A couple of weeks ago, brokerage group Trading 212 released its results for 2023.
There were a few interesting tidbits of information in there that are worth covering.
1. Over 80% of revenue is derived from the UK
Trading 212 has consolidated its operations in the last few years and its group holding entity is now UK-based, meaning you can see both the UK accounts and the group level accounts.
The result is that you can see the difference between the money the company makes in the UK and the money the company makes in other markets.
Last year, the company’s UK entity made £95.35m in revenue in the UK. The accounts that were published recently show revenue on the group level was £116.20m.
The result? About 82% of revenues are derived from the UK. This probably explains why the company has expanded into Australia and appears to be doing the same in Germany at the moment. They want to diversify the revenue mix.
2. They own a super car rental business
One of the weirder parts of the accounts details companies that Trading 212 owns. There aren’t many surprises here – there’s the Cypriot crypto entity, the German entity, and the UK entity. And then…a super car rental business in Germany?
The company said that they disposing of the company, which is currently in liquidation. Why do they own this?
Trading 212 don’t like the press so I’m not going to get a comment from them. However, TradeInformer understands from three people familiar with the matter that it is a legacy holding, with one of the broker’s owners being a big fan of sports cars.
3. Marketing spend doubled in 2023
Readers may recall that Trading 212 had to pause onboarding for a while during the pandemic.
We still don’t know what happened there but the likelihood is that, as with other lots of other firms, the company simply wasn’t set up to suddenly be onboarding the tidal wave of clients that suddenly became interested in investing during the pandemic.
Anyway, that’s all in the past and the company has been back in business for a long time now and you can see it in marketing spend. This went up from c.£13m to over £26m in 2023. This was on the group level and, as you can tell, translates into monthly spend of around £2.17m last year.
This number is likely to have risen in 2024, given that the company has been absolutely hammering out of home and online advertising for a significant chunk of this year.
