Good afternoon. On behalf of the IR team at XTB and the management team of XTB, I have the pleasure of welcoming you to our meeting discussing the preliminary results of Q1 2025. For those of you who perhaps are joining us for the first time, I have a few housekeeping details I will discuss very briefly. Today's meeting will last roughly one hour. It will be run by the management team headed up by Omar Arnaout, the CEO, Filip Kaczmarzyk, the management board member in charge of trading, and Paweł Szejko, who is the CFO. After that, we'll move into the Q&A session. You can pose your questions throughout the course of today's meeting. You have a chat window, which you should see on the bottom right of your screens.
Sometimes questions overlap, we will group your questions, respond to them in such a way that we'll be able to address the largest number of topics possible. That's it when it comes to the housekeeping details. I'll give the floor now to the management team. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. XTB, during Q1 of 2025, generated a consolidated net profit of PLN 194 million. As we break that down into its underlying components, we can say that we have record-breaking revenue of PLN 580 million. We also mentioned one thing to you at the beginning of the year, we mentioned this to the market. We had anticipated that we would have higher operating expenses, which in Q1 were PLN 316 million. The third major factor which drove our net profit were FX losses totaling PLN 43 million.
If we scrutinize those FX losses more closely, this is a result of the Polish zloty appreciation versus the US dollar, as well as the EUR and other currencies. The biggest portion of the PLN 43 million FX loss was driven by the appreciation of the Polish zloty versus the dollar. The US dollar accounts for 81% of the FX losses. EUR is responsible for 11%, and the remaining portion was driven by the other currencies. To illustrate what happened, the Polish zloty/US dollar exchange rate at the end of Q1 was PLN 3.86 per USD, whereas end of year it was PLN 4.10. The difference is quite sizable. If we look at EUR, it was PLN 4.18 at the end of Q1, while at the end of the year it was PLN 4.27. Now I'll move on to the details concerning our operating revenue.
As I mentioned, we've had record-breaking revenue in Q1 of PLN 580 million year-on-year. This is an increase of 4%. Q-on-Q, it's an increase of 25%. The most important factors contributing to the level of revenue in this order. Well, one of them was the constantly growing number of active customers. We have an increase of 77% year-on-year. Higher customer activity translated into higher trading volume measured in terms of lots, by 25% year-on-year and 61% if we look at the nominal trading value in millions of dollars. As a result, the trading value in lots in Q1 was 1,908,000 lots. The profitability per lot was PLN 270.
If we look at the market characterization in Q1, we could say that in terms of the appearance of long-term clear trends, the market characterization was quite similar to what we saw in Q4 and Q1 of last year. We didn't have that same level of volatility that we had seen in Q1 of the previous year. Now, as we go on to the revenue composition, we can say that in Q1, 52% of our revenue came from index CFDs, 29% was based on commodity CFDs. In Q1, the rev composition shifted with respect to Q4 and Q1 of last year. This is something that's quite natural because our customers are following the market volatility, and they're trading those instruments where that volatility is present in a given period as they see investment opportunities enabling them to earn money.
If we look at the cost side. As we mentioned at the beginning of the year, which we shared with you, our management view in terms of what's going to happen with cost years, there were no major surprises. Our OPEX was PLN 316 million. If we compare that to the average cost in last year, we can say that the cost was up by 42%, more or less. Marketing spend is what we're constantly building our customer database, and as a result, costs in Q1 were up by some 84% versus the average quarter from last year. Salary expenses were driven primarily by higher headcount, so headcount is up by roughly 7%. If we look at commission costs, this is primarily a result of the deposits made by customers. We want to optimize these costs in the following quarter, and so they may diminish.
We would also uphold our assessment we shared with you at the beginning of the year, where we assumed that across the full year of 2025, our OPEX may be up by some 40%, with the marketing spend being up by roughly 80% year-on-year. XTB is a company with a very good financial position. At the end of Q1 2025, own cash and cash equivalents totaled PLN 2.2 billion. This enables us to share dividends with our shareholders regularly. The most recent management board recommendation calls for a distribution of standalone net profit for 2024 at the level of 70%. This translates into a dividend per share of PLN 5.45. On the 14th of May, we have the ordinary shareholder meeting, which should make the final decision in terms of the dividend disbursement.
Good day, ladies and gentlemen.
When it comes to our targets, our targets of course have not changed. We want to create the best investment app for everybody who would like to manage his or her funds actively as well as passively. What does that mean? We want to be the supplier of first choice for every such potential customer in every area where we're active, and if we are to achieve our targets and strengthen our position, then we should say that the solutions are very clear and self-evident. I would like to emphasize that we have to continue growing technologically. We have to develop ourselves in terms of our products. What Paweł mentioned a few minutes ago, we also need to work on strengthening the brand, especially in those countries where our brand is not so well-known. It's not as strong as it is in Poland, for example.
This is a key portion of the activities we're taking this year. In terms of Q1, we are very pleased that we have a record-breaking number of new customers who've joined our ranks, 194,000 new customers. This is an increase in comparison with Q1 of last year of some 50%. If we look at the number of active customers, which Paweł mentioned, this is the highest figure in the history of the company. When we compare that to Q1 of last year, that's an incremental increase of some 76%. We can say that incremental increase of some 76%, as well as the increase in new customers of 50%, is also linked to the increase of marketing spend of some 70-odd%. What we're pleased with is that our marketing efforts are so effective.
We would like to emphasize the fact that despite the fact that our marketing spend has increased substantially in Q1, the cost of customer acquisition is the same as it was in previous quarters. The last thing I would like to highlight, it's also very important to us, because in Q4, we achieved a record in terms of the net deposits from our customers, net deposits were roughly PLN 2.5 billion. This level has been exceeded substantially. In Q1, it's more than PLN 4 billion. This is a result that's more than twice as good as it was in 2024. An important historical aspect, I believe that this was a landmark moment in the history of our company. This was 2010, when we decided that we needed to create our own investment app.
In my opinion, this was the most important moment in the history of the company. We picked up momentum in recent years in terms of products. It all got started in 2020, when we proposed to our customers both equities as well as ETFs without any commissions. What's happened in recent years, of course, you can see there's been a huge change in terms of the technology we offer as well as the products. The Investment Plans, interest at the IKE and the ISA program in the U.K., as well as the multi-currency platform and portfolio. If we focus on Q1 of this year, we should emphasize that in Q1 of this, we have the eWallet for customers in Poland, this has generated a lot of interest related with this result.
Recently, we have also recurring payments or pending orders for the Individual Retirement Account in Poland, we also have the PEA account for France. I think I'm more than convinced that we're going to be able to compete for the leadership position there. If we look at the investment app, it's going through changes in terms of products as well as functional changes. We're trying to focus on the user experience, on simplifying the new interface and making that experience as good as possible. We're also doing tests on the AI chat, we're going to be pleased with the results, we're hoping that this will optimize the internal in-house work that we're doing, would also provide our customers with a better user experience, we'll be able to distribute or deploy this across other markets.
If we think about international expansion, in Chile, we have received a license. We're going to be able to offer ETFs and equities from across the world. We're doing our final fine-tuning with respect to the technology to be able to offer to customers very similar things to the ones that we're offering in Europe. This will, of course, mean that we'll have much higher marketing spend on that market. We have to become the leader on that market. That's the same target, the same goal we have here. There's a lot of room for us to be able to achieve that. In terms of the Brazilian market, nothing has changed. We've mentioned this to you several times. We're waiting to obtain the license. This is something that should happen at the end of this year.
We have the United Arab Emirates. We have another license. This should enable us to optimize our business. This will not be a huge game changer from your point of view, but this should enable us to achieve a lot more, not only in terms of optimization of in-house processes, but in the future, it may enable us to expand our offering in the United Arab Emirates. The final thing that I wanted to mention is the marketing campaign. Our marketing spend was the highest in the history of the company.
We have never spent as much for branding. Those of you who live in Poland or those of you who live abroad in countries where XTB is running its business, I hope that you've had the opportunity to see some of our advertisements offline as well as in TV, as well as outdoor.
Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I want to tell you a little bit about the market environment. On the first slide, we wanted to show you client assets. In each one of the bars, you see the customer funds, you see then equities as well as ETFs. You also have the derivatives securities. We can see the growth quarter-on-quarter.
We can say that 80% of our customers start with the cash market. We see the biggest growth in terms of these instruments. We do not forget about our bread and our salt, which are CFD instruments. Basically, the increasing activity of our customers is quite important here. Last month, or last quarter, sorry, we can say that things looked pretty good in my opinion. Many instruments saw record-breaking levels. You can mention the American indices, the German indices, gold, what was happening over the first three months. This broke new records. If we look at the American indices and the DAX index for the first three months, they were growing. This was a continuation of the trend from the previous year.
For the two months, DAX continued to grow, whereas the S&P index went through a correction, and this was something that was an introductory sort of statement to what took place in April of this year. We have gold and coffee markets. This also contributed to the positive income of the company. What I would also like to mention is the activity on the cryptocurrency market. There was a Trump rally, a rage. We saw a lot of rallies. We saw a lot of volume, then things started to calm down. The volume is falling, but we had revenue as a result of some $17 million. On the final slide, we wanted to tell you a little bit about how the activity of our customers is changing with respect to the CFD instruments.
Here you can see that we're more or less 57%, 56% in terms of customer activity through the mobile app. We are of the opinion that this share will grow over time. Revenue has a totally different picture. The mobile apps generate a lot more. One thing you can't see, this is cash instruments. Here you can see that customers are moving from the web app to the mobile app, and this is also a signal for us that it's worthwhile to develop the mobile app because this is the place where customers are actually engaging and trading, actually executing transactions. Thank you very much for this presentation. I think that the management team addressed your questions, but we have questions that were posed through the chat function and let me add, we can say that many of the questions refer to the current period.
According to our communication policy, we will not discuss the results or customer behavior in this period or the results of customers in the current reporting period. We're going to have to wait until we publish the results for Q2. Let's move on to the questions. We'll begin with the questions about new products. In just a moment, we should see the question, when can new products be rolled out, so cryptocurrencies and options, will it be more attractive in the future? If so, why for the trading in cryptocurrencies? Filip, could you respond to this question? Yes, of course. We have advised you that in both products, we are somewhat dependent on the licenses we receive, and this is an aspect where we have a lesser influence.
The technical work is underway, and I profoundly believe that we're going to be able to deploy these products this year. In terms of the options, we're thinking about vanilla options. We're also thinking about barrier options. With respect to cryptocurrencies, we are focusing of course, on the most popular instruments, depending on trading volume and customer interest. What we're focusing on is the safety and asset safekeeping, and this is what we're working on very strongly at present, that the offer will be more attractive. We believe that the spot instrument does not have leverage, so naturally, it will address a different group of customers in our opinion. The groups will be similar to another, but the leverage itself means that the risk is bigger in a natural way, and that's why it is used by a different group of customers.
If we look at the spot instruments, we won't have the fee for safekeeping the positions, so these products will differ from one another. It's going to be very difficult to compare them to one another because we're going to treat them as separate instruments.
Let me add one thing to this, because of course I do agree with Filip, this is something that's independent of us, licensing and permitting. From the technology point of view, we are doing everything we can in our power to ensure that both products in-house will be ready by Q3.
Thank you very much. After the CEO has mentioned permitting and licensing, we have the continuation of this question, a follow-up question. Since MiCA is an EU regulation, some countries like Lithuania, Estonia and France have implemented those regulations, making it possible to license suppliers of cryptocurrencies.
When can we expect? It's possible to do that through the subsidiary. Instead of waiting for the subsidiary, sorry, just one moment. Why can't we launch the delivery of these services through a subsidiary as opposed to waiting for the implementation of these regulations in Poland? Perhaps I'll take this question. Let's remember that MiCA, M-I-C-A, is basically an additional license to the underlying license. We have our license in Poland. We run cross-border across EU from Poland. We have to obtain the MiCA license here in Poland. That's why we're waiting for the implementation of EU directives. Unfortunately, we don't have too big of an impact or influence over that. If we were to talk about a setup, as suggested in the question, we would first have to secure a normal brokerage license elsewhere.
We are thinking that there will be a quicker implementation of the regulations in Poland.
Thank you very much. Let's go ahead and finish up that theme in terms of cooperation with the Polish Financial Supervision Authority in terms of launching new products. Perhaps I can go ahead and respond to that.
Let me begin by saying that our cooperation with KNF looks very good, and if we're talking about KNF, this is not a subject linked to cryptocurrencies, but to options. We see that the process is moving forward. Is it lasting a long time? It doesn't seem to me, because every licensing process, whether we're talking about new products or obtaining a new license, whether it's in Poland or any other country, there's a certain amount of time, some 6 to 12 and sometimes 15 months.
If we're going to be successful in rolling out options this year, and that's our intention, this would be totally on time. We do not think that this is taking too long, and we believe that this cooperation looks very good at present. Let me add, in terms of crypto, the Polish FSA is in the same position as we are in. There are no regulations at present, until the government rolls them out or implements them, it's not going to be possible. Thank you very much for dispelling the doubts here. Let's go ahead and talk about the international companies. We have a question about licensing. What's going to change, and how will that increase the potential in terms of Chile and United Arab Emirates? I think I've already mentioned the Arab Emirates. We're talking about optimizing in-house processes.
Of course, this will have a knock-on impact on the results, but this will not be a huge game changer from your point of view. In the future, this should also help us to launch additional products, which we cannot talk about at the current point in time because we haven't shared this information at the beginning of the year. This is optimization when we talk about Chile. We can say this would be a huge difference, because up until now in Chile, we've used or followed the strategy we had in Europe some five years ago. Basically, we were a typical CFD broker, which of course limits our capabilities. You're fully aware what XTB looked like before we became a multi-asset broker, and at that point in time, our annual results were around PLN 100 million.
Now if we exceeded PLN 100 million, that was a very good year. If it was under PLN 100 million, that was an average year. For the most part, we were very close to that barrier, and this barrier was broken only thanks to the fact that we started to offer our customers a much broader array of products, and the plans are exactly the same for Chile, and that's why we see a very good prospect for growth, and we're convinced that we're going to be the leader in that market. Thank you very much. Now we have a question about revenue. One moment, please. The increase in revenue on equities in ETFs, is this because of having more customers or because they're actually exceeding some of the limits? When we talked about preliminary results. Just a moment. There is that split.
When we look at the increase in revenue, we can say that we have a higher number of active customers. Please remember, in terms of equities, we have two sources of income. In one case, if the monthly limit of EUR 100,000 per month is broken, the other thing is when you translate currencies from one currency to another, if you have in ETFs or equities, and you have an account in Polish zlotys and you're buying shares in USD, we also earn money on the translation from one currency to another. We actually have two drivers of revenue. We continue to work on optimizing our costs in terms of being the broker facilitating these transactions. This is something that we've done in the first quarter. All of these factors influence that. We have the increase in the number of customers.
Is the slowdown in April, is this a matter of saturation or marketing? In terms of the slowdown in the incremental increase, if you could give a few words of commentary about that in terms of what's happening. Let me begin by saying Saturation of the market doesn't exist. This is something to be emphasized. A few years ago, we thought that we had a very high number of customers. Now we are bringing in many more customers. This shows you that we'll increase the number of products. We strengthen our brand. We can say that there are no limitations whatsoever. That's the first topic. The second topic, when we look at the slowdown in April, if my memory serves me well, the information we published suggests that up until the 28th of April, we had some 55,000 new customers.
Assuming, as a matter of simplification, that we have a few thousand more, let's say we reach 60,000. If we multiply 60 times 3, that would suggest that we have 180,000 new customers, which is very close to what we've been able to achieve in Q1. We have to take into consideration two, perhaps three elements. Historically speaking, because of the Easter holiday, it's the worst month year-on-year in terms of bringing in new customers. The second thing, let's remember that in January, we usually bring in a large number of customers when we're comparing that to the first 6 months of the year, because this is linked psychologically to New Year's resolutions. In every country we're present, we see that happening. We also see there's much more interest in products like ISA and the Individual Retirement Account.
It's either at the end of the year or at the beginning of the year. This is not something where this trend takes place. This is not a major decrease in terms of what we've had in the first quarter of the year. Thank you very much for your response. Now let's come back to the product offering, and this question pertains to the eWallet. What are the first results and opinions of customers about this new eWallet service multi-currency card? Do you see this as a long-term driver and a way to loyalize your customers? Well, the sample is very dynamically growing. It's not sufficiently sizable to say to what extent the interest in this product will be, but we are surprised that there's so much interest among our customers, especially having in mind this is just the MVP of the product.
Our customers have access to a payment card, but they don't have any additional benefits, but the additional benefits will be added this year. Why it's worth having this card? Of course, there's no commission to translate currencies. That's already a benefit in of itself. But if we want to compete with other companies around the world, these aspects alone would not enable us to compete. Additional benefits will be added this year, so we believe that the interest in this card will be substantially larger. What's critical, this is something that we emphasize during our meetings with you, but also in other conferences, that this is a product that complements our offering, just like interest. I don't want to say that we're not going to do this ever because the change dynamic is very large.
At present, we don't want to position ourselves as a place where our customers should store their funds. Above all, we want to be an investment app, whether we're talking about investors who want to manage their funds actively or passively, that these are additional features of our platform. In and of themselves, they're not the major way in which we position ourselves on the market as opposed to what's happening with our competition.
Thank you very much. Let's stick to the product area and testing new products, so artificial intelligence. We have a question. To what extent these tools like the chat to serve customers will be deployed in other markets to support customers? That's the first question. The second thing is to what extent will this help you to save money in terms of headcount?
Do you see any additional benefit coming from AI in terms of support? At present, above all, this is for customer service because we're growing so fast, so dynamically, having in mind the number of new customers we're bringing in through the doors at this same pace. We would not like to increase the headcount. We're talking about automating contacts with customers through the AI chat, which I hope will solve the bulk of our problems, the problems that our customers have. We're talking about the onboarding process of our customers. Customer service should have the least possible input in terms of opening accounts. Of course. Is it scalable? Of course, it's scalable. We've rolled it out in Poland to test the model.
We would like to do this in every single branch as soon as possible to help us in terms of our internal processes, we want to have customers having the best possible service. In terms of AI, this will apply to every part of our organization, not only support, but technology, but also marketing and everything else. Generally speaking, we have an enormous amount of expectations with respect to AI, especially when we talk about automating processes and optimizing costs. Thank you very much. We're talking about costs, this dovetails very nicely with the next question. What percentage of our net financial costs are FX losses, and to what extent are these the increases in deposits?
If you think about financial cost and this line in the P&L statement. The value in Q1 of financial costs is PLN 43 million, and that's exactly the same amount that we have for FX losses. Practically speaking, we can say that this is basically 100% overlapping with the FX losses. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. We have a question about the competition, eToro. It has a very strong position in America. They have a broad product offering, which continually is enriched. Historically, they've been aggressive in terms of their expansion. They have their own intuitive app similar to XTB, and gradually they're entering Europe, and they want to penetrate Asia. How does XTB want to address the presence of such a strong competitor on the market? Does XTB intend to make Asian equities available on its platform? If so, when?
I'll respond to the first part of the question, then Filip will add about the offering. We are fully cognizant of eToro's activities, this is one of the reasons why we are making such a strong emphasis on changing the technology. eToro has a similar dream like XTB. It's key to address potential growth from a variety of viewpoints. We started with technology and products, something that was also mentioned in the question, this is the marketing spend. We've greatly increased our marketing spend this year. If we look at the marketing spend of our peers, they're substantially higher than our own. We have to learn, on one hand, we have to concentrate on product development, technology, improving our results, but at the same time, we have to remember and look at this on a long-term view and not only from a short-term perspective.
If we look at the business only from a short-term view, there would be no reason for us to ramp up our marketing spend. The difficulty is, just like after introducing changes in 2018, the regulatory changes that took place, there was a certain type of consolidation of the market where the smallest brokers disappeared. The average brokers were no longer so visible as they once were, or the ones that are still visible had results that were basically unchanging or even falling. We don't want to find ourselves in that situation. We don't want to be insignificant like some others, and this is something that scares us in terms of thinking about being inconsequential or insignificant. We know what we need to change, and we know that we need to continue ramping up our marketing spend in order to be able to compete with companies like eToro.
The edge that we have is the edge that eToro would have were we to make the decision to enter the U.S. market, that we already have a position on the market. We're already one of the leaders in Europe, it's going to be a much more difficult task for them to do, because we've been on this market for some 20 years. We know exactly what we need to do in order to win this race. We treat eToro and many other competitors very seriously, and we want to be a very important player in terms of market consolidation, in terms of new products. We can say that Asian equities are not something we plan to introduce in the near future, but it does seem to be a realistic goal for 2026.
If we're thinking about adding local markets, this feeds into what the CEO is saying, we could have Romanian equities in Romania, or in Dubai, we would have Middle East equities. This is important because this will enable us to build our local presence, and that's something we want to concentrate on this year.
Thank you very much. We also have a question about products. Do you want to come back to the implementation of bonds? It seems you were close to finishing that and you were basically ready to launch, you decided to withdraw from that, saying that this would be a low profitability undertaking, having in mind the interest available for bonds.
Let me respond to that. This is always a matter of prioritization. When we're prioritizing products that we want to roll out, it's clear that we have limited resources.
Maybe not limited, it's always a matter of choosing the products. Having in mind the products that we want to roll out, like the equities that Filip mentioned, both in Middle East and Romania. If we think about options or not vanilla options, but barrier options, cryptocurrencies, as well as perfecting or improving existing products, this is something that's substantially greater than just bonds themselves. We talked a bit about Asia, and investors are asking whether or not you could think about your targets this year for Western Europe. How do you assess the scale of marketing spend this year compared to your assumptions from last year in terms of customer activity? Numbers vary over at the markets in the U.K., France, and Germany. If you think about business at present, we've had the biggest amount in Germany. U.K. is in third place.
You have to remember that these countries have competition where there are huge marketing budgets available to those competitors. It's not the case that we start spending more from year to year, that we're going to immediately have a huge impact. While it's a matter of percentage, well, the increase in the number of accounts, we can say that we have increases in the number of accounts by tens of percentage points, but this is much less than we see in Portugal, Poland, and Czech Republic. On the other hand, if we were to want to replicate the success we achieved in Poland, it will be very difficult to replicate in the Czech, Portuguese, or Slovakian market because of the small population. That's why we have a smaller marketing spend there, because the market potential is there. There are two things that we can achieve.
Continuing our product strategy and then higher marketing spend. Many companies have proven in Europe that the market could appear to be saturated. New companies have been successful in these markets, and we think this is the same growth path that awaits us. Thank you very much. We have gradually wrapped up the pool of questions we received. I see there are a few questions about XTB Social. Let me ask the management team, this is a question about the status of your talks with the Polish FSA in this respect. In terms of our talks with the Polish FSA, one month ago, maybe six weeks ago, we talked with the Polish FSA. We agreed with them that we should deliver to the Polish FSA certain changes in the products for this to be acceptable. Basically, the ball's in our court.
Having in mind the large number of topics and projects we have, again, because of prioritization with respect to other projects, we made the decision that we're not going to move in this direction. We're very pleased with our cooperation with the Polish FSA because we entered dialogue and Polish FSA was open to our dialogue and was looking for the product that we would accept and KNF would accept. We're not limited. There are only some internal things as well as a matter of prioritization.
Good. Then we have a question about the results for 2024. I think it would be better for you to send those type of questions to the IR team because we're talking about the results in Q1. It would be very difficult right now for us to reflect on specific numbers from the 2024 year.
I don't see any more questions. I'll give you another two minutes if somebody has the desire. It's a moment in time when you can write down your question, pose that question, perhaps we'll be able to dispel any doubts or share information. Of course, if you have any questions, we would also invite you to send us an email and we'll happily respond to your questions and we'll try to dispel any doubts that you may have. The last couple seconds for you to ask or a follow-up question to the management team. I think if there are no other questions, we would like to thank you very much, and we would like to wish you a good May Day weekend. Thank you very much for the time you've dedicated. We'll invite you to our next meeting.
On the slide, you can see our email address, which is relacje.inwestorskie@xtb.com. If you have any other follow-up questions, please contact us.