainly by the ending of the settlement period in June, meaning the compulsory redemption of the certificate that needs to be performed by the end of every June. This is the trend that we have every year.
You probably you've had a chance to see that every second quarter is much better than the previous and the next quarters on the green certificates. However, comparing year-on-year basis, we recorded slight growth, as you can see on the chart. On the white certificates, we have low volumes, caused directly by the small amount of certificates issued by the Energy Regulatory Office. Yes. That's all for from this slide, and we can come to the next one to the revenues. Of course, revenues in the commodity side in the first quarter are directly resulting from the trading volumes just discussed in the previous slide.
The causes of the smaller amount of the revenues that we gained in the first quarter are directly coming from the volumes. Noteworthy is the increase in the other fees by over 47% year-on-year, mainly due to the higher revenues from the management of the clearing warranty funds that is performed by our daughter company, IRGiT, which is the clearing house. Going to the next slide, revenues from the clearing. Clearing in the third quarter amounted to PLN 8.3 million, over 24% lower than in the second quarter, mainly due to lower trading volumes in the forward instruments on gas and energy.
When we go down to the revenues of the registers, we see the drop quarter-on-quarter by 37%. It's caused, as I mentioned before, by the seasonal, high operations in registers that are performed in the second quarters, remembering the compulsory redemption of the certificates in every June. However, we noticed better results in year-on-year comparison, over 10% increase, mainly driven by the bigger volumes of issued property rights and general return over of the guarantees of origin. I think that's all from the community side. I pass the voice to my colleagues from Warsaw Stock Exchange.
Thank you, Piotr. We are coming back to the consolidated financial results of the group. We are on slide 16. As I said before, cost to income ratio in Q3 increased to 64%, but remains within our targets. Operating costs grew slightly more than 20% year-on-year, and this was mainly due to an increase in the cost of external services by 5 million PLN year-on-year, and an increase in the labor cost by 4.6 million PLN. The increase in cost was the result of an increase in the cost of maintaining the IT infrastructure, promotion, consulting, market development, and additional employment in the implementation of strategic initiatives. Next slide, please.
On the 17th slide, you can see share of profit of entities measured by the equity methods. In Q3, value of this share increased by over 40% year-on-year, and this was the result of the increase in the net profit of the KDPW Group due to higher revenues from the settlement of future transactions and the higher profits from financial investments in conjunction with an increase in the interest rates on the financial market. WSE's share of KDPW profit increased from PLN 5.8 million in Q3 2021 to PLN 8.2 million in Q3 2022. Finally, the next slide, please. Okay, this is the last slide of our presentation with the balance sheet.
The group assets after Q3 were reduced on the balance sheet by PLN 50 million year-on-year as a result of the lower value of financial assets measured by amortized costs with a simultaneous increase in cash. The decrease in current liabilities was the result of the above mentioned payment of dividend on August the fifth in the amount of PLN 150 million. The last comment from my side, the corporate bonds issued by WSE were redeemed at the beginning of October. For this reason, there was no change in the balance sheet on August the 13th. This is all for today. Thank you for your attention.
Thank you. We'll now move to the question and answer section. If you would like to ask a question, please press star two on your phone and wait to be prompted. If you're dialed in by web, you can either type your question in the box provided or request to ask a voice question. I think our first question comes from Miguel at WOOD & Company. Miguel, please go ahead.
Miguel, I think you're still on mute.
Hello?
Yes, we can hear you now.
We can hear you.
Miguel, we lost you again, I think.
Mm.
Maybe you start for questions. No?
Yeah. Perhaps we can start with a different question. We have a question from Javier Pérez from Ancor Investments. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yes. Loud and clear.
Okay, thank you for the presentation. I would like you to ask a couple of question. First regarding the Armenia Stock Exchange acquisition, we would like to hear what's the board strategic rationale behind it and the price you paid? My second question would be regarding your middle and long-term goal for some metrics. Since you are working in the next strategy plan, are you setting any target for revenue growth, profit margin or return on equity? Lastly, since my last question, since the Polish state owns 35% of the shares and more than 50% of the voting power, I would like to know whether the state might consider at some point to sell its stake and leave it in private hands, and just if you can comment about it? Thank you.
Okay. I will take the questions. Let me start with Armenia. We paid around EUR 31.5 million. We have also put option, within 3 years, we can also separate ourselves from the stock exchange, the Central Bank of Armenia will be paying us back the amount we paid. The price was defined as simply net asset value. It was, from our perspective, very attractive price, but we also promised to conduct 60 initiatives to grow Armenia capital market. The rationale was that it's fast-growing exchange, profitable exchange with roughly 20%, 30% EBITDA margin. We like the border.
Also, Armenia becomes, despite the war and political tensions, a financial center of South Caucasus. We believe that it's good place to be. About the war, I mean, of course, we feel very sorry for those or all the casualties in this war. We look forward to a peaceful solution. We also see it as a, if you look at Armenian GDP growth, double digits between 10% to 13%. It's rapidly growing economy despite the war. Also visit of Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives, with 2 Armenian-American Congresswoman and Congressman also show commitment from the United States of America to help maintain Armenian territorial integrity.
We are therefore still quite positive. Of course, we know that geopolitics is challenging. That's why we have this put option, and we pay relatively, as far as I'm concerned, low price. KPIs. Just before the call, we had another workshop with our strategic advisors, exactly on KPIs. We asked them to review the initial proposal. We will come with a proposal. I don't know. Under this strategy, it was the revenue, EBITDA and cost to income ratio and dividend and dividends level. What will be the next? I don't know. There will be most probably some strategy related things and some financials. For sure, we are in business of growing the value of the company. For sure, financial parameters play important role.
We also research carefully our investors base, and we know that 80+% of our investors are value-oriented. For sure the dividends is a kind of a must. Last question about the state. I mean, selling the shares of the stock exchange is, could be difficult for the Polish government, any government, as we are on the list of 40, I think, seven strategy companies, and there should for offloading the shares, there should be consent from the parliament. It's a both political decision. I'm not aware of any even attempts to do so. Actually, there's no any news on the privatization, further privatization or next step of the privatization of the GPW or stock exchange. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Christoph Arnold. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks for the presentation, and thanks for taking my question. My question concerns excess cash. At the end of Q3, there were liquid assets of about PLN 565 million on the balance sheet and almost no debt. Also the operating cash flows are very strong and sufficient covers to cover the CapEx, even at the currently elevated levels. Considering that holding lots of cash is very expensive for shareholders, especially in times of high inflation and interest rates, do you have any plans or thoughts about how to use that cash or to return it to shareholders, for example, as a special dividend? Is this something that will be part of the new strategy for 2023 onwards?
Thank you very much for this question. Just to update you, we paid some of our bonds, so we are literally debt-free company. Actually our cash is a little bit spending is a little bit lower now. Anyway, first of all, we are committed a loan to our subsidiary, Polish Power Exchange, to finance VAT. When there is an export of electricity from Poland via exchange, there is a VAT charge, and the VAT is recovered after 60 days. For the bridge financing, we committed, we offered a kind of a credit line of PLN 100 million. It's actually you can think about like it's working capital for us.
Yeah.
Let's put it this way. The other thing is that we are heavily investing time and money into our technology, WATS technology products. WATS stands for Warsaw Automated Trading System. One-third is financed by the National Centre for Research and Development, but the two-third is financed by us. It's another PLN 60 million, so it adds up to PLN 160 million. We have few other initiatives where which gonna consume also some money. We indeed look for the outcome of the new strategy. Also we are in few M&A processes, more or less promising different stages. So we also work heavily on this normal organic growth. Of course, with M&A, you never know how it's gonna play out. But the crucial thing is the strategy.
We also were considering to buy the office building we are located in. We own part of it and part of the rest. Most probably we'll give up as the yields increase, and the valuation was based on the old yields, so most probably won't buy this real estate, but we spared some cash for buying that. Currently, it's not, might be not the optimal moment for a request, acquisition financing in form of debt. We'd rather if there will be an M&A, most probably we'll finance it with our cash, or we would prefer to finance with our cash. We are not that eager to dispose that amount. In the first quarter next year, we'll know the strategy. It can happen that we will pay out the special dividend.
It's not, I cannot exclude that. It's still in our scope of thinking.
Okay, thank you. Can I just ask another question?
Sure. No problem.
Yeah, you mentioned the PLN 100 million that is dead yet, kind of a working capital. Is that related to the PLN 100 million revolving credit facility that you secured last year in 2021?
Yeah, we knew that. Actually, Polish Power Exchange has a bank credit line of PLN 100 million, and another PLN 100 million comes from us.
Oh, okay. Okay, right. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay.
So.
Understood. Thanks. Maybe one more regarding the Warsaw Automated Trading System. Is the development still running to plan? Or are there any unforeseen problems? In case there are some, do you have some contingency plan, for example, to use UTP longer than planned in case that something goes wrong with the development and you realize, you're not ready to go live as planned in, I think it's Q1 2024?
On our end, everything goes according to the plan. Of course, there are some streams which are delayed, but all in all, we are still fine. The issues of the local ecosystem, if it's ready for the system, and we are in the discussion with our local clients, when they gonna be ready for the new system. This might postpone. That's why we sign an agreement with the Euronext. It's of course, very important that we get this support. Actually, over the last few years, we have never used this support from Euronext. Of course, we want to have it maintenance contract, but we have never used that in the last 3 or 4 years. Also our team is more and more experienced in running UTP.
We are hedged two ways. One is experience of our team, and the second hedge is maintenance contract with Euronext. Everything depends on our clients, on our investment firms, local ecosystem.
Okay. Mm-hmm. Maybe one last question. Can you say what are the expected annual savings from the new trading system compared to the cost of UTP?
Basically, our NPV from WATS is positive, even if we do not sell WATS, Warsaw Automated Tradings System, outside of our Capital Group. It's now even more attractive because we are charged in euros by Euronext, obviously. Basically, we are very positive as the maintenance cost will decrease. Our new WATS trading system is not only according to the independent test done by Warsaw Polytechnic, the fastest in the world, but also has a much greater capacity. We will need much less hardware to run it. We will also replace not only our trading system here at the Warsaw Stock Exchange, but also at our BondSpot, our bond market, and at Polish Power Exchange. We will also reduce the complexity of the systems.
In our ecosystem, there are 7 trading systems actually, you won't believe that, but it's true, from different vendors. It's the extreme cost efficiencies related to that. We will recover our investment just by that. Of course, we hope to sell it to third party, to other exchanges. Also when we were deciding on the WATS, we were not sure about Armenia, and hopefully sooner or later also our Armenian colleagues gonna use this WATS. For sure it's NPV positive project even in the contingency scenario. Even in case we are just the only user of that, but hopefully we will have more users. This is really very nice piece of software. It works really good. Clients are testing that.
Clients like that are impressed by the efficiency, you know. It's really. We don't have a legacy as our competitors, so it's a really brand new system on the Rust technology, which was recently also Google or Alphabet is converting all their systems into Rust technology. We were 2 years ahead and really this Rust as a programming language and the technology platform is very, very efficient. We are very positive on the market prospect. We start with us, with our capital group, and it will keep us busy for some time. Our GPW Tech, our 100% owned subsidiary, is also in talks with some potential clients for WATS.
Usually clients say, "Okay, we want to see it, that you implement that, and then we'll decide if we see how it works in real life, scenario.
Okay. Sounds good. Thank you.
There is also one question.
Yes. Go ahead.
This question on chart is to you, Piotr Listwan, because it's about what are the drivers of lower electricity and gas volumes and higher prices. Can you explain a little bit what has happened in our energy market? What is the situation there? Because there's a lot of things happening there.
Of course, yes. The drivers for the lower electricity and gas volumes are of course the prices of the coal, ETS and gas prices. This is the main reason. The second is uncertainty of the supply of the coal and gas to the power plants in Poland. The bigger profit margin gained by the power plants. That's the reason of the higher prices of the energy in Poland.
The record high prices on the market caused also the higher demanding from the higher deposits from the members because of the fluctuation of the prices on the energy and gas market makes the higher deposits that are demanding from our clearing house. That all makes our market participants a little bit stopped from opening new positions and just waiting what will be at the end of the year. This is only from the functional side of the market caused mainly by the prices of the coal, ETS and gas prices. However, on the second side, that is the also answer for the second part of the question.
There is regulatory concerns of the market participants, and its concern is very big, caused by the major changes in national level that goes even farther from the regulations provided by the European, on the European level. Second is the regulations of the reduction obligation level on the gas market. We currently see the proposal of the regulation that makes reduction from 55% trading obligation of the gas on the market to 30% for this year and for the next year. It is not yet implemented, but there is the project that's was already put for the consultation.
The second, the third one and the last one is the act that limiting the energy prices on the exchange. That makes the very over-regulated market in Poland and makes the most concerns of the market participants in trading on the exchange. We have both energy, both energy prices and also regulatory concerns on the market participant side. That's all of them.
Makes them a little bit, stop of trading so much on the market and just waiting what will happen with the regulations, and how will the market will be performed in next year.
Thank you. Maybe we can try, Miguel from, WOOD & Company again. Miguel, are you there? Can you, connect?
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can.
Hello? Yeah. Okay.
We can hear you.
Sorry. I might have had some technical issues on my side. I'll try to be brief. I have a couple of questions. The first one is regarding the cost to income ratio. If there are any cost-saving measures that are planned. If yes, in which areas? How do you see ad count evolve in the future? Also, are you able to pass some of these cost increases to your customers by means of IT fees on either GPW or TGE? I would like to also ask Piotr still if he could provide some guidance on the impact of all of these regulatory constrictions on the energy market.
How will this affect energy trading turnovers in the future? Last question would be regarding dividends. If you still see the 0.1 PLN growth until 2025, meaning that in 2023 you pay 2.7 PLN, 2024, 2.8 PLN, and 2025, 2.9 PLN. Yeah. That's all. Thank you so much.
Thank you very much. I'll start with the first 2.5 question, and the remaining part I will leave to Piotr at this point. First of all, cost to income ratio has increased. I don't think we'll have this ratio in the next strategy as we skipped some attractive businesses with a EBITDA margin of 20%, 30%, which because of they were spoiling our cost to income ratio target. I don't think it's an efficient ratio. When it comes to headcount, we have indeed increased our number of people at our company mainly for the strategic projects. We are lagging.
We are lagging behind the efficiency of other exchanges when you count the revenues per employee or even on the per EUR basis. For every EUR we pay or PLN we pay, we have lower returns in terms of revenues than other exchanges of the similar size. We look very closely in that and but for the time being, we are simply expanding many business lines. More or less, we are happy with the number of people we have, and we can continue. Unless there are very ambitious strategic initiatives in the new strategy, we will be fine with the current headcount. Cost pass through. It's very difficult. We were checking. Our last price increases were in many business lines were very many years ago.
If we were to put it to the today's values, we will be forced to increase our prices by 50%-60%. It's not realistic. We will rather do some smaller changes now to our pricing, and we'll try to get some of the cost increases through. It's very, very difficult on the current market situation. Also there's a pressure from our ecosystem that we actually lower prices. When we come up with the increased prices, it's we come with a strong resistance. We have to be very smart and very selective where we can improve slightly our pricing. I don't know what is the...
I know a little bit what is at the end of TGE when the cost are passed through to the prices. Piotr, if you can take over the second part of the first question and elaborate a little bit more on the TGE perspective. Thank you very much.
Yes. Thank you. Thank you for the question. From, we forecast trading volumes on the energy side to be much lower than this year. Maybe not half of the trading volumes that were performed this year, but much lower than we have it this year from the energy side. From the gas side will be slight difference, slight decrease in the trading volumes both in the forward instruments and the spot trading. However, going to the next question, about the fees that we are
If we are planning to introduce any changes in the structure of the fees, I would like to say that don't be afraid of the profitability of the TGE side because in the matter that we are losing a little bit the trading volumes from the market, because we were not introducing any changes in the fees since 12 years on the energy market and 10 years on the gas market, we are planning to introduce some changes from the beginning of next year in the fee, in the trading fees. Our goal is to maintain the profitability of the TGE and our local company at a similar level as it is in the current year.
Okay, great.
Okay. Okay. Understood. If just you could also comment on the dividend question that'll be very much appreciated. Thank you. If you want, I can repeat. It's about the expectations for dividend payment for the coming years. If you still see that you'll be able to maintain the pace of growth of 0.1 PLN per year. Meaning that by 2025, you'd be paying 2.9 PLN, according to the previous strategy plans. Thank you.
Sorry, sorry. Sorry, I missed the question. 0.1 per year. You mean dividend, yeah?
Yes.
Yeah. I mean, it's doable.
Yes. Yes. Yes.
We will have a new strategy and dividend policy, but it seems doable. I mean, I talk a lot to our investors, and they were very pleased that it's foreseeable growth path for the dividends was highly appreciated. If I were to decide now, I will go for the similar range, depending of course on our CapEx requirements for the new strategy. It seems that we will have CapEx lighter initiatives than in this strategy round. It seems to be feasible. Of course, as I mentioned, there are several challenges to our business, especially related to the cost pressure and limited pass-through rate. Polish Power Exchange is, in this respect, in slightly better...
In a slightly better position as it is now the, I think, cheapest power exchange in Europe, by the way. There is still some room for price improvement.
Okay. Understood. Thank you so much.
Thank you. I'm not seeing any more questions, perhaps I can hand back to the GPW team for closing remarks.
First of all, let me thank you for joining. It was the record number of participants. I also enjoyed this live discussion, this chat things, and answering in vain was somehow difficult for me. I really like this call. Hopefully, it was also informative for you. If you have any further questions, do not hesitate to contact our IR team. We'll have in about 3-4 months another chance to chat on our fourth quarter and yearly results, and I look forward to this conference. Thank you very much for your kind participation in this meeting. Thank you. Have a great afternoon and evening. Bye-bye.
Thank you. That concludes for today. Thank you.