Earnings call transcript: Nordnet AB Q1 2025 shows strong revenue growth

Nordnet AB reported a robust financial performance for the first quarter of 2025, with record revenue of SEK 1.4 billion, a 30% increase year-on-year since 2019. Despite the impressive revenue figures, the company’s stock saw a slight decline, dropping 0.55% in pre-market trading. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a FAIR financial health score of 2.29, with particularly strong marks in profitability and relative value metrics. The earnings call highlighted significant growth across various segments, including fund brokerage and net interest income, while also addressing increased operating expenses.

Key Takeaways

• Nordnet achieved record revenue of SEK 1.4 billion, marking a 30% increase since 2019.
• Operating expenses rose by 15%, excluding the German market.
• The company is expanding its product offerings and market reach, including pre-market U.S. trading and new European markets.
• Stock price experienced a minor decline of 0.55% in pre-market trading.

Company Performance

Nordnet’s performance in Q1 2025 was characterized by impressive revenue growth, driven by strong results in fund brokerage, net interest income, and trading activities. The company has effectively leveraged its scalable, cloud-powered tech platform to support this growth. Despite a rise in operating expenses, Nordnet has maintained its market leadership in equities and is expanding its presence in funds and pensions. InvestingPro analysis indicates the company is currently trading below its Fair Value, suggesting potential upside opportunity. Subscribers can access 6 additional ProTips and comprehensive valuation metrics through the Pro Research Report.

Financial Highlights

• Revenue: SEK 1.4 billion, up 30% year-on-year since 2019.
• Profitability: Close to SEK 1 billion.
• Operating Expenses: Increased by 15% year-on-year (excluding Germany).

Market Reaction

Nordnet’s stock price decreased by 0.55% in pre-market trading, despite strong revenue figures. This slight dip may reflect investor concerns over rising operating expenses or market saturation in the Nordic region. However, the stock remains near its 52-week high, indicating overall positive market sentiment.

Outlook & Guidance

Looking forward, Nordnet is preparing to enter the German market and will continue to focus on high-end trading segment offerings. The company expects to meet its full-year cost growth guidance of 8% and is committed to maintaining cost control and scalability. With a gross profit margin of 64.2% and strong return on invested capital, the company demonstrates solid operational efficiency. Want deeper insights? InvestingPro subscribers get access to extensive financial metrics, peer comparisons, and expert analysis through our comprehensive Pro Research Reports. Upcoming launches include FX accounts on ISK and KF, additional European electronic trading markets, and expanded company data offerings.

Executive Commentary

CEO Lars Hakanoglen emphasized the importance of scalability and trust in the company’s operations, stating, "We have a scalable cloud-powered tech platform that we work with automation." He also noted the impact of market volatility, saying, "Short term volatility good, very long term volatility not good."

Risks and Challenges

• Rising operating expenses could impact profitability.
• Market saturation in the Nordic region may limit growth.
• Potential challenges in entering the German market.
• Dependence on maintaining low customer acquisition costs.
• Economic fluctuations affecting trading volumes and interest income.

Q&A

During the earnings call, analysts inquired about dividend reinvestment patterns, net savings composition, and marketing spend strategies. The company addressed these concerns, highlighting its focus on efficient growth and cross-border trading dynamics.

Full transcript - Nordnet AB (SAVE) Q1 2025:

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the presentation of Nunet’s First Quarter twenty twenty five. My name is Markus Zinberg. I’m the Head of Investor Relations at Nunet. With me today, I have our CEO, Lars Hakanoglen and our CFO, Leonard Kerran. Lars Hoke and Leonard will start off by presenting the results and then we’ll have a Q and A session.

During the presentation, all participants will be on mute. Then when we come to the Q and A session, you have two alternatives to ask questions. You can click the raise hand button. I’ll then unmute you and call your name, or you can submit a question in writing through the q and a button. The presentation itself is available on our corporate website, nordetab.com.

Okay, let’s start the presentation. Lars Orkien, please go ahead.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Thank you, Markus. We can go to next slide. So starting with the highlights. Revenue and profit reached record levels during the quarter and especially strong growth in our core business, the fund brokerage business. We also see the highest customer growth and net savings in four years.

Market turbulence, of course, drives a lot of trading, but it’s also weighed on savings capital. And also that’s partly due to a stronger SIC. Low interest rates drove NII headwinds, partly compensated by higher deposits. OpEx, excluding Germany, was up around 13% due to sequencing of marketing spend, and we expect to meet the full year guidance of around 8% growth, excluding Germany. We also launched many nice new features for the more trader segments or high end segments, and more is to come as well.

I’m going to cover that on a separate slide. Also good start of the Danish pension product, Libreunte, leading to record net savings and pensions in Denmark in quarter one, billion versus from SEK900 million same quarter last year. And we concluded also the first buyback program of SEK500 million and applied for another program. Go to next. A little bit the impact from the volatility we’ve seen now in quarter one due to the tariffs.

And of course, this led to higher activity and trading. And trades are up 22% year on year. But you also see a slowdown in net buying during the quarter and especially in March, where we saw a fairly large outflow from funds. And also we see rotation from The U. S.

To Europe. When it comes to cross border trading, it’s been on an elevated levels both in quarter four and quarter one. In quarter four, everyone wanted in into The U. S, invest in The U. S.

And in quarter one, everyone wants to rotate away from The U. S. Leading to higher share of cross border trading. We also see then a reduction of savings capital following the strength in SEK, but also negative market performance. But strength in SEK effect is pretty large, SEK43 billion during the quarter, both impacting, of course, customers’ portfolios that they have in dollars and euro, but also since they consolidate in SEK in order to also get an impact from there.

Go to next. Some numbers then for the quarter, strong customer growth, 14% up year on year. Also good growth in savings capital of 9%, mainly from net savings as markets has been rather flattish year on year. Number of trades then up 32% due to high volatility in the markets. Revenue almost SEK1.4 billion as a record level.

We see higher revenues from fund and brokerage, but lower revenue from net interest income due to lower rates. Operating expenses up 15% year on year, but excluding the Germany is around 30%. That much higher than last year is mainly due to sequence of marketing spend, we have more evenly distributed marketing spend this year compared to last year where we were back end loaded, especially in quarter four. But like I said, we expect to meet the full year guidance of around 8% cost growth excluding Germany. And also good growth in profitability, close to SEK1 billion profitability, which is also a record for the quarter.

Go to next. And we see continued good momentum in growth in customers and net savings. The growth in customer base were almost 70,000 customers in the quarter and 35,000,000,000 in net savings is very good numbers. But we also saw even there was a lot of turbulence in March, we saw good customer growth in net savings also in March. Next.

And we benefit from having a diversified business over four Nordic countries. There is a business model and it enables growth. And we see good growth in all countries, especially strong customer growth in Denmark. Our savings capital in Denmark was flattish and that was mainly due to the big drop in share price of Novo Nordisk. You can go to next.

Looking at trading, we see a number of trading customers here to the left. The blue line there is growing in line with the growth of the customer base, but also then boosted in quarter one from seasonality and a volatile market. We also see that trading customer is up a little bit also due to volatility. And also then cross border trade that we discussed is also up both in quarter four and quarter one. But this is an effect, I mean, both from a country mix where we have higher share of cross border trading outside of Sweden in Norwegian and Denmark.

But then of course boosted them by volatility. Trade per day also is considerably up, more than double where we were in 2019. That’s also an effect from a growing customer base, more than double the customer base since 2019, but also due to the seasonality and volatility in quarter one. But also looking at revenue or income to trade is considerably up since ’nineteen, almost 60%. And that’s the effect of high share of cross border trading due to country mix, but also that the mix between retail versus heavy trade is also more retail in the later years.

Looking at the fund business, there’s also continued good growth here. We see that fund capital is growing almost twice as much as total savings capital. One quarter of the fund capital is non private funds, which is mainly index funds, and 40%, give or take, of the net buy into funds is going into the non private funds.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: More than half of

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: the customer base now, more than 1,000,000 customer own funds, and we see activity also of customers buying and selling funds steadily increasing. But of course, we see a drop here in the fund capital due to market decline, but also a stronger SEK. And also net buying for the last one months is a little bit lower, mainly due to lower net buy than in quarter one this year. Go to next. Looking a little bit on net interest income, starting here with the deposits.

We see the deposits versus savings capital is up from 7% to eight percent. And the full deposits are up from SEK70 billion to almost SEK79 billion in the quarter, both from strong net savings, dividends, but also considerably lower net buy in the quarter of equities and funds that we normally compared to what we normally see. Go to next. So looking a little bit on the snapshots here for this different components of NII, sort of liquidity portfolio snapshot then SEK 1,500,000,000.0, and that assumes then the volumes we had in quarter one and also currency and the current allocation credit spreads and market consensus estimates for the three month IBOR interest rates. But we see here that the liquidity portfolio is up almost SEK 10,000,000,000 in the quarter, and that’s mainly from deposits.

But on that hand, we see the interest rates pause now is lower than we saw in quarter four due to expected impact on the economy from tariffs. So next, I look at the loan portfolio snapshot for 2025, it’s estimated to yield billion, assuming on the quarter one volumes and interest rates as per April 1, and the interest rates pass that we saw on previous page with a pass through of margin lending of 50% and mortgage 100%. And here we see a slight drop in the margin lending volumes in the quarter. It’s mainly due to stronger SEK and we consolidated the margin lending from Norway, Denmark, Finland into SEK impacting that. Of course, the main sensitivity here is the growth on margin lending volume.

Likely, if the market slow calms down a little bit, that we will see continued growth in margin lending. Also low risk lending portfolio in general, with loan to value around 40% for both margin lending and mortgage. And in spite of this heavy turbulence, we haven’t seen any credit losses on margin lending. Go to next. And deposit interest cost snapshot is meant to be around million in 2025 and assuming 2020 ’5 volumes and 100% patch through of the IBOR changes.

And here the main sensitivities, of course, the amount or capital on the savings accounts. But that’s likely to decrease over time when interest rate decrease, then the customers keep the money on the trading accounts instead. And we already seen that starting to take effect here the last quarters. Go to next. So in summary, we’re looking at the revenues.

I mean, resilient revenues bolstered by our diversified revenue streams. And we see good growth in all revenue streams, both net interest income, the fund business and also the brokerage business. And looking down to the graph to the right, we see also a little bit uptick in margin on trading, thus due to high shelf cross border trading and also that the retail versus heavy traders is a stable mix. Also a little bit higher fund margin due to buy and sell of non domestic funds. Go to next.

So all in all, if you boil everything down to numbers, we have, as you see, very strong revenue growth since ’nineteen around 30% per year, increased revenue from around SEK1.5 billion to over SEK5 billion now in 2025, last twelve months. While cost growth is fairly limited around 6%, so it’s a true position of profitable growth where most of the top line growth ends up on the bottom line. We also one of the main focus areas for us this year is to launch new features and functions for the high end segment. So customers trading a bit more. And we have launched, as you know, the analyst recommendations and price targets in quarter four last year and has been very popular with more than 60,000,000 views and 500,000 unique users in quarter one.

So it’s very well received feature. We also, during the quarter now, launched algorithmic order executions with Bvop, Tvop, but also you can access full liquidity through all the dark pools. Also very good take up and reception of that service. And just before Easter, we lost also U. S.

Pre market trading from 01:00. So you can start trading U. S. Equity already from 01:00 on our platform. But we don’t stop here, it’s more to come.

During the quarter, we’re going to launch FX accounts on the ISK and KF. We’re also going to launch additional markets for electronic trading in Europe. And I think that’s a big interest in Europe now where they shift from U. S. To Europe.

And we’re also going to launch a rich company data, both historic data and forward looking data, historic data we actually launched today. So with that, I hand over to you, Dannott.

Leonard Kerran, CFO, Nunet: Thank you, and good morning, everyone. We can go to the next slide. And as expected, I would say, all in according to plan, we still have a very strong capital situation. Also, the liquidity situation is very good, where the leverage ratio is the constraining part. And that has, course, decreased a little bit due to the increase of deposit, but it’s still on a solid level with 5.4% with the requirement of 3.5%.

So it’s a very good situation we have here, which enable us to continue the dividend policy that we have, paying out 7% of the net earnings and also adding a new program whenever it is approved by the SFSA of share buyback of sharing of shares for this year as well. Or it is planned to be in line with last year. That is whereabout we are. But as a summary, very good strong capital and liquidity situation gives us a lot of flexibility to do and work with. Thank you.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: You very much. A little bit on the strategic focus. As you know, we can go to next. We have four main strategic focus areas, starting with of course with the customer side where we want to have the most satisfied customers. We want to be a one stop shop for savings and investments with a really good customer experience.

But we also know to have happy customers, you need really passionate and talented staff in order to see upper trend on employee satisfaction and also that we can attract and retain top talent. Sustainable business, we are in a trust business. We need to earn that trust every day and especially we need to manage our risks in a good way and overall secure that we are a trusted and like brand. And the last area is profitable growth to continue then to capture the Nordic growth potential and now in next year also launched Germany, but it will continue to take market share and grow in savings market. But at the same time, on scalability and cost control to have a scalable business model also going forward.

And we’re very happy with the, if you look at the customer growth and savings capital growth over the years, which is very strong. And customer growth and savings capital growth is the main driver for revenue growth for us. The customers sign up, they like what they see. They transfer money from the existing banks or pension companies and start using our products. So that’s the engine that drives the revenue growth for us.

We’ll go to next. We are taking market share in a growing savings market, but still very fairly low levels with Apple Group to grow in The Nordics for many years. And also for that we have Germany as an option. We have now 8% of the Nordic population on our platform. We have 7% of the addressable savings capital on the platform and the addressable market is, we believe Renton is now big, it’s around SEK 18,000,000,000,000 in 2024.

And we take market share last year, had 6% market share, so we gained 1% market share in one year. And we know that the markets will also continue to grow with the underlying market growth. And we’re highest, if you look to the right highest market share in equities, lower market shares in funds and pension, but we put a lot of effort as you know in those areas and we also see steady and nice growth in both fund and pension business. And also proud of our scalable business model and cost control. We have, in ’nineteen, have 900,000 customers.

Now we have 2,100,000 customers. And in spite of that, cost has not grown that much. A little bit step up in 2024, but that’s due to additional marketing of 55,000,000 during 2024 to drive additional brand awareness in our different countries. And initiatives, I mean, we really benefited to have a scalable cloud powered tech platform that we work with automation, which is a win win, works better for customer and we scale better. But also that we really have an efficient customer growth, it’s mainly based on word-of-mouth and PR, so low acquisition cost.

Go to next, looking at where we are versus the midterm financial targets, we’re in line. So customer growth is 14% versus guidance of 13% to 15%. Service capital close to the SEK500000 level. It was a little bit down in quarter one due to drop down in the markets. Income in relation to savings capital is higher than the four, five bps, so by then on due to a higher trading activity, but also higher deposit levels.

And cost is even if it was a little bit higher in quarter one versus last year, we expect to meet the full year guidance of 8% growth per year, excluding Germany. Go to next. Looking at the key priorities for 2025, of course, to lay the groundwork for launch of Onelect Germany. It’s supposed to establish the branch in Germany, also do the needed development of the platform, but of course also recruit the German team. And here, we’re really happy to announce our new country manager that’s going to start on May 1, and that’s Markus Pertheswieser.

And he has a broad background for the financial industry in Germany, both being with McKinsey, also working at Deutsche Bank, both as a CEO for the bank branches, but also as a chief digital officer, and also being with a smaller digital startup working with financial services to the small and medium sized enterprises named Penta. So really, really good experience and also really happy that you can start already on May 1. And we’re also going to of course continue to realize the potential in the new Libertad product and also continue the strong net flows in the fund and the pension business. And we’re going to have also enhanced the high end offering for private bank and active trading customers that we talked about. So many launches already done, but also many exciting things coming in the coming quarters.

We’re going to continue with the panoramic rollout of the new brand campaign to drive brand awareness. In 2023, spent SEK45 million on marketing. Last year, we spent SEK100 million. This year, we spent the full million that we announced before. But of course, to continue to focus on underlying cost control and ensure that we also have a scalable business going forward.

So with that, I hand over to you, Markus.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Thank you. Great. So let’s start the q and a session. So like I said before, if you wanna ask a question, just click the raise hand button. I’ll then announce your name and unmute you or submit a question in writing.

So the first question comes from Jakob Hestlevik at SEB.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: On Slide 10, historically speaking, what has happened with the dividends your client has received? I would assume it’s usually reinvested in the following quarter. Or do you have any other specific theories what usually occurs?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: No, but it’s normally reinvested, you’re correct. Of course, little bit higher uncertainty this quarter leading to less than 5%. So let’s see how the next quarter plays out if the portfolio uncertainty persists or not. But normally, it’s reinvested in the market.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: Okay, that’s clear. But then if forward margin has come down since Q4 and we assume clients reinvest the dividends, wouldn’t that mean you would have to decrease your full year NII guidance already in Q2?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: No, but I mean the deposits growth is also a function of the net savings, which of course continue on a good basis and was very strong in quarter one. You mean sorry, and you mean the forward rates. But the forward rates that we use with the volume on deposits is what you see as a snapshot. We’ve taken the latest forward rates. So I think it was yesterday’s rates that we have in the pack.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: Yes. So if we assume rates are stable and then you just take a snapshot of deposit volumes in Q2 and then that’s how you get your full year guidance, right?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. So the volume we have in quarter end of quarter one, but with the interest rates pass, that’s consensus pass for the rest of the year. And those are absolutely, I think they are from yesterday actually.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: And also, and we can expect dividends to continue. Q2 is pretty heavy dividend quarter. Last year, there was about 9,000,000,000 of dividends coming in.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: Yes, sure. That’s a good point. And then finally, net savings per month on Page five. Does this not include dividend that your client has received right, and it’s only inflows from banks?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Only only

Leonard Kerran, CFO, Nunet: in from only

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: in from banks financial companies. Yeah. No. Not the notes.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: And is there anything specific in the March numbers because it looks quite high when we go back in history as well? Is it broad based or is it specific to a few private banking clients?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes, it was a little bit private banking effect in Sweden. As we know, some quarters it could be negative movements and some quarters positive movements and this quarter was really positive movements. So we’re happy about that. But the underlying retail underlying PB growth, net savings That was a little bit extra boosted by some PB customers in Sweden.

Jakob Hestlevik, Analyst, SEB: Perfect. Thank you so much.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Thank you, Jakob. Next question comes from Nicholas McBeast from DNB. Please go ahead, Nicholas.

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: Good morning. Can you hear me?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. Good morning.

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: I’d like to follow-up a bit on the net savings. So, I think it’s interesting to see the country split for customers and that’s inflows in the quarter and in particular looking at Sweden because what we can see there is that the number of customers is more or less flat year on year but you’ve seen a significant improvement in net savings and that accounts for the increase in total net savings from the entire group year on year. So is there anything more you can add there on the net savings figure for Sweden in particular given that customer growth in Sweden doesn’t look to be that’s all that significant at this point? Is it have you gained any particular volumes from some competitors? Is it the marketing efforts that are starting to give a positive boost or anything more you can add there, please?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. When looking at customer growth, it was flat due to the sale of the private banking, private owned business, sorry, to call them. Except for that, they grow around 6%, so it’s not totally flat.

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: Right.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: But net inflows, and I think we see both from retail and TV in Sweden, good inflows. But like I said, it was a little bit extra boosted from some bigger private bank customers in the quarter in Sweden.

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: All right. And then as you mentioned, your leverage ratio went down a bit quarter on quarter because of the deposit inflows, but it’s still at a very healthy levels. Do you see any potential to accelerate the buybacks given where you are in terms of capital that you’re still some above where you’re looking to be. I can’t really see how you’re going to go down to your target level unless you increase the buyback pace unless something dramatically happen, of course, if you see significantly larger deposits or something. Just given the current operating trends, it seems like you’re still substantially overcapitalized.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: You want to answer that, Ehmet?

Leonard Kerran, CFO, Nunet: Yes, I can say, yes, of course, we are overcapitalized, but we also set a plan and that is what the one we stick to. And the plan is to be in line with our targets of the leverage ratio of four point zero to 4.5 at the end of twenty twenty six. So this is just the cautious plan to be aware that, yes, we can have increase in deposits quite significant, but we can handle them over time. So this is according to plan and also not to disturb the stock market too much with the buybacks as well.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: We also, as you know, have an 81 that’s due in 2026 and 2026. So we need to have optionality around that one as well.

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: Sure. And then finally, on your currency revenues. First of all, it seems like the currency revenues increased more than the actual number of the cross border trades. So is that a consequence of larger trades or anything in particular there that accounts for the large increase in currency revenues? And then secondly, related to that, do you see any implications from for your currency revenues from the launch of FX accounts on ESCO and the capital recycling as you mentioned earlier on the call, Lofoken?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: The specific margin, I don’t have exact numbers, but it can be related to the trader value is a little bit higher or value per trade is a little bit higher. But I think Markus can come back with that. When it comes to the FX accounts, launched them during quarter two. But we don’t expect any big decrease. It might be that we can attract customers back that are not trading foreign shares with us because we don’t have FX

Nicholas McBeast, Analyst, DNB: Perfect. Thank you.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Great. Thank you, Nicolas. And next question comes from Ermin at Carnegie. Please go ahead, Ermin.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: Good morning. Do you hear me?

Leonard Kerran, CFO, Nunet: Yes. Good morning. Excellent. Great.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: So my first question would just be on Q2. Can you give us any color on how plants have acted now in the start of the quarter kind of is it still high activity or is it being an initial sell off and then reduced activity? That goes both for our trading, but also customer intake, capital inflows. Can you give us any kind of flavor on that?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. But as you know, the first couple of weeks were very volatile still, driving, of course, activity. But then after that, we have an Easter that destroys the picture a little bit. So I think you will see the full picture when we announced the monthly numbers in the May. It’s a combination both of Easter and high activity in the beginning.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: Okay, fair enough. Then the launch of the algo trading, I suppose you’re charging a little bit extra for versus use dark pools, etcetera. Do you expect the take up there to be big enough to have any impact on the commission rates on a group level over time?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: It’s of course hard to tell, but I think it’s off to a good start anyway. And hopefully, can attract also customers and trading that we haven’t seen before on the platform. So let’s see how it plays out. But it was a good start, I would say, of the service business, very appreciated by the customers.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: Great. And then the last question would be on the platform outage you had in mid February. Have you had any kind of feedback from authorities on that? I know you’re right that you haven’t had any kind of final verdict,

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: no feedback so far. But as you know, we reported incident both to EMA and FSA.

Ermin, Analyst, Carnegie: Great. Thank you.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Thank you. Next question comes from Martin Eckstadt at Handelsbanken. Please go ahead. Martin, can you hear us? Yeah.

I see that you’re unmuted. All right. Well, let’s come back to Martin. Let’s then go to Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan. Enrico, please go ahead.

Enrico Bolzoni, Analyst, JPMorgan: Hi, good morning. Can you hear me well? Good

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: morning. Yes.

Enrico Bolzoni, Analyst, JPMorgan: Thank you for taking the questions. First question, given the current macroeconomic context, can you just give us some color on what have been your thoughts in terms of, for example, marketing spend over the last few weeks? And is there a scenario where you would considered maybe to pull back a bit and slow down, for example, on the expansion in Germany? Or actually, you think that the current scenario is an opportunity to accelerate things, maybe spend even a bit more in marketing to try to to capitalize on that. So just very high level general comment for you would be would be appreciated.

And then I also wanted to ask you, with the with the, let’s say, reduced appeal for U. S. Stocks, do you think that actually other European countries can absorb the proportion of cross border trades that were that was going to The U. S? Or actually, if this continues, you would expect just lower proportion of cross border trades going forward?

And then finally, given the change in the rate environment, rates came down a bit, do you think that you might push a bit more to increase the lending book? For example, I think about mortgages or perhaps expanding the mortgage offer to other courts of clients or maybe to other countries outside of Sweden? Yes.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: When it comes to marketing spend, we haven’t really changed the plans. We run one really big boost a quarter and then we have always on between. But when it was most volatile, it was actually after our boosts. So we didn’t really need to reflect off if we needed to do anything or not. But so far, we follow our plan.

It’s going to be another big boost in quarter two and quarter three and quarter four, but then also in between. When it comes to the German launches, no impact. We continue there with establishing the branch of recruitments and development. When it comes to rotation from US to Europe, I think it’s been a lot of interest investing in other countries outside of the Nordics in Europe. And it’s also why we’re also going to turn on more countries for electronic trading in Europe during the quarter.

But let’s see about the flows. Mean, quarter four was all in U. S. And then quarter one was all out U. S.

But I think over time, I think when everything comes down, I think U. S. Is still going to be interesting for our customers for sure. And then the last question was lending. I mean we have a very healthy loan to deposit levels.

We have room to grow the lending book. Both the mortgage, but mainly direct at the private banking, as you know, but definitely margin lending. Marginality also, I mean, it’s been a bit risk now due to the high volatility, but we expect that book to grow nicely if the markets come down a little bit.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: And a final point on the cross border trading. Remember that in the Nordic markets, we also have four different currencies, so any intra Nordic trading also generates

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yeah.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: The same type of FX as a US or or European trade.

Leonard Kerran, CFO, Nunet: Thank you.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Great. We’re gonna try Martin from Handelsbanken again and see if he his mic is working.

Martin Eckstadt, Analyst, Handelsbanken: Can you hear me now?

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Yes, we can. Great. Sorry,

Martin Eckstadt, Analyst, Handelsbanken: I was wrestling with the Zoom interface before. So I just wanted to ask on Slide seven, the graph with VIX versus trading activity. So I guess the point of that chart is that trading and volatility correlates, but there are some exceptions, right, such as q two twenty two when Russia invaded Ukraine when you saw volatility spike, but trading activity come down and so on. So are we looking at another quarter like this potentially in q two twenty five given the trade war? I mean, we can see trends of customers selling funds on a net basis, etcetera.

Or is there still good volatility in your view?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: I mean, I think, what you see is sort of the April 1 was a lot of activity. And I think short term volatility, unless it’s a big crisis like the UK war, I think that’s good because it increased trading activity. But long term volatility is not good if it continues for many quarters because some customers get worried that they lose a little bit interest in savings and equities and funds and thereby less customers in, less net savings and less activity levels. Yeah, short term volatility good, very long term volatility not good, but pretty bad way.

Martin Eckstadt, Analyst, Handelsbanken: Okay, great. Thank you for that. And then another one, if I may. So I saw brokerage income in Norway was up 32% quarter on quarter to be compared with Sweden, for example, at a more modest 19%. Is this a change in customer dynamics in Norway, which I think fund savings seems to have been more important historically?

Or is this more of a one off, say, longer term equity investments were liquidated in this quarter in particular, do you think?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: No, but I think we saw equity trading picking up in Norway. It was a little bit subdued last two quarters previous year or the previous year due to also Norway market being a bit, yeah, not growing that much. But I think it’s really a bigger focus now on equity trading in Norway again, which is good.

Martin Eckstadt, Analyst, Handelsbanken: Okay, excellent. And then a follow-up on the fund capital, if I may. So growth in the proportion of fund capital allocated to Northern expanded funds has been picking up. I just wanted to check what is driving this. Are your funds getting better or flash cheaper?

Or is it breakdown to regulation or marketing and so on?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: No, I think it’s, I mean, know, not that branded funds are mainly index funds or fund of index funds. And customers, as we know, buy a lot of index funds and they like our index portfolio, performing well and it’s good price as well. And our fund of funds, the one funds where you can also choose risk level is also very popular. So I think we have a good match product wise and price wise for the customers.

Martin Eckstadt, Analyst, Handelsbanken: Okay, great. Thank you. That’s all from me. Thank you.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Thank you, Martin. I’m going to take a written question from Nicholas Veselier at BNP XN. He asked what’s your thinking around offering spot crypto trading? Is that something your clients are asking for?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Today, as you know, we provide crypto trading versus certificates or trackers that track the underlying assets. That’s been really booming market in Europe. There’s a lot of trackers out there and good trackers as well. They have physical applications and low fees. And the upside the trackers is that you can also have them on the tax accounts on ISK and KF.

But that said, I mean, especially now going into Germany where you have players with spot trading in crypto is an area we look at. Not top priority, but it’s something we look at.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Great. One more from Nicholas. He’s asking the fund revenue margin has been resilient. What’s driving this? Is the increased share of Northern funds driving margins higher?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yeah. Corey, I mean, we see a shift still from active to passive even if it’s slowed down a bit. But the good thing now when the customer buy the index to passive, they may buy the normal index where we have a high margin. Even though the price for the customer is good, we have a high margin on those products. So that supports margin.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: And also I think specifically this quarter, saw a bit of FX Yes,

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: the uptick this year was a little bit FX effect from trading non domestic funds.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: More short term. Okay. Next question, I’m going to take from Ian White at Autonomous. Ian, please go ahead.

Ian White, Analyst, Autonomous: Hi. Sorry. Can you can you hear me, please?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes.

Ian White, Analyst, Autonomous: Yes. You for taking my questions. Three from my side, please. First up, can you provide us with a sense as to how much of the net savings inflow is recurring in nature? I’m thinking about things like monthly investment plans, pension contributions, salary deposits.

What’s the kind of baseline level that you think would be resilient in all in sort of any market environment or in most market environments? Perhaps you can give us that. That’s question one. Secondly, just wanted to follow-up on on mortgage lending. The macro environment has become a bit more favorable in Sweden.

Why are we not seeing firm volume growth there, please, over the last twelve months in terms of total mortgage lending? Think it’s down slightly year over year on the Swedish mortgages. So interested just to understand some of the underlying dynamics there. Lastly, thank you for the helpful detail around FX impacts on savings capital. Can you just help us to understand the P and L sensitivity from an FX perspective.

Am I right to think that the costs are mostly SEK, but the revenues are earned in the respective local currencies? Is that the correct way to think about it? Thank you.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. So when it comes to recurring net savings, it’s roughly around SEK 2,200,000,000.0 as a mix of pension, premiums and monthly savings and funds. But we see a steady growth in the SSR, especially both in the pension and also in the monthly savings area where customers set up more monthly savings. So we have that as a fundamental, but of course we have a lot of other money coming in on top of that. When it comes to mortgage, we focus mortgage product to the private banking segment.

And if you have certain amount of sales capital on the platform, you get a really, really good interest rates as a way for us to attract and retain capital for the bigger customers. But we are a bit selective there. We could of course go broader, but we know also that mortgage is a very sticky product. It’s hard to scale up or down, it’s hard to scale down, scale up you can of course. So we’re bit careful how we play the mortgage development.

But where we want to have room to grow is mortgage lending. So we want to not have constraints. We don’t want to have constraints there and we don’t. But we’re careful to secure that. When it comes to FX impact on our P and L, I mean, you’re right.

I mean, cost income is 30%, so cost is only 30%. And most of that cost is in Sweden. So we get an impact from the sector variation on revenue and on savings capital.

Ian White, Analyst, Autonomous: Got it. Thank you.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Thank you, Ian. Next question comes from Andy Lowe at Citi. Please go ahead, Andy.

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: Hi, guys. Hopefully, you can hear me. Just one question and just a quick follow-up. So I’m curious, obviously, we can see in the monthly stats how your platform deposits have been evolving and you and Avanser have both seen quite a big increase in the last

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: couple of I’m

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: just curious if you could maybe give us a little bit of insight as to how that’s been behaving over the past few weeks in volatile markets. You’ve previously said, Lars, that is likely to sort of go up quite materially in volatile sort of risk off environment. So is that the case? And then the follow-up is just on the crypto question that we had a few questions ago. I think last time you helpfully gave us a figure that was 5% of the trades.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: 1.5%, yes.

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: Sorry, was it 1.5 in Q2 sorry, Q1?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. So it’s about the same level. So looking at full year, last year was around 1.5% of the trades. It’s a bit similar in quarter one, but we saw more trades in Jan, Feb, but in March, it really declined when also the crypto price declined quite a bit.

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: And what were the figures in Q3 and Q4? I remember them slightly differently.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes, that’s for the full year. So I don’t have I don’t remember the order for specifically, Markus. But we saw that the trading activity also, of course, went up after the Trump won the election. Quarter four was higher than the previous quarters. And if you look at quarter one this year was Jan Feb was about the same level as quarter four, but considerably lower in March when the crypto prices dropped considerably.

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: Great. And then the deposit question?

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Yes. So as you know, it has been lower net buy in the more volatile environment, but still good high net savings and high dividends. And that’s why we have good development deposits. Of course, continued volatility, it’s likely that possibly increase a bit, but it’s up. But let’s see how the uncertainty plays out.

It feels like a little bit less uncertainty now than anyway in the beginning of the month.

Andy Lowe, Analyst, Citi: Super helpful. Thank you so much.

Markus Zinberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nunet: Great. Thank you. I think that was the last question, actually. So, we’ll call it a day. Thank you so much for attending the presentation, and please visit our website, nordetab.com, or reach out to me if you have any questions.

Thanks for your interest in Nordnet. Have a nice day, and goodbye.

Lars Hakanoglen, CEO, Nunet: Bye.

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