Unlock more trading volume with cTrader
Plus500 published its financial results for the first half of 2025 on Monday morning.
The broker saw $415.1m in the six month period, with net income of $149.6m. That was pretty much flat on last year, with a 4% increase in revenues and 1% rise in profit.
However, there were some more interesting stories in the company’s report – let’s go through them.
Get a Match-Trader server today
US revenue was over $50m and is 13% of total revenues
Plus500 has launched properly now in the US and begun making big investments in marketing efforts.
Those efforts have paid off.
Revenue from the company’s non-OTC business, which is effectively just the US, was 13% of total sales.
That means the broker made just under $54m in revenue from its US entity in the first six months of the year.
Start managing your risk with Centroid today!
Deposits are way up – but only because of the US
The average deposit at Plus500 per active client is now much higher at $17,250. That is up from ~$12,000 last year and ~$5,000 in 2021.
However, this is kind of misleading because it also includes futures numbers. 64% of client deposits are now from what Plus500 calls ‘Non-OTC Business’.
This goes to show the revenue differential between CFDs and other products – 64% of your deposits only make 13% of your revenue.
There is also a discrepancy here in the accounts that I could be wrong about.
Plus500 says its US futures business has ~$850m in client funds. But total deposits for active clients are $3.1bn.
However, if 64% of client funds are from non-OTC business, that would be just shy of $2bn.
What could that be? Either some kind of separation of segregated client funds vs funds used to trade.
Alternatively, it means that clients have more than $1bn in stock trading accounts. Plus500 does offer real stock trading in Europe, so it’s plausible the mismatch comes from there.
Plus500 has (by far) the best employee to revenue and profit ratio in the industry
The other interesting feature of the results was the fact Plu500 only has 650 employees globally.
This means in the first half of the year alone, net income per employee was $230k.
If we assume revenue is similar in the second half of this year, it would mean revenue per employee is around $1.2m per employee.
By way of comparison, IG Group makes about $578,000 in revenue per employee. So Plus500 is (arguably) twice as efficient as one of its most successful peers.
More expansion
The other interesting point was that Plus500 says it will continue to expand into new markets.
This is true for CFDs, as well as for other products, like ETDs and share trading. The company says it will add share trading to existing markets, for example.
The question is where this will actually be.
Plus500 has licenses in every major jurisdiction at this point.
The main blank spot is Latin America. I would not be surprised if there are a couple of licenses the company will try to get there in the next 12 – 18 months. Let’s see what happens.
47% of revenues from clients that have traded with the firm for more than 5 years
The final interesting point was on client retention. If you look at most brokers, the client drop off tends to be about 80% after 12 months.
Plus500’s report shows that 84% of revenues came from clients who have traded with the firm for more than a year.
Remarkably, 47% came from customers who have been with the firm for more than 5 years.
How do they do this?
Well, they won’t tell me.
My guess is it’s from (1) being good at email marketing and (2) being good at app marketing, with lots of push notifications. Otherwise it may just be that people like the app. Or it’s a combination of all three.
Either way, I am guessing that level of retention is something a lot of brokers can only dream of.
