Retail brokerage group Plus500 released its results for Q3 2024 on Monday.
The firm saw an 11% year on year increase to revenues for the quarter. Total revenue for the period was $187.3m, up from $168.1m during the same period last year.
Total interest for the period was $14.1m, compared to $14.4m in Q3 of 2023.
1. Revenue per trade was $11.50
Take away the interest income and you are left with revenue from client trading activity of $166.3m.
Over the three month period, Plus500 said that clients placed 14.5m trades.
When you put these two figures together, you see that revenue per trade was approximately $11.50.
2. Plus500 average deposits hit $6,150
Another interesting factor was an uplift to average client deposits with the firm. These hit $6,150, a 17% year on year uplift compared to 2023.
3. Plus500 onboarded 24,922 clients in Q3, CAC was $1,527
The company also onboarded 24,922 clients in the three month period. That was compared to 20,640 in Q3 of 2023.
Plus500 said its user acquisition cost was $1,527 over the period.
When you put those two figures together, you see that customer acquisition costs for the period were $38.06m.
4. New products not denting CAC, RPU
Taken all together, one striking point is that Plus500 does not seem to be seeing any change to either its customer acquisition cost or its revenue per user.
In the last couple of years the company has introduced futures trading in the US and stock trading in Europe.
Both of these are lower revenue products, with (you’d expect) commensurately lower customer acquisition costs. But this does not appear to be impacting the company’s bottom line in the way you’d expect.
Indeed, the cost of acquiring customers remains in line with the past, as does revenue per client. The other point is that revenue per trade seems about the same too.
In 2019, the company said it averaged about 3m trades per month, or 36m over the course of the year. Revenue for that year was $354.5m. In other words, revenue per trade was in the $10 region – lower than what it is today, despite the company not offering lower revenue products at that time.