Hello, ladies and gentlemen. On behalf of the management board of XTB, I'd like to welcome you very cordially to the conference to discuss the preliminary results for Q3 2025. My name is Paweł Szejko. During today's conference, I will discuss the financial data. The CEO, Omar Arnaout, will discuss, in part, the financial data as well as the operational data in terms of the work on new products, geographic expansion. Following him, Filip Kaczmarzyk will talk about the market environment. After the presentation, we have a Q&A session planned. Those of you who are participating in today's conference utilizing the webinar can pose questions using the chat function. Based on previous experience, we know that some of your questions may appear more than once. We will choose one representative question to ensure that today's conference can be run in an expeditious manner.
As I move on to the results, we have completed Q3. We have a PLN 53 million consolidated net result with revenue of PLN 375 million and costs of PLN 322 million. For many of you, this result might be disenchanting, what we continue to repeat as a mantra, XTB's results should not be viewed in the short term on a quarterly basis, but on an annual basis. If we look at the quarterly results, XTB results have always been and will always be volatile. This is a result of the business model we have embraced in this short period of time. There is a lot of impact on our revenue and therefore on our results. This is linked to the volatility on the financial markets, on the commodity markets. This parameter is outside of our control. We do not have any way to control that.
What is much more important is looking at the parameters where we as a management team have a control, have impact. This is acquisition of new customers, building customer bases, and this translates into a higher trading volume and creating a super investment application, extending the product offering. These are the most important parameters for us that confirm that our business model in the long run is the right one. The magnitude of customer acquisition in Q3 was record-breaking. We had 221,000 new customers, which is an increase of 105% year-on-year. What is even more spectacular is the number of new customers acquired in October. This is 96,000 to date. All of this was done while making sure that we maintain cost-effectiveness. The average cost in Q3 was 600 złoty per customer, and it is down from previous quarters.
This shows that XTB continues to improve the foundation in the form of its customer base. This means we are improving our capacity to generate higher profits in the future. Having in mind this customer base and the high level of volatility on the market, where we have long and clear trends, there is nothing standing in the way of XTB in Q4 generating PLN 53 million as in Q3, but having a half billion in net profit. This database or this customer base has that type of potential, but the nature of what happened in Q3 meant that this could not be utilized. Having in mind the market characterization in Q3, I would say that this was a quarter with a very low level of market volatility, where we had long and clear trends.
For the bulk of that period, the most popular instrument amongst our customers, we saw there was a horizontal trend, and this market characterization meant that our customers could earn money, and that meant that there was a loss in market-making. We can see that in the profitability of lots, which is PLN 152, and this was lower by 44% year-on-year and 34% quarter-on-quarter. The trading volumes were very high. With this market characterization, we had PLN 375 million in revenue in Q3. Had the volatility been high, then the current customer base would have made it possible to generate some PLN 750 million. When we look at the cost side, there are no surprises.
According to the information we divulged to the market at the beginning of the year, in 2025, total OpEx may be higher by roughly 40% year-on-year, and marketing spend can be up by some 80% year-on-year. If we take a look at the actuals, so the data for the first nine months of the year, total OpEx is up by 50% year-on-year, while marketing spend has grown by 78% year-on-year. In terms of liquidity, XTB's situation is very good. At the end of Q3, we had EUR 1 billion, EUR 805 million of own funds and equivalents in the form of bond investments. As a management board, we uphold our dividend policy.
Which, if we simplify things, assumes or calls for the distribution of 50%-100% of the net standalone profit, having in mind, of course, the annual guidance given by the Polish FSA to brokerage houses in terms of their dividend policy. Now I'd like to go ahead and give the floor to the CEO, who will discuss the operational data, work on our products, as well as geographic expansion.
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. As Paweł has mentioned, Q3, from the point of view of net profit, was not entirely a good quarter or in fact a very bad quarter. We as the management board, we focus primarily on those items we can control, and I'll talk about them to a greater extent. If we look at the market situation, Filip Kaczmarzyk will say more.
What I can say briefly is that on this market, where we've had such a strong horizontal trend since April until August, it's very difficult for any broker whatsoever to generate robust results. That's why we're focusing on those things where we do exercise control. In terms of those elements, Paweł has already managed to say a few words. If we look at the number of new customers, this is something that was clearly the best performance in history for us, especially in the vacation period. These numbers do not indicate or evidence that we had a vacation period or holiday period. We had 220,000 new accounts in October. We also have gained roughly 96,000 new accounts.
Of course, this month has not come to an end, so anything can happen, but all of this suggests that in October we should acquire more than 100,000 customers, which would be a milestone for the first time in the history of the company. I also hope, having in mind the very active marketing campaign, that we'll be able to exceed more than 250,000 new customers in a single quarter, and that means that we'll be able to generate even better results in the following year. If we look at the number of active customers, this was also a record-breaking figure because we've been able to exceed 1 million active customers in the first part of the year, and net deposits have grown by more than 40% in comparison to the previous year.
What's critical here is that despite the growing magnitude of marketing spend, the cost of customer acquisition continues to be very similar. It was even lower in Q3 than in previous periods, but over the last 2 years, we've been able to stay around PLN 600 to PLN 700. As I move on to the next subject, if we look at products, in Q3, we added the IKE product. If we think about other plans, we're now waiting for the acceptance from the Polish FSA for the price valuation. I hope that we'll be able to offer this product at the end of this year or at the beginning of next year. This is, of course, up to the FSA. From a technological point of view, these options are available amongst friends and families, so we are testing them. Our managers in the company and the management is checking that.
I also have checked the options. I think we're very close technologically to achieving this outcome. If we think about IKE and the local regulations and adaptation, we're taking a slightly less optimistic approach. It's hard to say whether it will take place this year or next year. Regardless of whether that happens this year or next year, we have applied, nevertheless, for a license to offer cryptocurrencies in Cyprus. If it's not something that would be successful to offer cryptocurrencies through our branch in Poland, then they will be offered by our branch in Cyprus. The biggest drawback of that approach would be the fact that if cryptocurrencies are going to be offered through Cyprus, then we won't be able to orchestrate marketing communication. Nevertheless, this would enable us to check how the options work until IKE is rolled out in Poland.
If we talk about the other elements, we continue to adapt the functionality in our application, our mobile app. It is becoming more and more available, accessible. It's easier to use, and these changes will continue to be made over the next 2 years because the utility of the app is very important to us. We also talk about one other thing. We're modernizing the architecture of this system in order to improve the stability regardless of the number of clients who are logged onto the app at a given point in time. The next slide. If we look at the next slide, this pertains to foreign or international expansion. In Indonesia, several weeks ago, we kicked off our operations. I'm personally in Indonesia at this time. We're organizing a soft launch tomorrow so we can see interest in our offering at this point in time.
The first 1,000 customers have joined us, even though it's a very short period of time. Of course, I hope that just as in the United Arab Emirates, that in Indonesia we'll have base or core branches being joined. We have Chile, United Arab Emirates, and after this probation period, that Indonesia will be one of those branches. In terms of Brazil, we've received the license in Brazil, and this means we can launch our operations. Having in mind the situation on the Brazilian market and the high level of protectionism for local brokers, we're thinking very seriously about ceasing operations on that market. If I talk about this from the point of view of probability, it's much more probable that we'll cease operations on that market as opposed to continuing operations on that market.
We look at Chile. In Chile, we're onboarding not only customers from Chile, but also from other countries in South America. Revisiting specifically the subject of Chile itself, Chile is an old branch. In a way, it's a new branch because, at the beginning of this year, we were able to obtain a license to offer equities and ETFs. Originally, it was a typical CFD broker. Now we have the same offer as we do have in Europe, and the data in the presentation talk about the growth in South America, in Chile alone last month. If we compare it to the average for the first half of the year, we have more than treble the number of customers, which clearly shows that this European model is one that is proving itself in Chile.
My last topic, you're fully well aware, I hope that you see that we are running the largest marketing campaign in Q4. Usual, this is the biggest campaign in the history of the company. We look at our offline activities, this is being done in every one of our European branches without a single exception. As I mentioned, this is translating into the number of accounts. As I also mentioned previously, for the first time in the history of the company, we've been able to break through the watermark of 100,000 new customers. It's also our hope that we'll be able to bring on board more than one-quarter of a million customers in a single quarter. We'll see how things wrap up once we finish the quarter.
Having in mind such a rapidly growing customer base, we, as a management board, have to keep our fingers crossed that we're going to be able to maintain that pace. In September, we can see that volatility came back. To some extent, we see some potential avenues. At present, this is moving on in October, I'm sure that Filip Kaczmarzyk will say quite a bit more about that subject.
Thank you very much. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. I will try to break down that revenue in Q3 into its components for you to understand what it is driven by. The main guilty party are the indices. When we talk about Nasdaq or S&P, we can say the revenue is quite good. Throughout the quarter, we had a growth trend around 7%-8%, and that translated into positive revenue for the company.
The situation was totally different, however, if we look at DAX. As you are perfectly well aware, this is a critical instrument for us. Here we had a classic horizontal or sideways trend, the markets were going up, then they were coming back down. For us as a market-maker, that's very difficult for us to earn on that market. This is something that Paweł discussed. If we look at the result, the indices themselves in Q3, we're saying it's going to be roughly half of what we saw in Q2, maybe one-quarter of what we saw in Q1. Here we, in fact, do see differences in terms of the revenue, the trading revenue of the company. Similarly, if we look at the Forex, we have suffered a loss. Here we can say the main guilty party is the US dollar.
We had basically a float here, the dollar was plus or minus moving up and down by 1%. One week it was up by 4%, this was a very narrow range compared to what we had seen in previous quarters. The same is true if we look at US dollar to PLN and other cross-currency. If we look at some of the other commodity markets, we have a situation that was quite similar to previous quarters. What's noteworthy here is gold was the main instrument. We can say that gold was the most profitable instrument across the company. If we break things down, July and August didn't do much in gold at all. This was a very narrow range within a field of 4%, later it was 18%-20%, most of the result was generated as a result of that growth.
Natural gas and cocoa were basically individual hits. Around 25%-30% over the course of the entire quarter. If we look at cryptocurrencies, this quarter was better than what we had seen in the previous quarter. It was more or less like in the first quarter. The trading here on cryptocurrency was a little bit more than PLN 15 million. We had two events. We had one incident in July and then in August, we had a correction. These were moments in time where basically trading volume was jumping. If we look at the cryptocurrencies, we're dependent. We don't do the market-making for that. We are basically securing our position and/or hedging our position, and we're earning a margin. What's noteworthy here is the growing level of assets we've exceeded now. If you look at cash assets, we've exceeded $7 billion in terms of ETFs and equities.
What is also noteworthy, and we all know this, is the bread and the salt. These are CFD instruments, from my perspective, my vantage point, things look quite well because our exposure to CFD instruments continues to grow. This is the most important indicator for me that this business is not shrinking. We don't see customers trending away to other instruments that are less profitable for the company. The CFD portion continues to expand. We don't see the same growth rate as we do see with respect to equities, this is a totally different type of instrument. What's important is that we have a high level of exposure on a gross basis, this exposure continues to grow. The interest amongst customers in CFD instruments continues to exist.
That's it from my side. I'll go ahead and give the floor back to Paweł at this time.
Thank you very much, Filip. We've completed the presentation. We can move on to the Q&A session at this point in time. The first question. You talk about the decline in profitability per lot and the ARPU. Do you think, as the management team, this result is a one-off as a result of low market volatility, or is this a long-term structural change in terms of the mix of instruments? This is what I said previously. This is the low profitability per lot. It's a consequence of the market characterization, which transpired in Q3, where there was a low level of volatility, and we had this sideways trend, which was present across most instruments.
This is something that was outside of the control of XTB. In terms of the factors where we can exercise control, our capacity to generate income, this is something where XTB is continuing proving its capacity to generate income. This is quite stable and over time, this is growing. This is a consequence of building a customer base. When the proper level of volatility appears, having in mind our customer base in Q3, this would have enabled us to generate a half billion in net profit had the market characterization been totally different. Had there been a lot of volatility. From this point of view of the fundamentals, XTB is in a good position. We continue to see an improvement in our fundamentals and a capacity to improve our results.
In the past and in the future, we will have situations occurring where the volatility will be better or worse, and this will have an impact on the short-term results of XTB. We have the next question. The costs of operating activities are up to PLN 323 million as a result of higher marketing spend. What does the management team assess the ROI on this? The growth of acquisition, is it satisfactory from the point of view of the costs that are being incurred? Let me start with the first part. On top of the return on investment, we also analyze an indicator, which we've talked about previously, which is client lifetime value.
This is an indicator or a ratio, which takes into consideration the current result on a customer, plus the nature of a customer's operations, the type of instruments that he's trading, what he's investing in. We make a forecast in terms of how much we're going to be able to earn on a given customer base. When we look at Q3, this was one of the highest levels of CLV in history. If my memory doesn't serve me well, we can say that in September, CLV was the highest in history of the company, customer lifetime value. I'd like to emphasize what Paweł already mentioned. Our customer base is capable of generating excellent results.
We, as a management team, receive information every day in the morning, the results we see on good days, they're many times higher than what we could have achieved in previous years. The customer base has been created. We have the potential, and now we just need to have the proper market characterization. If we think about the customer acquisition pace, we can say this is clearly a satisfactory customer acquisition pace. Of course, we have branches that are better and then branches that are worse.
If we're going to be capable in Q4 of breaking through the watermark of one quarter of a million of customers, this will be a huge success because we could say quite simply, to simplify things, that instead of the 20 years to reach the millionth customer, that starting next year, we won't go below 1 million new customers per annum. That would be the difference. XTB has more than 2 million customers and growing deposits. What sort of activities do you plan to undertake to increase the monetization, so adding ETFs and investments. I can respond to a portion of the question, and then Paweł and Filip can add something in terms of information I might not mention, then I'll be grateful to you for that. In terms of monetization, we can say there are two elements, monetization of low-income products and monetization of high-income products.
When we talk about high-income products, this is what Karol mentioned. This is why we have options and cryptocurrencies being implemented to offer greater diversification as opposed to CFD instruments. These are products that won't be offered at such good prices as in terms of equities and Investment Plans. They're going to be highly competitive and priced very well. That doesn't mean that we're going to have the exact same approach that we won't charge any commissions, because we do want to generate profits that are much higher on these two products. If we look at the low-margin products, this is a result of the magnitude of the scale of business, economies of scale. We have ETFs and equities generating a lot of activity, but we have revenue that's much smaller than in CFD. That's why we don't see it on the numbers.
A few years ago, even when we were adding equities to the offering, we were bringing on 30,000, 50,000 new customers. Now I'm hoping that next year we're going to be adding 1 million customers. The revenue generated, even with those low-margin products, this revenue will be much bigger, and that's a result of the economies of scale. The next thing is the interest on free funds of our customers. If we take a look at the reports, how our competition is earning money, for example, from the U.S., you can see how important interest is. The mass is something that we need. That volume is something we need to achieve. In the most recent quarters, operating costs have grown more quickly than revenue.
In 2026, do you plan to undertake any optimization, or will you scrutinize marketing spend to think about operational leverage? I can tell you that the cost review, of course, this is maybe I'm exaggerating on purpose. Of course, we will scrutinize costs, but basically, this will apply to pretty much everything outside of marketing. On one hand, we would like for our team in terms of the number of people in our team should not grow so strongly as in the past years. That doesn't mean we won't have any increase or incremental increases, but it will be much, much smaller than in previous years. We believe that we have a sufficient team now in order to be able to fulfill the objectives we're planning to achieve. Of course, we do not want to increase costs as drastically as in the past in terms of payroll costs.
As you are fully well aware, most of the costs in XTB are payroll costs. Payroll costs will be strongly controlled. We do not want to grow and expand as strongly as in the past, if we want to compete with the largest companies in the world, then marketing cost or marketing spend will continue to grow next year until, as long as we're effectively spending money, there's no sense whatsoever for us to limit ourselves, because we have to be fully aware of the fact that in Europe, there's only room for one leader, and there's only room for a second-place player and a third-place player. If we don't take one of those top three places, it might be too late, and we can't look at this business on a short-term basis.
Of course, profits are very important to us, and that's why we're not drastically ramping up our marketing spend. This is why we're going to be following that closely next year. We've started the budgeting period recently, so at the beginning of next year, we'll be able to divulge our plans for the subsequent year in terms of the marketing spend. What are the three most important strategic priorities for the management board, growing the number of customers, improving profitability, or developing new products? How is the company balancing those goals with the current market environment? Those are the three most important elements. That's clear. I think if we look at profitability is linked to effectiveness and the ability to control costs. New products, new marketing campaigns are needed in order to achieve the first goal, which is to grow the number of customers.
I think these are the most important objectives. How are you balancing that with the current market environment? The market environment I mentioned with respect to the previous question, it also has similar goals like we do in terms of the companies that have the greatest potential to be in the top three in Europe. If we want to achieve that goal, we cannot forget about those three aspects. Let me mention, Karol, that items that you've written about are, in fact, the most important ones for us. If we want to be successful, we have to continue to develop technologically. We have to develop our products, and we also have to run intensive active marketing campaigns to ensure that this is Well, of course, ensuring that this is an effective marketing approach. When are you planning to add options and cryptocurrencies?
I think I've already talked about that in the discussion of the slide. Options are ready. I'm testing that myself. If we think about cryptocurrencies, I think technologically we'll be prepared in Q4. We'd like to roll out options at least in one of the markets this year. In terms of cryptocurrencies, it seems it's more probable that this would happen in Q1 of next year. What is the development in Middle East and Indonesia? I've already talked about Indonesia, so I won't revisit that subject. I've already talked about Chile, so I don't think I need to revisit that subject. In terms of the Middle East, this is the fastest-growing branch in the history of the company. If we look at trading volume, it's number two across the company. We can say this is an enormous amount of trade. This is a wonderful branch.
Even today, we've been discussing the next steps to be taken in order to be able to achieve even better results in this region, in the Middle East. If I were to talk about our bases, we can say that the Middle East has joined that group in terms of the products and the technological priority will be ascribed to these branches, and certainly in the Middle East. Recently, we've added equities, local equities from Abu Dhabi. In terms of LATAM, we have similar plans with respect to Chile. Filip, I'll leave this question to you.
Thank you very much, Omar. We do not plan to have a full sheet of orders. We don't want to add the full orders.
Thank you very much, Filip. Let me just add one other thing.
This is not the thing that we would not like to do this. What we have in mind is that we want to add those products and those services which will be needed in bulk. Ones that will be used by the masses. It's not so much that we wouldn't like to. It's a matter of prioritization. Let me add, of course, these are also additional costs, and having in mind what Omar said, we're focusing on having our costs not grow. Just because there's a narrow group of customers who need that service, we're actually focusing what's the most important for large and extensive groups of customers. In terms of the stability of apps, especially having in mind greater volatility. This is something we continue to talk. We're working on the capacity of our system. We've done a lot over the last two years.
We have new servers. The customer flow is run over several servers. We had a situation, unfortunately, that happened for the first time in a long time, where there was a large number of customers joining the American market. Please believe me, this is a very important thing. Every situation of this type has an adverse impact on our customers and an adverse impact on the company in terms of PR. There are questions engendered from the Polish FSA. These are situations we would like to avoid. We're working actively to roll out the next instances of these services. We're developing solutions for that. I would have to say that things look a lot better than they did two or three years ago when we had that occurring every time there was something happening with CPI, and that was unacceptable.
We continue to develop those solutions. We're working on that strongly. Are you planning to reinstate XTB Social, or at least the social ranking? Here, I mentioned that basically the ball's on our court. We've talked with the Polish FSA. We know more or less what sort of framework for Social would be consistent with what the expectations of the Polish FSA are. Having in mind the large number of other priorities, we've put this to the side because the team that was dealing with Social is also dealing with products like IKE, IKZE, the British market, the French market, the Hungarian market, the Czech market for pension products. That's why we believe it has much greater value for our customers in those countries to add those or roll out those customers, and that's why XTB Social has been pushed to the side for now.
Would it be possible to transfer funds from PPE to IKE, which is being run by XTB? There are no such plans at this point in time, and the same is case with the order book. It's a matter of prioritization. That's why it's not there. Is it possible that in the future, utilizing XTB platform, you can add the Orlen shareholder program? Of course. This is a question of prioritization, whereas the previous two topics were not at all on our to-do list. We're not even thinking about it at present. When we talk about this question, this is something that is in our talks. We're talking about it. Why doesn't XTB want to extend the sessions of the Warsaw Stock Exchange until the end, despite many requests of customers? My response is the same as in the previous questions.
Most of the customers are thinking about the main trading session. This is where the bulk of trading takes place. The after-hours sessions would entail technological development. We want to focus on those products that will generate value in terms of their mass, a greater number of customers utilizing them. If we have that capacity in the future, we'll do that. We're not planning to do that at this time. In connection with the delay of implementing MiCA in the Polish system, are you thinking about adding cryptocurrencies based on a license in another country, for example, Cyprus? Of course, I won't dwell on this at greater length because I've already responded to that, because of course we will be doing that. We're also thinking about Cyprus in terms of new products, in terms of options and cryptocurrencies.
Will they be available outside of the European markets, for example, like in Middle East and India? If so, from when? The response. Would you need to obtain separate licenses? Each country has a totally different approach. If we're talking about cryptocurrencies, a license is not needed. If we talk about in United Arab Emirates, this is an extension of the license. Are we thinking about that? Clearly, we are thinking about, and we're applying for those type of licenses, and the steps have already been undertaken. It's very important for us to have that in every single country where we're operating. In connection with the preliminary results for Q3, there is information about the company considering stopping its operations in Brazil. Does the management board believe this to be highly probable?
Instead of Brazil, are you thinking about other markets and expanding there, where no communication has been given to shareholders up until now? If we talk about Brazil, I've already mentioned that it's a greater probability that we'll stop our operations in Brazil as opposed to continuing them. In terms of ongoing expansion, I would say clearly not. If our goal, and that is our goal, to be the largest investment company in Europe, then we cannot spread our attention over a large number of markets. We have to focus where we are. We have an offering and processes. We have to make sure that they're sufficiently well-defined that we can be better than the best competitors in the country. This is taking an enormous amount of time, and this is where we're focusing our attention above all.
If we look at the profitability per lot, it's down by 44% year-over-year. It was lower than in all of the previous quarters. Does the management board anticipate that the profitability will grow in the current quarter and subsequent quarters? Well, this will depend on the market situation. I don't know if you want to add anything here, Filip.
I don't remember having such a low level of profitability per lot in any of the previous years. I'll leave it up to you.
I think I've already responded to that question. The profitability per lot is a result of what's happening on the marketplace. I showed you that it was a result of what happened on the indices. The profitability will be higher if the profitability there is higher, if the volatility is higher.
Frequently, it's the case, if it's a range market, then customers are having a large number of transactions. They close their positions very quickly. If it's not a range market, then the company would have a lower result. I'm not thinking about profitability per lot because it's a result of other values. I'm focusing my attention on revenue, which in Q3 was clearly something that dissipated because of what happened on the indices, because nothing was happening with those indices in Q3. In the future, are you planning to add OMI? Would it be enough to just slightly adjust your Investment Plans? Well, certainly this is something that's in our talks. It's not really in our plans per se because of having a totally different method of operation. For example, IKE, IKZE, and pension products in other countries.
In next year, we'll talk about a product, OKE, and this is something we're talking about. Investment Plans, we also have very ambitious plans. I hope that you'll be able to see the fruit of that work done by the team that's dealing with that subject, I hope in January of next year, because we're going to issue another round of Investment Plans in Q1. This is going to be another step in the direction of making it easier to gain access, maybe not to investments themselves. The idea is for a customer to be interested in Investment Plans. In fact, at the very beginning, this would inundate the customer. We want to make sure that we want to simplify this product for customers from the very beginning and not overwhelm them. Here, this question is for you, Filip, as far as I can tell. Spin-offs.
Is the company planning to have a single narration from the chat function in client support in terms of the settlements of spin-offs on the Polish market? At present, the messages coming from the marketplace from different departments and from different people, basically are somehow at odds with one another. It's very difficult for me to respond. If you see some differences, we'll try to clarify any of those situations, any and all of those situations. Right now, we're working on a new mechanism in terms of corporate actions. We want to make sure that this is going to be ready by the middle of next year. Additional question, is the company planning to settle the upcoming spin-offs on the Polish market in the form of shares of companies that are being de-merged in the form of cash? This is something that we're trying to do.
Maybe not in a cash form, I can't say that every company will be subject to this. I can say that if we're talking about a major market event, every event we try to treat separately to ensure that it would be run the way in which customers expect that to be done. From the end of 2023, the number of people in the product and technology department has grown by nearly a half, and the costs of this department in the first nine months of this year represent twice the number of costs that we saw in 2023. Does the management board plan to continue growing or at least maintain the size of that department? How are you measuring the profitability of the viability of the expenditures engaged or incurred for research and development, and how is that headcount increasing?
Are you having some sort of problems linked to the coordination of work of the various teams? Let me try to respond to that as follows. From the point of view of payroll, as I mentioned, we're not planning to raise the headcount. I think we're more or less at the level at which we should be in order to be able to achieve the goals which we would like to achieve. Maybe not a problem, but let's say a challenge is coordinating the work, and one of the most important elements we're currently working on is creating the proper suitable structures to make sure that we have the proper method of assessing or performance reviews of the individual departments. Generally speaking, if we're thinking about the HR activities, we're doing quite a bit.
A new person has joined us. This is our Chief People Officer, Julia Pączak , who worked previously in Revolut. This is a huge organization that has eight times more people than we have. This is a major challenge for us, but this is a strong priority to make sure that we wouldn't have any major difficulties here because the organization is expanding extensively and we have to measure the viability of our operations at every level, whether or not we're talking about marketing efforts or the technology department or any other department. One of the most important projects that's being run in the company at present is linked to these aspects. I think this responds to this question.
Why, despite having such a big team that's growing so strongly, why is IKE available only in the mobile app despite the fact that more than 12 months have passed? Let me respond to this by talking about prioritization. Most of the work is being done in our mobile app. From the point of view of prioritization, that's one reason why this is happening. The second reason is as follows. We should issue products when they're ready, at least in part. The MVP, if a product is going to be ready for the mobile app, we should issue it even if it's not ready for other instances.
Things that are being made available in the mobile app, they will also be made available in the web version, and this also pertains to Investment Plans. Let me try to give you some explanation in terms of prioritization. For us and for me personally, I prefer to release a new product for the French branch, like the French pension product or the British pension product or in the Czech Republic, as opposed to adding something in the web version. I do fully concur with you, Michal, that this is something that should be released, but it's just a matter of sequencing. What does the Spanish market look like now? Is it possible for you to revisit advertising? Let me respond quite broadly. The situation on the Spanish market is as follows.
Last week or 2 weeks ago, we turned off CFD instruments for new customers, and I hope this year we're going to be able to offer in the Spanish market options and cryptocurrencies next year. We've talked with the local regulator, and we would like to revisit marketing as soon as possible in terms of marketing efforts that will not have major budgets or any budgets whatsoever. This is something that will come back, I imagine, in the next few weeks. I hope we'll be able to come back to the Spanish market at full steam ahead. Of course, we're going to have to see what the monetization of options and the monetization of cryptocurrencies will look like. We are clearly revisiting coming back to the Spanish market. What sort of growth in the marketing budget do you plan on a percentage basis?
Recently, the foreign branches, international branches, as well as our departments in the head office, have kicked off the budgeting process. At present, I haven't received those budgets yet for the most part, so Paweł and I will kick off that process. If I were to guess, this is just a matter of guessing. This doesn't really evidence anything. I think it should be somewhere between 40% and 50%, maybe 60% in terms of the growth of the marketing budget. I don't imagine that it would be smaller than that. I don't imagine it would be larger than that. XTB is gaining new clients at a very impressive pace, and it's expanding the base of active clients. At the same time, we can see the number of unactive customers has grown to nearly 1 million.
Do you have any ideas about how to activate once again or monetize this portion of the database? Well, there's a lot of elements here linked to communication with customers. We all know perfectly well that these types of forms, classical forms of communication like emails or telephone calls to customers, those are not the most popular methods of reaching customers. Having in mind the large number of customers, it's unrealistic to do that by phone. If we think about other forms of communication, we're trying to achieve two things. The first thing is through notification to our customers, and here we're going to work on improving our communication, marketing communication, because extensive portion of our communication is based on what's happening in the marketplace, market analysis situations, and so on and so forth.
This is something that we want to improve or enhance in terms of the marketing communication that we're sending out to our customers. Second, we would like for the app itself to be the tool of communication with the customers. If something new appears in the app, this should be visible to the customer immediately without having to jump from one tab to another. We're trying to communicate with our customers, and we cannot fool ourselves. A portion of our marketing efforts is a matter of remarketing. If somebody has utilized our services, has visited our sites, there's a high probability of doing some remarketing amongst those persons. Yes, we are fully aware of that, and this is a major part of what we're focusing our attention on. There was one other question.
Paweł, could you step back one slide just a moment ago because there was a second question. I don't know. Can you hear me, Paweł? Yes. Maybe you could read out the question if you can't go back one page. I think it was about the ambassador. Okay, thank you very much. What is the stage of the process of acquiring another XTB ambassador? Will you have the sports avenue continued, or are you thinking about recognition or reach that you would like? Would it be similar to what you have with respect to Zlatan Ibrahimović, or would you want to have an even bigger name? Well, let me speak honestly in the second part. In terms of the world of sport, I'm not really ready to respond to this question. Perhaps these figures won't be entirely authentic.
I'm practically convinced that amongst all of the football players who are living football players and from the point of view of the social media, I think Zlatan Ibrahimović is probably the top 15 in terms of the number of followers. In terms of having a bigger name, we're talking about a huge name or even bigger name in terms of Zlatan. I'm thinking about a future ambassador. Realistically, Zlatan is somebody. Conor was well-recognized or well-known in terms of the world of football. For people who are not interested in sports, I think only Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo would have a bigger name than Zlatan.
With the exception of those two, I would say that the brand recognition of Zlatan's name is very big, and if we talk about the marketing department, it's actually measuring what percentage of these advertisements are viewed and the results of the campaign for Zlatan are the best in the history of XTB. From the point of view of recognition, it would be very difficult for us to go much, much higher than we see with Zlatan or Conor McGregor. Right now, we're thinking about extending the contract with Zlatan Ibrahimović or maybe cooperate with some people like Tyson Fury, who we're already working with. Regardless of the activities that are being undertaken with Tyson Fury or Zlatan Ibrahimović, the marketing department, myself, we are involved in this process of looking for ambassadors for our future efforts.
I think we've already talked about this topic, so I think we can go ahead and move forward. To what extent do you have a built-out product plan for the upcoming years, for example, borrowing equities, borrowing funds for investments that are hedged, utilizing financial instruments or some other subscription services? We haven't talked about that at all. It's clearly premature to talk about this subject in terms of the two previous elements. Well, this is in progress in terms of our discussion.
We haven't divulged any plans for the upcoming year, but I think we have a clearly defined plan for next year, and we'll share that information with you at the beginning of next year, which is just exactly what we did in the last two years. Let me add one other thing. Paweł, you don't have to go back. On top of the products themselves, I've mentioned this at a couple of our meetings, we also have to work on the quality, not only of our current products, but also the processes. For this reason, we have certain heat maps which define for us, how we benchmark to the best competitors in each of the countries where we have a footprint, the number of products, the number of instruments, how quickly payments are made, incoming and outgoing.
Depending on the country, we have a heat map that's either greener or redder. The essence of this heat map is we want to bring about a situation in which the selection of XTB would be the sole logistical choice if you want to begin investments. And in some countries, XTB is already the sole logical choice, assuming that you don't have exceptional needs. In terms of probability, we want to bring about a situation in which somebody would like to begin investing, that the rational choice or reasonable choice for that customer would be XTB.
In some countries, the heat maps are sufficiently red that we have to work on them, and then product or technology changes will be linked to these heat maps, and we want to try to repaint them or convert the colors from red into green by Q3 of next year. Thank you very much. Paweł. What % of new customers are converting within a period of 3-6 months or any other period into active customers? While we don't share information with people about how quickly that takes place, I can say a significant portion of our customers are converting within the first two weeks, and this is the largest % of conversion that we would see. I see that in terms of time, we're gradually wrapping up our conference, we have the last question about the marketplace in October.
Maybe, Filip, you could respond to this question to the extent we're capable of responding. Well, how do you assess the market conditions in October?
I think there's one star. This is gold with some ambitions from silver. Of course, we have new records on the Nasdaq exchange, and I think that's more or less what I can say at this point. Thank you very much. If somebody would have an additional follow-up question, then I would invite you to contact the investor relations department. You can write to us at our investor relations email address. With this nice accent, I think we can wrap up today's results conference, and we'd like to thank you very cordially for your attendance. Thank you very much, everybody. Thank you for participating.