Hi. Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Warsaw Stock Exchange Q1 2026 results call. Thank you for joining us today. Let me introduce our today's speakers. We have with us the CEO of Wars aw Stock Exchange, Mr. Tomasz Bardziłowski, the CFO, Mr. Marcin Rulnicki, and the CEO of the subsidiary of the Polish Power Exchange, Mr. Piotr Listwoń. We have planned a 20-30 minute presentation for you, follow ed by a Q&A session. Now, without further ado, let me pass the floor to Tomasz.
Thank you, Lukasz. Welcome, everybody, on our first-quarter earnings call. The first quarter was a record quarter for the exchange. We recorded record high revenues of PLN 169 million, which is up 27.5% year-on-year on the back of a very strong turnover growth. The turnover in cash equities rose by 42% year-on-year in the first quarter. This was driving our revenues from financial markets, which grew 34% on a year-on-year ba sis. However, we also noted and recorded very strong revenue growth in commodity segment, 70% year-on-year to over PLN 15 million in revenues. In terms of operating costs, our operating costs rose almost 12% year-on-year. However, our cost income fell to the lowest levels in four years, below 58%, over 800 basis points lower than a year ago.
As a result of operating leverage, our earnings went up significantly on EBITDA level, up 42%, and on net profit level, 38% up on a year-on-year basis to almost PLN 17 million. In April, we have, as a board, recommended to our shareholders a record high dividend of PLN 3.4 per share, which represent almost 8% growth over the previously paid dividend. Key developments in the first quarter. First of all, we are very happy to see an active market in terms of transactions, even despite high volatility. We had six debuts on the main market, and the total value of the primary and follow-on deals year to date was over PLN 4 million. We also had four new listings on the NewConnect market, with a total deal value of PLN 130 million. A quite active bond market.
The number of new listings on the Catalyst market was 126 non-treasury bonds, and total value of new listings of almost PLN 12 billion. Also, we had 13 new ETFs year to date, and the turnover of ETFs more than went up by almost 100%. In terms of strategic initiatives, we focused on activities aimed at attracting both new issuers, like GPW IPO Academy, and also investors. Much also focus on the NewConnect market, and we had a NewConnect Focus Day conference, but also we expelled 20 companies from the NewConnect market for not being compliant with our reporting obligations. In terms of regulatory works, we cooperated with seven other exchanges in the CEE region and presented a joint position paper on Savings and Investment Union.
However, one of the biggest events so far this year was our 35th anniversary. We had an event on the 16th of April this year, and the main statement was from transformation to innovation. The stock exchange 35 years ago was a symbol in Poland of switching from a communist to a free market economy. Now we want the Warsaw Stock Exchange to be a symbol of innovative economy, of financing of innovative companies. We also point out that last three years were one of the best periods in the history of the exchange. In this period, the market cap of domestic companies went up two times to PLN 1.2 trillion, and average daily turnover went up by more than two times to PLN 2.6 billion.
Going back to the statistics of the past quarter, as I said, the very impressive revenue growth, internal growth of 42%, and in terms of turnover growth, we've been one of the most active exchange in Europe. In terms of turnover volatility, we are still one of the top exchanges in Europe, just after Deutsche Börse and Athens Stock Exchange. Very active period in terms of ECM transactions, six new com panies on the main market with a IPO of Rex Concepts. It's a restaurant company which raised almost PLN 500 million on the exchange, new capital. Also, the two other companies which made its IPO debut in the first quarter, they already conducted and executed successfully follow-on offerings.
Here, I'm speaking about MRAD, a defense company, and Quantum Creotech, which is the first company in Europe listed on the European exchanges from a quantum computing sector. Also, quite a strong SPO market and ABB market, as I said, in total, over PLN 4 billion in the transaction values, what we hope to see this activity to stay at sim ilar level or even be stronger in following quarters, once the volatility will slightly decline in the market. Strong activity also in the non-treasury bond market Catalyst with the 126 new listings, and the total value of listings on the Ca ta lyst market went up by almost 20% year-on-year to over PLN 160 billion. On ETF market, because ETFs, we con tinue to say that to broadening ETF offering remains one of our key strategic priorities for this year.
We have the assets of ETFs listed on exchange increased by 30% in the first quarter to PLN 2.8 billion. We have now 33 ETFs, and we hope to have around 50 ETFs by end of this year. Let me now pass to Marcin to guide you through our financials.
Thank you, Tomasz. Hello, everyone. In the next few slides, I'll try to explain details of our financial performance in Q1 2026, starting with the summary of our P&L. As Tomasz already mentioned, we had a record high revenue with PLN 169 million in sales in the first quarter, and it was driven by both the financial market and the commodity market. In the financial market, it was obviously due to high revenue in cash equities, but also a very good quarter for Armenia Stock Excha nge and also in sales of market data, we made a big progress year-over-year. Also in the commodity market, we had very solid quarter, more than 17% up year-over-year, and this is basically in all business lines, like tr ading on energy and gas as well as transaction settlements.
All these activities went up compared to the first three quarters of 2025. In the operating costs, we had almost 12% increase. That's explained in a few separate slides in a second. Let me not go into details here. Our cost income ratio was below 58%. It was at a super low level, the lowest since four years, as far as I can remember. Very good operating performance, operating profit over PLN 70 million, EBITDA almost PLN 78 million, and net profits at the level of almost PLN 70 million. It was a very good quarter for the Warsaw Stock Exchange Group. In the structure of our revenues, a small increase in the financial market-related revenues. It went up to almost 68% in the overall revenues of the group.
Of course, mainly thanks to very high turnover in cash equities and related revenue. Commodity market stands for 30% in the first quarter, slightly down compared to Q4 2025. Looking at the slide, we usually also comment revenue which is not related to trading, and in Q1 2026, the share of this revenue was slightly lower than the previous quarter. It went down from 34.2% to 31.8%. It was obviously not because of declining revenue, but because of the revenue growing slower. The revenue related to trading went up almost 29% year-on-year, whereas the non-trading related revenue went up almost 25%. I would say slower, but not slow.
Looking at the trading-related revenue and per class of assets, we can see that cash equities still dominate here, and they represent PLN 63 million out of PLN 76 total trading-related revenue after the growth of 40%. This is obviously following the record high turnover on cash equities on Warsaw Stock Exchange, it was almost PLN 158 billion in Q1. Also on other classes of assets, we see increases. We see higher revenue from derivatives, we see higher revenue from debt. Here, both treasury bonds, Poland and Catalyst markets noticed much higher revenue than the year before. Let's move on. Looking at other business lines within financial market segment, we see very solid, very good growth in the information services selling data.
More than 15% up year-on-year, more than PLN 18 million in revenues in Q1 only. This is a very fundamental growth. Thanks to new clients for both real-time data and processed data, we have seen this growth for a few quarters now. Stable revenues from listing, very good growth in Armenia Stock Exchange. As you can see, both in deposit-related activities, this is like the dark blue part of the bar, as well as exchange activities. In the deposit-related activities, the growth comes mainly from revision of fees for services that took place in July last year. Q1 and Q2 will still benefit from lower base. In exchange activities, the growth comes from high activity of market participants. This is mainly related to new issues of corporate bonds.
We had 30 of them during Q1. Maybe one more thing to mention here about depository activity in Armenia. In Q1, in January and February, we had a number of quite significant non-recurring transactions, and they elevated this revenue to the level of PLN 11.3 million. I would say that recurring revenue from Armenian depository after the revision of rates should be between PLN nine million, PLN nine and a half million per quarter. Q1 is, I would say, higher than this, let's say, recurring revenue level we should be expecting in the coming quarters. Okay, let's move on. Piotr, if you could comment on commodity market revenue, please.
Sure. Let me present the revenues from the commodity markets. We have a very good first quarter behind us, in which the revenues from trading on the commodity markets amounted to over PLN 28 million, which is over 19% increase year-on-year. The gas market continue in first quarter its good streak from 2025, and record total turnover year-on-year increased by almost 55%, and the revenues by almost 58%. It is worth mentioning that January and February were the months with the highest turnover on the spot gas market in the history of Polish Power Exchange. We also achieved good revenues on the electricity market, which grew by almost 28% year-on-year, mainly due to the forward market, whose volumes increased by over 59%.
A higher contracting on the forward market can be seen from the lower prices of emission allowances during this period. The third place on the podium goes to the fees from the market participants with increase over 22% year-on-year and a level of PLN 9 million, mainly resulting from our commodity clearing house fees for the management of collaterals contributed to the settlement guarantee system. The property rights market fell below our expectation with a 25% decrease in revenue year-on-year. On the one hand, this may be related to the smaller number of certificates issued and imported into our registry, and the change in the strategy of entities obliged to purchase and redeem certificates as a result of the level of the redemption obligation that was established for three years now.
On the other hand, the so far unrealized turnover may appear later in this year, we hope. Next slide, please. Similarly to trading, the clearing and settlement segment in first quarter recorded mainly due to increased volumes on the natural gas market, an increase in revenues by 27%, reaching the level of PLN 16.7 million. In registers, we recorded an increase in revenues in the service of guarantees of origin by 12% year-over-year, while similarly to trading in property rights, revenues in the registers fell by more than 23% year-over-year.
Okay, thank you very much, Piotr. Now, coming back to consolidated numbers, let's have a look at the operating expenses. In the Q1 2026, we had 97 million PLN of OpEx, and it grew almost 12% compared to the previous year. The drivers were mainly the same as in previous quarters. The main component of our operating expenses are personnel costs , and they grew 14.2%. For the reasons we already explained in the previous conferences, we have a high number of full-time employees. This is related mainly to Warsaw Stock Exchange and the IT teams, which we had to strengthen during the last year, but also in the Armenia Stock Exchange or mainly the Armenian Depository.
We have a number of new employees, and this is related to new services and new fees that were approved by the Central Bank of Armenia. Also under condition that the company will invest part of the additional revenues into strengthening the team and IT infrastructure. This translated to higher costs, obviously. One more component of personnel costs , which contributed to this difference, were provisions for variable remuneration. Because of record-high results of Q1, we have higher provision for variable remuneration, basically in all companies of our stock exchange group, which additionally contributed to higher personal expenses. The other significant component of our costs are external services, and in here we see significant growth, mainly in those costs related to IT.
T his is a mixture of two different kinds of costs. One group are costs related to our significant projects that are in progress, and costs we cannot capitalize part of them land in OpEx. Here, I mean both WATS, but also the new accounting system, new billing system, a number of initiatives that we have in our IT area. Also a number of new licenses or new elements of our IT infrastructure, which is sold in the model of software as a service. This is, as you know, replacing the traditional CapEx and amortization model of sales, and many providers of new services in this software as a service model. What is also worth commending here is lower depreciation amortization costs.
It went down more than 13%, like PLN 1.1 million. This is due to the write-offs we had in the non-core companies at the end of the year. We wrote off the intangible assets in these companies. They are not amortized anymore. Also, our UTP license was fully amortized in Q4 last year, so this cost also disappeared from our P&L. Let's move on. Okay. In this slide, we are trying to analyze the underlying operating expenses increase. I'm not trying to make a point here that those costs, which we are excluding from the analysis, are non-recurring or unusual. I'm rather saying here that they are related to very dynamic growth of business, which was not included in our original plans.
Yes, as you know, in our strategic KPIs, we assume the growth of revenue between 6% and 8% annually, and the accompanying growth of operating expenses at the level of 4% to 6%. We are saying, okay, we are much higher than 4% to 6%, but it is also related to a very dynamic growth in business. We identified two components of costs which are related to this growth. One is variable compensation. This is what I mentioned. We have record-high results in the whole group, and our provisions are relatively higher for variable remuneration of our employees. Also in Armenia Stock Exchange, we had over 130% growth in the revenues, and we have additional operating expenses that are associated with this extra revenue that exceeds our long-term expectations.
Working the other way are savings we are making in non-core companies. Their operating expenses declined by PLN 800,000 in Q1 year-on-year. Excluding these three, we see the growth on operating expenses of less than PLN 5 million. It's approximately 5.7%, and it's much closer to our long-term target. Speaking about non-core projects, we are still in the process of minimizing their negative impact on our results. We are either looking for investors or liquidating the companies or reducing their operating costs. Without, let's say, going into details here, I would like to emphasize that this is still our priority, and we hope that we will see gradual result of our efforts here. I think that from Q3 this year, it will be more visible in our P&L.
A few words about capital expenditures. When you look at Q1 2026, we ended up with PLN 14.3 million investments. It looks really low compared to previous quarters, and especially compared to Q1 of 2025. Please keep in mind that in 2025, we had a shift of almost or around PLN 10 million from Q4 to Q1. We made a number of orders and even received deliveries in Q4 2024, but we paid for these deliveries only in the first three months of 2025, which, let's say, elevated the value of investments, especially in those, let's say, tangible equipment pieces in Q1 2025, that's why this data is not quite comparable to what we see for Q1 2026. Anyway, this is also a result of postponing, delaying certain planned investments.
I would say that overall, CapEx plan for 2026 will be also on quite high level comparable to 2025, I think, we will be catching up in the coming quarters. Speaking about CapEx, maybe there is one more thing worth mentioning here. We revised the budget of our WATS system. The original budget that was assumed by the management in September 2024 was PLN 152.9 million. Because we delayed the go-live date and prolonged the period of working on the system, the go-live date is 6th of July, we revised the budget, we assume that total investments and expenses related to this project at the go-live date will be 164.5 million as PLN accumulated. In liquidity, maybe one thing to comment here is that we are used to seeing our operating flows to EBITDA ratio at around 90%.
You can see that for 12 months ending in March, it's closer to 82%. It seems low, especially looking at the growth rate of the operating profit. We were investigating what happened here. The explanation is quite easy and technical. Because of the change of the accounting system in Warsaw Stock Exchange and three subsidiaries, we had some technical issues with monitoring overdue receivables, and we lost some automatic procedures that we had in our previous system for, let's say, collecting these receivables. At the end of March, we had an unusually high value of overdue receivables, but we are catching up with it, and we are adjusting the system to be more, let's say, operational. Right now, we are at the levels comparable to last year.
I would say it was temporary and technical, but translated to slightly worse cash flow from operating activities than you would expect looking at the operating profit dynamics. Anyway, we are very safe in terms of liquidity. Our net cash at the end of March was PLN 453 million, so it gives us, let's say, a very good starting point for discussing the dividend. Let's move to the next slide where we summarize our proposal of the dividend payment. In April, the management of Warsaw Stock Exchange recommended the payment of PLN 142.7 million from 2025 net profit. It translates to PLN 3.4 per share, 8% higher than last year. The payout ratio is 72% of consolidated net profit for 2025, and the dividend yield is 4.4%.
The management proposed the dividend date 23rd July and the payment date on August the 6th. Of course, this is a proposal. It was reviewed by the supervisory board and approved, but the final word is with the shareholders' meeting, which will take place end of June. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you, Marcin. Let me now share with you our guidance, but before that, a few words about our most strategic project, which is the rollout of the proprietary trading system, WATS. At the end of April, the board, together with the exchange members, we have confirmed the new timetable for the rollout of the system, including the three dress rehearsal, and then subject to successful dress rehearsals and also the full readiness of GPW and also all trading members, we have set up the migration date, which is 5th July, and then go-live date was set at 6th July. We have already conducted the first dress rehearsals. We are quite satisfied with the result. Almost all brokers took part in the rehearsal.
Some of those who didn't take part, they requested for them to have a special test the coming week. Two, we tested the capacity of the system, and we tested the transfer to the system, and overall, are quite happy with the result. As I said, there are still a few areas for further improvements, especially in the applications around WATS, which we need to integrate with WATS, but we will be working on them and fixing them before the next dress rehearsal, which will take place on the sixth and seventh of June. Just to really underline that in terms of what's the key priority for us is the safe rollout, safe integration.
If we will not be 100% sure that we can have a safe rollout, we will reconsider the timetable. In terms of guidance for coming months and quarters, in terms of cash equity trading, we've seen some lower volume growth in April, May, compared to the first quarter, but still at solid double-digit levels, 15% in April and 7% in May. This was mainly due to the high base effect, not to the fact that the volumes are lower right now. In terms of commodity market, let me perhaps ask Piotr to just give some update about the trends here, especially as we see some declines in the turnover, both in gas and electricity.
Yeah, sure. I will just explain a little bit the reason of the little smaller, the volumes that we expected that would be bigger. Currently, volumes on the gas and electricity markets are lower than those recorded last year. As I mentioned before, we had record high volumes in April and May last year, especially on the gas market. In relation exactly to the gas, we are dealing with the very high fluctuation of the gas prices in the European gas hubs, including Poland, resulting from the situation in the Middle East and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz.
In recent weeks, we have observed a trend of increasing gas indexes, which translate into a lower level of activity of our participants on the demand side, that are not willing to pay too much for the gas, mostly used for electricity production and industry processes. On the electricity market, we observed decrease in trading volume year-over-year, mainly due to the rising CO2 emission allowances prices that have direct impact on the duration of the energy sales on the forward market. We expect the volumes to recover in both markets in the near future. The first symptoms of the recovery can be seen in the last sessions of the gas market. We are expecting that in the near future, the volumes should be coming back to the exchange.
Okay. Thank you, Piotr. On operating costs in the following quarters, we continue to anticipate a higher OpEx level, mainly due to the expected sharp increase in depreciation after the launch of WATS and the recognition of previously capitalized costs in the P&L. Also, we would, following the sharp increase in revenues in AMX, there'll be some still increase in operating costs going forward in our Armenia subsidiary. On the other hand, we hope that some of these increases will be offset by further cost reduction we see at the level of non-core subsidiaries. In terms of CapEx, we expect to see increasing CapEx, especially in the second quarter, mainly due to the intensification of works on implementation and roll-out of WATS, and also further investments in cybersecurity and development of digital tools, also including those related to AI.
It was worth mentioning that there are some significant initiatives here in Poland related to capital market development. One that we are really waiting for are the introduction of special investment accounts, OIPE, tax efficient without a capital gain tax and draft law on OIPE has been adopted by the government on 5th of May, and the launch is planned on 1st of January next year. We continue to believe that the new investment account, which will enable retail investors to invest up to PLN 100,000 free of capital gain tax in shares and capital market instruments, this could be a real game changer in terms of retail flows on the exchange. Also, there is a new bill on ETFs UCITS regime.
The draft law has been passed on 24th of April, and we believe that this law will come into force by the end of this year, enabling local Polish ETF providers to issue and list the ETFs on foreign markets and UCITS regime, also in Poland, which will enable also an easier distribution, especially in the banking networks. Okay. Overall, what we want to say, this is something that we continue to repeat on many occasions, is that we continue to see a huge upside, long-term upside in the development of Polish capital market. The size of the market compared to economy at 27%, when you count domestic market cap to the GDP, is significantly lower than other European markets and significantly lower than the needs of Polish economy.
We believe that the market will continue to grow, and we will remain a key beneficiary of this growth going forward.
Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation. Let us move to the Q&A session. If you would like to ask a question, please raise a hand. Also, we'd kindly ask you to introduce yourself before asking any questions. I see a raised hand from Miguel Dias from WOOD & Company. Miguel, I'm looking at you right now.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes, we can hear you. Hi, Miguel.
Okay. Hey. I guess you've introduced me already, but my name is Miguel, and I'm with Wood & Company Financial Analysis. I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, congratulations for, again, a strong set of results. Impressive. In terms of the quarter, for information services coming higher than I was expecting. Is this broadly the new run rate for the rest of the year, would you say? Also what drove the increase?
Yeah. Hi, Mig uel. I think that in this business, basically the growth comes from gaining new customers for the data. It's very organic, I would say. I think that we don't have so many cases of customers resigning from the service. I think the growth or the level that we reached is pretty sustainable. We cannot guarantee that the growth rate will remain the same, but we have observed a solid growth for many quarters now. I believe that we don't see declines on selling data related revenue too often. I would say, I believe that staying there and adding a bit to this number is a pretty safe assumption. I'm not sure if there was any one-off in Q1 2026, not to my knowledge.
Okay. If I understand and listen correctly, we could expect a small quarter-on-quarter increase moving forward, yeah?
This is what we have observed for quite a long time now, and I hope we can maintain it. But of course, the rate of this growth i s hard to predict.
Sure. Maybe if you could just, you piqued my curiosity, if you could just give some color on the new customers, like who's buying the data, or who is interested in the data. If you could disclose.
I don't have these details off the top of my head. Okay? Let me check if we can disclose anything specific here, and we can get back to you later.
Okay.
If it's not a problem.
All right. Thanks, appreciate it. On other fees paid by market participants in commodities, this is also pretty strong. If you could please provide more color on these, like what drove the good print, and also, if we can view this level as the new run rate for 2026.
Yeah, sure. There are two main drivers. Of course, there are other fees that are like the customer annual fees that we onboard some new clients, so they paid the annual fees. It's also paid in the first quarter. Additionally, as I mentioned, this is the increase caused by our commodity clearing house fees. Last year, we changed the way how we collect the collateral from our clients, our participants. We thought that this change may cause the situation that our customers will withdraw some of the collaterals because we made it more efficient for the clients.
They did not. Even more, they put more collaterals and more than even we expect them to put from the spot market. This is the additional fees that came from managing the security system. The third driver is our daughter company, InfoEngine, which collects more clients and volumes coming from the operation between the traders and the physical delivery in TSO, so I mean the transmission system operator. We are gaining more clients and also revenues from this area.
Okay, got it. You'd consider this level to be sustainable moving forward?
Yeah.
I can extrapolate these as a run rate for the rest of 2026.
Of course, it depends. The contracts comes with the spot and the forward market. Depending what are the differences in the settlement prices. It is hard to predict those numbers. However, because I mentioned that fluctuation of the gas market is pretty high, so it is hard to predict. In case of the InfoEngine customers, our predictions are just the solid ones, that the volumes should be staying at a similar level.
All right. Understood. Okay, thanks. Now on costs, probably bit more detail is needed here. Can you please provide a quarterly cost bridge for the rest of 2026, specifically quantifying the WATS depreciation amortization, WATS related OpEx, the Armenia Stock Exchange costs, and also how much of these cost increase that you are expecting can be offset by the gains or the efficiency gains or cost savings in non-core parts of the business?
Okay, let me take this one. Let's start with the amortization depreciation of WATS. I would say that the accumulated investments, also the value of the asset when we go live, should be around PLN 140 million-PLN 145 million. Yes, because out of this PLN 165 million budget, a part was operating expenses, I think around PLN 20 million roughly calculating. I think that the amortization period should be between 10 and 15 years. Okay. We are still analyzing what the expected useful life should be. We have many cases showing that exceeding 10 years in the core system of the stock exchange is nothing unusual. Also our adventure with UTP confirms this approach. I would say PLN 140 million-PLN 145 million accumulated investment depreciated over 10-15 years.
Okay. Probably more than 10. I'm not sure if 15, maybe something in between. In terms of operating expenses when we go live, we avoid giving specific guidance here. Let's say that our quarterly investments are around PLN 9 million. Yeah. It's like PLN 3 million per month. I would say it will consist of, let's say, three parts. Yes. What we see in the investment right now will be split into three parts. One part will remain in CapEx, and it will be the effort of the team to develop new versions of WATS and expand the system to other markets and other companies in the group.
The other third part will land in OpEx, and it will be related with maintaining the system, fixing the bugs, basically any, let's say, maintenance needed by the system, but already operational, so not to be capitalized. The third part is probably something we will be able to resign from. Here we have a number of also contracts with subcontractors and companies supporting us in this project. I believe at least part of them we'll be able to depart. Yes. In terms of Armenia and the costs there, I think they still will need a little bit more investments in the team and IT infrastructure. I would say that meeting this 65% cost-income ratio on new services that they introduced from July last year shouldn't be a problem for them. Okay?
I hope it explains more or less the profitability level on additional services that you would like to know. Last but not least, you're asking about the offset from non-core companies. Quarterly costs of DAI and two smaller companies are around PLN 1 million, and I think this we can reduce basically to zero from Q3. For the logistics company, their costs are significantly higher, but we are in the process of looking for an investor. Okay? It's hard to say if we can find one and how long it will take. Here the possibilities are, let's say, bigger, but the time can be long.
All right. Got it. Understand. Thanks for the color. Based on the first quarter 2026 OpEx run rate and the expected WATS and Armenia Stock Exchange cost step up, it looks rather challenging to stay within the previously 4% to 6% OpEx growth guidance that you had during the strategic update. Right? I know, is this still a realistic range for 2026? Or should we assume a higher full year OpEx growth rate for 2026? If so, how much would the step up be?
Yeah, I think it will be a challenging year in terms of operating expenses. 4%-6% is something that we would like to achieve in the long run and also to achieve with assumed 6%-8% growth in revenues. I believe that, yes, in 2026, it will be challenging considering all these what you mentioned. I think in the longer run, it is possible. Also we are looking for possibilities to offset the growth which will come from WATS. However, 2026 will be challenging also because of one more reason, that we still need to maintain the infrastructure to run two systems in parallel. Yes. These costs will stay at least until the end of 2026, maybe a bit longer.
I hope that focusing on one system, and resigning from one set of, let's say, infrastructure, data centers, and all the related infrastructure will also result in some savings, but probably in 2027, the earliest.
Let me perhaps add here that obviously there will be some cost capitalization. On the other hand, we will try to offset this with some reduction in other areas. What most important for us, WATS will enable us to attract new clients, to attract new members, to develop new products, and to increase our revenue base. As we have mentioned on many occasion, right now, we operating at full capacity with the current system. We can not really attract new clients, and we cannot really implement new products. That's really an additional opportunity and huge opportunity for us in terms of organic revenue growth, which I believe, and I'm convinced that will, in longer term, offset higher costs, which we will see in the P&L from launching the system.
Sure. We appreciate that, when you built the strategy, costs are the one thing that you can control, right? Okay. Just finally, on 2027, is this range 4%-6% still in play, or you also are seeing maybe a possibility to overshoot this range?
Yeah. We don't really comment right now on the level of 2027 costs apart from what we have in our strategy published last year. As Marcin said, that we are clearly able to and we will be seeking to offset and compensate for any related cost increase in other areas, including non-core. As also we said, right now we are double paying for various costs related to IT. We are paying for two data centers, and there's a number of such costs that we may eliminate going forward.
Okay, great. I'll just ask one more question, then leave space for a lot of participants to ask questions. I had some more on WATS, but we can take it all offline. The last question would be, if you are clearly beating the guidance on top line, but you are missing on OpEx, why don't you update the guidance? I would say that relying on the guidance at this point is, it's a rather poor way of forecasting the business, right? What is keeping you from updating the guidance?
Basically, these were our I understand, Miguel, that what you refer to are our long-term strategy aspirations that we have presented.
Yes
Strategy update 2025, 2027. Next year, we will work on the new strategy, we will announce that towards end of the next year, I believe right now what we see is the second tailwind from high revenues. We will continue to compare ourselves versus the strategic KPIs, especially related to costs, for this three-year strategy. For the new strategy, we'll work on that next year.
All right. Understood. Appreciate the answers, and thanks again for the opportunity.
Yeah. Thank you for the questions, Miguel. We have another hand raised, which is the one of Ron Alcon. Ron, it's great to see you with us. I'm unmuting you right now.
Hi.
We can hear you.
Thank you very much. My name is Ron. I work for a private hedge fund. First of all, congratulations on a spectacular quarter. Starting with that, how do you explain such a sharp increase in equity trading? Does it come from institutionals, private investors, banks? Where did it come from?
First of all, part of it is basically a higher level of indices. Year to date, we are up 70%. Last year, the market was up 40%, so when you take last 12 months, probably you will end in the, I think, high 30s. We see some more activity. Some foreign investors also in terms of retail investors, there's a bit more activity there. We also were able to gain one algo client in the first quarter, which added a bit of probably two percentage points to the overall growth.
Okay. Same question. There's no conference call without AI. You mentioned increase in expenses, but in a lot of companies they are talking about, they see how AI will reduce their expenses in the next few years. Do you also see it as something viable for you?
I think that what we would want to achieve to be more efficient, because we are starting with projects aimed at higher efficiency. That's first area. Second area is we are a factory of data, and these are our proprietary data, the prices and market prices and all related to the exchange. Right now we are working on putting those data into format which can be used by external entities, AI-ready. This is our big project with many people involved. Two main areas. One is efficiency, and second, being able to capitalize from the data that we produce.
To be more precise, do you see any current goals in order to save money with AI, or it's something you're still looking at and you do not have specific goals?
No. For the time being, we don't have any cost reduction goals related to AI.
Okay, last questions, if I may, regarding increasing the dividend after such resounding profits and the fact that you're highly cash positive, do you consider increasing the dividend?
In terms of the dividend policy, our dividend policy is between 60% to 80% of consolidated net profit. What's important for us with the stated ambition to grow dividend year by year. We want to keep dividend going up, in a period when the earnings growth will be a bit less spectacular as what we have last year. We may pay a dividend at the top end of this range, maybe even higher than the range as we did last year. The overall principle is a dividend to gradually increase. We have high cash position on our balance sheet. It's over PLN 450 million, and there's even a bit more in receivables. We want to be also ready with any new investments, any new investment opportunities.
Until those investment opportunities are not materialized, we most likely will continue to have some cash on our balance sheet.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Ron. Are there any further questions? This might be the last call, so take advantage of it. I don't see any further questions. Thank you once again for joining us and hope to see you all on our Q2 results conference in September. Just to mention, if you'd like to contact us, reach out to the IR team will be in London in mid-July. I'm looking at all of the London-based shareholders and investors. Emmanuel, yourself, I see you on the guest list on the chat. Let us know if you'd like to meet. Yeah, that sums up what we had to say and goodbye and see you hopefully in September. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. Bye.
Thank you.