Earnings call transcript: Nordnet Q2 2025 highlights strategic growth

Nordnet AB’s earnings call for the second quarter of 2025 revealed a stable financial performance with a flat year-on-year total income and steady revenue from savings capital. According to InvestingPro analysis, the company maintains a healthy gross profit margin of 67% and is currently trading near its 52-week high. The company is focusing on strategic growth initiatives, including expanding its market presence and enhancing its product offerings. Despite a slight decline in net interest income due to low interest rates, Nordnet remains optimistic about its future prospects.

Key Takeaways

• Nordnet’s total income remained flat year-on-year, with stable revenue from SEK 1 trillion in savings capital.
• The company experienced a 14% increase in customer growth and a 10% rise in savings capital.
• Nordnet launched 8 new European trading venues and introduced currency accounts in Sweden.
• The company is preparing for a German market entry in 2026.
• Net interest income declined due to low interest rates.

Company Performance

Nordnet has maintained stable financial performance in Q2 2025, with total income remaining flat compared to the previous year. The company has focused on expanding its customer base, achieving a 14% increase in customer growth. Savings capital also grew by 10%, reflecting the company’s strong market position and customer trust. With a P/E ratio of 3.89 and a robust financial health score rated as GOOD by InvestingPro, Nordnet’s strategic initiatives, including the launch of new trading venues and currency accounts, highlight its commitment to innovation and market expansion.

Financial Highlights

• Total income: Flat year-on-year
• Revenue: Stable at SEK 1 trillion in savings capital
• Customer growth: 14% increase year-on-year
• Savings capital growth: 10%
• Net interest income: Decline due to low interest rates

Outlook & Guidance

Nordnet is targeting continued customer and net savings growth, with a focus on expanding its fund and pension business. The company expects full-year cost growth around 8%, excluding Germany. InvestingPro data shows strong returns over the past five years, with analysts predicting continued profitability this year. As part of its strategic plan, Nordnet is preparing for a German market launch in 2026, aiming to capture a larger share of the European market. For detailed analysis and additional insights, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro.

Executive Commentary

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, emphasized the company’s business model and operating leverage, stating, "We’ve grown revenue 25% per year since 2019 while costs only grew around 7% per year." He also highlighted the new private banking offering, describing it as "digital, transparent, low price, and will have a high development speed of new things to come." Lennart Kran, CFO, reassured investors of the company’s cautious and long-term capital planning approach.

Risks and Challenges

• Interest Rate Environment: The decline in net interest income due to low interest rates poses a challenge for Nordnet’s profitability.
• Market Entry Risks: The planned entry into the German market in 2026 involves uncertainties and potential competitive pressures.
• Cost Management: While the company targets an 8% cost growth, managing expenses effectively remains crucial.
• Regulatory Changes: Potential regulatory changes in the financial sector could impact Nordnet’s operations and growth strategies.

Nordnet’s Q2 2025 earnings call highlighted its stable financial performance and strategic initiatives aimed at expanding its market presence and enhancing product offerings. The company remains focused on growth, despite challenges posed by the current interest rate environment and upcoming market entry plans.

Full transcript - Nordnet AB (SAVE) Q2 2025:

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Okay. Good morning everyone and welcome to the presentation of Nordnet’s second quarter of 2025. My name is Markus Lindberg and I’m the Head of Investor Relations at Nordnet. With me today as usual, I have our CEO Lars-Åke Norling and our CFO Lennart Kran. Lars-Åke and Lennart 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. When we come to the Q and A session, you have two alternatives to ask questions. You can either click the raise hand button in Zoom, I’ll then unmute you and call your name, or you can submit a question in writing. The presentation itself is available on our corporate website, nordnetab.com. Okay, let’s start the presentation. Please go ahead.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Thank you, Markus. Go to the next slide, starting with some key highlights. We had seen a stable financial performance with continued growth in core business and both revenue and profit in line with core to last year. Positive net savings and good customer growth. Overall strong trading activity and continued robust revenue margin from an increasing customer base and also higher share of cross-border trading. We see a decline in net interest income due to low interest rate levels, partly compensated by higher deposits. OpEx excluding Germany is up 9.7% due to sequencing of marketing spend. Last year we were, and we expect to meet the full year guidance of around 8% cost growth excluding Germany.

Also, high activity in releases and product development where we have launched eight new European trading venues in our app and web and also currency account in the wrappers in Sweden and much more. I’ll come back to that. We also launched a new private banking tiering with clearly defined benefits in Sweden that has been well received overall. A very strong capital situation. We had the dividend of SEK 8.10 that’s paid and a new share buyback program announced that Lennart Kran, our CFO, will talk a little bit more about later. Go to next, some of the highlights. Financial highlights continue. Strong customer growth. We see 14% growth underlying year on year, savings capital growth of 10%. We’re once again now above SEK 1 trillion in savings capital on the platform, mainly due to net savings because the market year on year has been fairly flat.

Number of trades up 18% from a growing customer base but also higher volatility due to tariff uncertainty. Revenues overall is flat year on year. We see a decline on net interest income due to lower rates but an increase in our core business trading and.

Fund.

Cost year is up 30% excluding Germany. Is 9.7%. What I said is that we expect to meet the full year guidance around 8% for the year versus last year excluding Germany. Profit level is also on high level aligned with last year. Can go to next. We see a continued good momentum in customer growth during the quarter. Net savings though is a little bit lower this quarter versus last year. It’s mainly due to existing customers transfer a little bit less money this quarter. That’s due to that we had a very high net savings in quarter one and also high dividends and also some sellouts in April and March that then enabled a lot of cash on the accounts, thereby less need to transfer money from other banks during the quarter. We see net savings picking up a little bit in July. Can go to next.

We benefit from having four markets. The risks are business model and enables growth. We’ve had a good growth momentum in all countries where we grow most in customers in Denmark, where we see that savings cap is growing the least and that’s due to a fairly big market decline in Denmark during the year due to Novo Nordisk. Go to next. Talking a little bit about the revenue streams now, starting with the trading revenue. We see in the graph to the left here that the number of trading customers is increasing in line with customer growth. Up to the right, this here we use trades per trading customer is about the same level as last quarter where we see a very high level in April due to trade volatility. The markets calmed down in May and June.

Still, the high share cross-border trading even though it was a little bit less than last quarter. That’s from also the country mix with high share cross-border trading outside of Sweden. Trades today are at multi-year highs. Each trade also drives more revenue. We see here in the graph to the left that trades per day is increasing steadily and that’s due to growing customer base. We more than double the customer base since 2019 from 1 million customers to more than 2 million customers. We also see that trades per customer is up a little bit in first half of this year due to high volatility from tariffs. Looking at the right graph, you see that income per trade is increasing due to a higher share of cross-border trading and is mainly due to country mix where we grow a lot outside of Sweden.

It’s more cross-border trading in Norway, Denmark, and Finland because their local exchanges are fairly small. They trade a lot outside the local exchange. Go to next. The fund business keeps developing in a good way. We see a steady growth in fund capital. We have a little bit dip in revenue in quarter two versus quarter one due to a volume effect where the markets were down quite a bit, as you know, and also that the customers sold off a little bit of the funds. We see the fund capital is now back again to the levels before we saw the downturn. Hopefully in quarter three that will not have an effect.

We see continued good growth rate in Nordnet branded funds, which is more than one quarter of the fund capital on the platform, and overall high activity in funds, and more than half of the customers own funds on the platform. Go to next. Looking a little bit on net interest income starting with deposits and deposit levels. Deposit versus savings capital overall is around 8%. Like last quarter, you see an increase in deposits from around SEK 79 billion to SEK 83 billion in a quarter from net savings, high dividends, but then of course offset by net buys. We see now net buys in brokerage and funds is back to more normal levels where quarter one was low. Go to next.

Looking a little bit at the different components of NII, starting with a liquidity portfolio estimated to have a revenue of SEK 1.6 billion in 2025, assuming the volumes we saw in quarter two and the currency allocation, credit space, and the visual quarter two, and also the market consensus of IBER rates going forward. The sensitivity here is deposit volume, where we likely have an upside with growing customer base and additional net savings coming onto the platform. There are also the pulses that have driven the liquidity portfolio up the last quarters and thereby generating a high revenue. We see interest rate pulse fairly stable versus last quarter, a little bit down in Sweden and Norway, but up in Denmark and Finland. No big movements.

Looking at the loan portfolio, the estimated revenue there for this year is SEK 1.1 billion, then again assuming second quarter volumes and interest rates as per July 1 and also the IBER rates we saw on the previous page with a pass-through rate of margin lending of 50% and mortgage 100%. The sensitivity here is margin lending volume, where we also likely have an upside if the market stabilizes. If you look at margin lending volume in the graph to the left, it is down in a quarter both from risk off but also from a stronger SEK since we consolidated in. But overall our lending business at low risk. We didn’t see any credit losses in margin lending even though the high volatility in March, April.

We also managed to maintain the margins for margin lending on a good level in spite of the central bank decreases of interest. Looking at the last component on the deposit interest, so interest we paid to the customers, estimate that to be around SEK 400 million in 2025. Sensitivity here is volume on capital on savings account where we also likely have upside. When the interest rate goes down, there’s going to be less money on the savings accounts. We saw a little bit uptick in the quarter due to high cash volumes from again sell off and the high dividends. Over time I think the volume of savings account will decrease a bit. In summary, we have good development in all the revenue streams, both net interest income, the fund business, and the trading business. Once again, over SEK 1 trillion earnings capital on the platform.

If you look at the margins, margin on deposits of course a bit down due to lower interest rates. You see the trading margin is a bit up due to higher share cross-border trading and a stable fund margin. We have a business model with great operating leverage. We’ve grown the revenue with 25% per year since 2019 while the cost is only growing around 7% per year. Most of the top line growth ends up on the bottom line. A true position of profitable growth.

Next.

We’ve had the high release rates both in quarter one and continue into quarter two, not least for features and products for the more active customers. With this quarter, launched a currency account for ISK and the capital for tracking in Sweden. We also launched eight new European trading venues for electronic trading via our app and web, and that’s been well received since it’s now not high interest to invest in Europe versus the U.S. Some smaller releases: we have an AI summary of news, we have a generative AI which is exciting, and we also built in really nice native movement pension flows in the app in Norway and Denmark and also built in savings going into the app. We also had a very exciting launch of a new private banking offering in Sweden, and it’s a tiered model based on savings capital.

It’s four tiers, it’s called platinum, black, and signature. For each tier, we have very clearly defined benefits. You have lower commission, you have lower mortgage rates, you have coming soon also discounts on margin lending rates, you can have an upside on interest rates on savings account, you have access to certain products specific for this segment like currency accounts on ISK and KF, and also prioritized customer service and much more is to come. This is a framework that we can build on for a very long time, and we have a very high release rate and a lot will happen here. We also focus to launch this in the other countries also during the fall.

What we want to do of course is to track more capital from the private banking segment, both from existing customers to try to nudge them to the next level, the next tier so they get additional benefits, but also then of course retaining capital by the nice benefits they have. Also on top of that, attract totally new customers to our private banking offering. It’s been well received and a good start. With that, I hand over to you Lennart Kran to talk a little bit capital liquidity and some buybacks and other things.

Lennart Kran, CFO, Nordnet: Thank you very much. It’s always a pleasure to talk about the capital and liquidity situation. As you know, you can go to the next slide. It is, as you know, a very solid and robust situation. We have both capital and liquidity wise, and that is also the reason why we have decided to continue the share buyback program, which last year did about SEK 500 million share buyback, and we will continue. The intention is to do the same this year, but we start out with the launch of SEK 250 million on Monday, going on until the 7th of November this year, and then we will most probably launch another tranche of this one. The intention is, as I said, to go for SEK 500 million, continue the same way as we did last year.

We also have a strong capital situation that will enable us to do the 70% dividend continuously as well. Very nice figures to talk about, but I don’t have very much more to say about it really.

It’s.

It shows itself.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Thank you. Thanks. Little bit on a strategic focus goes next. We have four keys to the focus areas, of course starting with the customer side. They want to have the most satisfied customers by having a one stop shop, really truly great customer experience and low price. You also, of course, want to have engaged employees and we know to have happy customers you need to have really skilled and passionate employees, which we have, but also that we can attract and retain top talent, which also believe that we really can. Third area, sustainable business. We are in a trust business. We need to earn that trust every day and especially we need to manage our risks, both compliance risks and other risks in a good way and overall be a trusted and liked brand. Fourth area is profitable growth.

Captured the fantastic growth potential we have in the Nordics to continue to take market share in a growing market and on top of that launch Germany during next year. Of course, continue to focus on scalability and cost control and we have a very good long term growth in both customers and savings capital. We have critical mass of customers in all countries and they really like our platform. We have a strong word of mouth driven growth. What drives our revenue growth over time is customer growth and net savings. Customer sign up to the platform, they like what they see, they transfer money from other banks and start using our products like our fund products or trading products or lending products. We are taking market share in a growing market and we have a lot of room to grow.

Also going forward, only around 8% of the Nordic population on our platform, we have 7% of the addressable market of 18 trillion sector. That’s a big market and it is a growing market which has an underlying growth and we take in market share. Last year we had 6% market share in 2024, then 7% and we see in the graph to the right we have highest market share in equities and lower market share in funds and pension. Those are two very important focus areas for us and we’re really moving in the right direction with really good growth in both areas. Next, also very good scalability and cost control overall in the business. With double the customer base since 1.9 million to 2.2 million customers with a limited cost growth.

We’ve decided to invest in three areas and that’s one area is additional marketing to drive brand awareness and thereby higher customer growth. The other area is the German launch which will enable markets two and a half times as big as Sweden Nordics. The third area is more development staff to have a high release speed, which is key if you’re going to succeed in a competitive market like the Nordics. Go to next when the performance versus our financial targets is okay. Customer growth 14% in line. Savings capital for customers a little bit lower than the 500k but not that much, partly due to a little bit weak in markets in H1. Income in relation to savings capital is higher than the guidance due to higher deposit levels and also higher trading activity and expenses.

Like I said, we estimate that to be around 8% per year excluding Germany. Looking at the key priorities, a lot of focus of course on Germany. They have the Country Manager in place since 1st of May and now we’re recruiting the team around him. They also define the scope that’s needed for developing the platform in Germany, also started that development, and we also notified the SFSA that we intend to then passport the bank license we have in Sweden to Germany. Overall, good progress in the German project. We’re going to continue to focus of course on the fund and pension business where we had a bit lower market share but very good traction and not least realize the potential in the new Librante pension product in Denmark.

We also focus on enhancing the high end offerings, so the offering for the more active customers with really good releases both in quarter one and quarter two. We’re going to continue to roll out the new brand campaign. It’s a new marketing burst starting in August and of course continue to focus on scalability and overall cost control. With that Markus, I hand it over to you for Q and A.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Great, thank you. Now we’ll start the Q&A. Like I said before, if you want to ask a question live, just click the raise hand button. I’ll announce your name and unmute you, or feel free to submit a question in writing. The first question comes from Edmund Kirik at DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead, Edmund.

Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Maybe if we start on private banking, it seems like you don’t expect any price erosion with the introduced tiering. Do you expect it would be enough then to drive in much more volume, and if we flip it the other way around? You also talked about introducing some more attractive pricing on the margin lending there. Just generally, how do you think about kind of price versus volume given that you already have an installed base in private banking. That would be the first topic. The second one, just on NII, how do you think about the price changes from here? Is the assumption you have in the slides with 50% pass-through in margin lending and for the deposits your best guess given how competition has looked down there after the last rate cut?

Lastly, just on the deposit base, how do you expect that to develop from here given that you’ve had support from the dividend season, which I suppose now is kind of behind us.

Thank you.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah. So looking at the private banking, of course it will take a little bit of our revenues, but it’s still non-material. I think what’s important here is that we’re really clear on the tiers and really clear on the benefit per tier, and that we are very transparent and overall, of course, low price, but the higher capital you have, the better commission level you have, the better mortgage rate you have, the better margin rate you will have, better savings account rate you will have, etc. This is also start. It’s much more to come that will be launched in this framework. I mean, it’s not just the price component, it’s other things that can be interested in there as well.

We seen a big interest from the launch, both from existing customers that really liked it, but also of course try to nudge them to the next level to transfer a little bit more capital so they enter the next level, but also then attracting fully new customers. For us it’s a little bit new generation private banking. It’s digital, it’s transparent, it’s low price, and it’s going to be a fairly high development speed of new things to come. Looking at NII, I would say it’s the best guess and a snapshot. As we know, I mean, it’s been no real surprises on our previous assumptions. I think those will hold here as well. The positive base, I mean ultimately there’s also a function of net savings and customer growth, and we will grow customers and we will have higher net savings over time.

That will also build deposit base. We’ve seen even though dividends are.

Being.

Lower now, it’s still on a stable level on deposits.

Excellent. Thank you very much. Have a nice summer.

Thanks. Same.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Thanks, Amin. Okay, the next question comes from Patrik Brattelius at ABG. Patrik, go ahead.

Thank you. Can you hear me?

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yes, perfect.

Yeah. I will start with the two follow-ups on admin’s questions. If we start with the private banking area, could you talk a little bit more and elaborate on how you view the competitive situation, especially in Sweden, but also how your offering that you plan to launch in the other market stacks up with the current offering in the other regions outside of Sweden?

Yeah, I mean competitive wise, we plan of course to take customers both from other platforms, but also banks by having a little bit more modern private banking offering, like I said, with very clearly defined tiers. A nice experience how you move between the tiers, and also clearly defined benefits. It is very transparent and also low price, but also a framework that we can add a lot of exciting stuff in over time. Of course, we plan to launch this in other countries as well, hopefully during the fall. Again, as usual, competitive situation is always highest in Sweden. It’s less outside of Sweden, but I think it’s a framework that works well in all of our countries.

Do you see, for example, outside of Sweden that your product offering will be broader than peers, or is it also better in pricing?

How does that work again? I think it is both. Digital is very transparent, very clearly define what benefits you get per tier and low price, of course, but there’s also going to be additional components in the offering. That’s going to be exciting. That will come over time.

Thank you. My next question is also a little bit of a follow-up. We saw historically the deposit in relation to savings capital being above 10% and close to 10%, while it’s been closer to 7% the last couple of years. It has come up in the last in H1 given the uncertainty we have seen. Do you expect now in the short term that this will continue up? We have in the past talked about that in a normalized rate level, you expect it to move back towards this 10% level, ish. Or do you expect that the customers have built now in the short term so this should trend down in the coming six months?

I think in the midterm guidance we gave for revenue there by NII we’ve fairly modest in assumption of growth of deposit versus AUM. We’re still growing in absolute terms. Since we grow in the savings capital, we grow in the customer base, we have more net savings coming in. It’s also a little bit different mix. I mean also more fund and pension customers now which are not going in and out of positions as much as equity or brokerage customers, thereby creating perhaps a little bit less cash. Let’s see. We’ll grow deposits and even with 8% we will grow deposit in absolute terms in a nice way. Of course, we know if you have a downturn in the market the deposit is going to definitely increase. Hopefully we have some upside anyway going forward. Anyway, absolute terms will grow.

Thank you. I just have two minor questions that are a little bit not impact the big picture, but the net of the commission, it was positive from the beginning of 2019 until mid 2024, and now we have seen four quarters in a row with negative result. What is driving this difference, and should we expect it to be negative going forward as well?

I don’t have all the details on that. I don’t know, Markus, if you have.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: I know one factor is that there were some fees and they’re associated with the unsecured lending product. When that was sold in Q4, you would have seen, I think that’s when you saw the shift into more negative numbers. That would have been the biggest shift. Other than that, of course, that other line contains a lot of other things that can move a bit. That’s the only major shift I can think of.

Correct.

Thank you. Another minor detail question is that the lending book has decreased by almost 2 billion since the start of the year, while the credit is up by 2 billion. Just for my understanding, what is driving this development?

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: You can pronounce that it’s probably the positions in liquidity portfolio, but you can answer.

Lennart Kran, CFO, Nordnet: Sorry, can you take that once again?

Yeah, yeah.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: The, the.

The credit risk is up by 2 billion since the start of the year while the lending book is down 2 billion. The shift in delta just for a better understand.

Lennart Kran, CFO, Nordnet: Yes, now we have a very high liquidity or increased liquidity portfolio, and also we have then increased the credit risk weights within this one in short positions to gain a little bit more on the net interest income leveling up at a certain level as we have this very strong capital situation as well. It’s actually optimizing that path without taking it for the credit risk because those are all short papers, so very much in control of them.

Very clear. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Thank you, Patrick.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Thanks, Patrick. Next question comes from Jakob Hestlevic at SEB. Jakob, please go ahead.

Good morning.

If we look at the P&L development, total income is flat versus a year ago, while cost has increased by 13%. If income doesn’t come back in the second half of this year, how do you view your cost development? Are there any investments you could pause, for example?

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: If you look at revenues in line by quarter two last year, cost is higher. Also, we don’t have any credit losses this year since we offloaded the unsecured lending business, but thereby also given a little bit less revenue on lending of course. We foresee a continued growth in customers, net savings, and thereby top line over time. As you know, it can be impacted by fluctuations in the market quite a bit from quarter to quarter. There are always levers you can pull if needed. Like I said, we decided to invest in marketing and new development resources in Germany. I don’t think we would do anything with Germany, but marketing you can work with and also new recruitments you can work with as well.

Thank you. My second question is on the margin on transaction related income, it came down quite a bit in the quarter and I guess FX played a part there. Is it only due to lower volumes or do you see a margin compression as you have rolled out your FX accounts to pro and private banking clients?

No, it’s not more than compression. It’s just due to a little bit lower FX volume, but especially lower trading value on FX. I mean, the currency accounts have been well received, but it’s just a few hundred accounts opened, and we also see if they trade on those accounts, they also have higher volumes. It’s a little bit wash. There’s no impact from currency accounts.

Great, thank you. Wish you all good success.

Same.

Bye.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Thank you, Jacob. The next question comes from Enrico Bozoni from JP Morgan. Enrico, please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Can you hear me okay?

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah.

Hi.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Morning.

Thanks for taking the questions. One, a follow up on NII which was clearly good versus consensus. Can you just give us some extra color on what you think drove such a good print? Is it because you managed to secure some pretty good deals with the liquidity portfolio? You mentioned the credit exposure as well. We hit the ceiling. Do you think that potentially you could push the portfolio a bit further into higher yielding securities? That’s my first question. The second question is on the Swedish market. You posted a roughly flat customer growth relative to the previous quarter. I appreciate this quarter probably has been a tougher one. However, you’re also spending more on marketing.

Can you give us some color and your thoughts on whether you think the marketing investments you’re doing there are actually bearing fruits and whether you think that from Q3, for example, we might already see an acceleration perhaps in customer growth? Finally, on the private banking, I was just wondering if you could give us some KPI on perhaps how many clients you have seen already moving some asset to maybe four within one of the better bands that you are currently offering. Thanks.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah, I think on the NII mainly that we have a higher deposit volume, thereby high liquidity portfolio and thereby higher revenues. Of course, you have a little bit upside on taking a little bit more risk in the investments there. The main driver is deposit levels when it comes to customer growth in Sweden. I mean, we see clear signs anyway that the market campaign is well received. We see that campaign recognition is very high, campaign liking is very high. You see also an uptick in aided brand awareness in Sweden that will hopefully spill over in additional customer growth over time. It will also always take time to shift sentiment from awareness to preference as well. We are also then very happy to see that the NPS development in Sweden is also very positive and importantly closing the gap to Avanza.

All this taken together at some point should also enable a bit higher customer growth. We still see that we have good customer. I mean, we have good customer base, we have good customer growth as good customers coming in in Sweden. As we know, savings capital per customer, high income per customer, high activity per customer in Sweden. Private banking of course going to support all of our countries, not least Sweden. Like I said, well received. I don’t have, I can’t share stats today but we see really big interest both from existing customers to go to the next level. We have had several cases where customers have moved in more money to go to the next next tier to enable more benefits but also attractive versus new customers as well. We see positive trend net savings in July partly from this.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Enrico.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: The next question comes from Martin Ixted at Hunderspinen.

Thank you.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Can you hear me?

Yeah, we can. Excellent. I just wanted to ask a little bit about Norway, and you use year on year mainly in the presentation, but just taking a bit more near-term stance and looking at income by country very simplistically by transaction-related revenue volumes. Norway seems to continue its outperformance this quarter, although all markets are down, quote unquote, quarter. For example, the Nordnet group is down 17% quarter to quarter in brokerage income, but Norway is only down 11%, with Denmark, for example, on the other hand, being down 21%. The same is actually true for fund income from Norway. Could you speak a bit more about the dynamics behind Norway’s ascension, perhaps, and perhaps also the recent decline in Denmark, although there it seems more like a shift to funds actually. Could it be related to the Lievrente product that you launched there?

If you could give us some more flavor on the dynamics for those two markets, please.

I think this is a benefit of having four markets because they move in a little bit different directions. You spread the market risk in a good way. Norway is a bit different since there’s a lot of oil and fish and other parts of industries that you don’t see in the other countries. With the volatility we saw in March, April, I think it hit. They also sold down in funds in Norway clearly, but trading wise I think they saw an opportunity as well and always has been a strong market this year versus Denmark. There’s been a really bad performing market this year and we know market sentiment impacts also activity. Denmark is down quite a bit this year due to Novo Nordisk and Novo Nordisk is still on very low levels. That’s impacted the sentiment in Denmark quite a bit.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: So.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: This is what we have all the time. Basically, the market moves in a little bit different direction, thereby also spreading the market risk in Denmark. I mean, we have good strong net flows in pension for the first half, of course, around SEK 2.5 billion so far. That’s impacting, of course, the fund business positively.

Okay, excellent. Thank you for the added clarity there. A second one if I may. I asked this question of Avanza as well. Given how fund margins look perhaps artificially lower this quarter since fund capital dropped between quarter ends, which is not captured in average volume calculation, would it not make sense to give some more data on this in your monthly data packs, for example? Just volumes would clearly be helpful.

It does. We plan to actually break down the savings capital in the monthly report per brokerage, advance, and deposits.

Okay, super. That would be very helpful.

I agree it was not a normal movement, but clearly a V shape during the quarter. We understand that creates a problem for forecasting.

Excellent. That was all from me. Wish you all a good summer.

Yeah, see.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Thank you, Martin. Next question comes from Zach Wirth from Autonomous. Zach, please go ahead.

Hi there. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I’ve got two please. Firstly, can you give us a bit more color around brokerage margins during the quarter? Are there any other drivers here of the decline versus 1Q aside from lower foreign trading levels? Secondly, on the release of digital trading in eight new European markets and pre-market trading in the U.S. during the quarter, what drove these launches? Is this in response to specific customer demand, and what has uptake here looked like thus far? Thanks.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah. So revenue bargain versus quarter one trading volume versus quarter one is mainly due to a little bit lower share of cross-border trading on volume, but a little bit lower still on traded value. Since we don’t report traded value, that’s probably why you didn’t fully meet the forecasting on that parameter. There’s no other big movements. Still, the margin is very high compared to what we’ve seen before. High level and 2024 for when it comes to the launches, pre-market U.S. has been very well received. 10% of the trades in the U.S. now is being made, give or take, pre-market. We also see a tendency that the customers that take pre-market also have a little bit higher traded value. Hopefully that will play out good over time. Also, Europe launch was also well received since there’s a lot of renewed interest now in investing in Europe.

So far we saw a little bit less volume in Germany, but more volume in the other markets. The total volume in Europe has been about the same, but it’s been a shift from Germany to the other markets.

That’s great. Thanks very much.

Thanks.

Thank you, Zach.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Next question comes from Michael McNaughton from UBS. Michael, please go ahead.

Morning.

Can you hear me okay?

Yeah.

Morning. Yes.

Great.

Yeah.

My first one was just on the private banking rollout as well. I think when you rolled out in Sweden, you commented that if customers near the tier barriers change, that would add about or attract SEK 20 billion, SEK 22 billion stack of new savings. Do you have similar numbers for how that would look in your other markets? Is it a similar quantum or is it much less?

Less?

I think the 22 billion was a pan-Nordic number. Might have been unclear.

Okay. Okay, got it.

Thanks.

Regarding Norway, I saw that you reduced your platform fee on external funds.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah, just.

Could you just talk about the reasons behind that, what you’re seeing there in that market, and then if there’s any risks of similar moves in your other markets and what the competitive dynamics there are.

Yeah, we don’t. As you know, we’re very careful normally with lowering the price, especially versus new small competitors. When we see bigger players moving or a gap to the big players is too big, we see we need to defend our price position. In Norway, ISK, mainly that’s owned by Storebrand. One of the big players has very low fees on index funds, platform fees, and the gap has been a little bit too big versus us, especially with KLP the most. The biggest, basically the index provider in Norway changed to a clean share class where they gave themselves a bit more margin and thereby ended up that the KLP funds looked very expensive on our platform versus Kron. We saw that we need to act. It’s not dramatic.

I think it’s SEK 6 million on a yearly basis impact, but we don’t see any spillover to any of the other countries.

Okay, thanks. Maybe just on that, any comment on if you’re seeing any pickup in competition in Sweden from Savr as well in that regard?

Not really. I mean, Savers was also acquired by Lansforsakringar Bank recently, and I think that shows it’s a very competitive market in the Nordics. It’s very low prices in general, so it’s difficult to build a profitable business. You need a lot of customers, a lot of savings capital, a lot of transactions before you get there. We don’t see any impact from Savers in Sweden. Okay, great, thanks.

Have a good summer.

Same. Bye.

Thank you.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Michael, call and good luck going forward. I know you’re moving somewhere else. It might be that last Q call. Next question comes from Andy Lowe at Citi. Please go ahead, Andy.

Hey, thanks for taking the question. Just would like to go back to the net flow dynamic in Sweden. You annualized about 2% net flow in the quarter. Similarly, Avanza had quite a weak quarter. I’m just curious to hear what you think the diagnosis is for that. On Avanza’s call, the CEO said that the capacity is there for people to save and it was more a lack of inflows due to risk appetite. Do you think that comes back in the second half, given that markets have fared much better? The second one is just a request really, like the margin or the revenues per trade obviously sort of caught people off guard this quarter. Would you consider disclosing the average traded volume? That would just be a helpful metric for us to track. Thanks.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah, yeah. Netflow was weaker, not just in Sweden, it was a little bit weaker in all countries in quarter two. The main reason, like I said, is that the existing customers had more cash on their accounts because it was very high net savings in quarter one. There was a sell-off in March, April, and also very high dividends. We have the existing customers’ both recurring net savings that wasn’t impacted. They also do one-off transfers when they see a need. There’s been less need of that because the cash, the deposit level, has been very fairly high on their account. It’s mainly due to that, not so much risk off, I would say. We see positive development in net savings now in July.

Thanks.

Margin per trading value, etc. You can take that with you, Markus. I think the biggest one is if you have trading volume and just trading value and not just trading volume.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: We will consider it for sure.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Normally they go very much hand in hand, but not every quarter.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Okay, thank you so much, Andy. The next question comes from Ian White from Autonomous. Ian, can you hear us?

Hi there.

Hey, can you hear me?

Yes.

Thank you for taking my questions. Just two from me, please. First up, I want to ask on capital and the glide path to a 4 to 4.5% leverage ratio. Basically, if I look at, say, the SEK 500 million of buybacks you pointed to today, you will more or less accrue that capital back in the second half, even post the sort of 70% dividend payout. I’m just wondering how you’re thinking about getting down to that 4 to 4.5% leverage ratio range that you’ve given us previously. When do you think we should expect you to be in that target range essentially? Please. Secondly, slightly broader question. We saw a competitor announce the launch of tokenized equity products for clients in Europe in the last couple of months.

Just wanted to hear your thoughts on that, please, and wondered if it’s something that Nordnet AB will also consider launching. Strikes me as a way to internalize flow and reduce trading costs and make product launch maybe a little bit more flexible. Just interested to hear any thoughts on that from your perspective, please.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah, I think the glide path, you can probably answer that, Lena, but we also have an increasing deposit level or deposit volume over time that we need to consider as well. Perhaps you want to give some more color and an SEK 8.10 that’s coming up soon as well.

Lennart Kran, CFO, Nordnet: Yeah, I would say. I mean we are very cautious and we are a long-term capital planning to be this strong all the time. As said, we have the SEK 81,600 million that will be able to call next year and that we have to consider all the time and see how we’ll continue with that one. Actually, it’s a gliding path and I would presume somewhere 2026, 2027 that we will be down to 4.0, 4.0. It also depends on the deposit levels and that is what we always adjust to.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Tokenized equity products, yeah, I mean overall it’s an area of course we watch. I don’t think we’re there yet, but it’s an area we definitely watch. And crypto also on top of that as such. There’s a lot of things happening in the tokenization space which might be interesting over time, but we also need to really secure that we have a really trusted service to our customers.

Got it.

Thanks very much.

Thanks.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Thank you so much, Ian. We had a few written questions. I think we answered most of them, but one we haven’t answered yet. The question is Nordnet has been in the German market before. What’s different now and why will the company succeed now? I believe Nordnet exited Germany in 2011.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yeah, correct. I mean, but it’s a very different situation now. One is that the German market is maturing when it comes to equity and fund savings, and there’s a lot of other players there, digital platforms as well, that tries the behavior to use the platform. That’s one. Probably the more important reason is we were not mature. We were so far away from profitable growth in Denmark, Finland, and Norway during that time, and we needed to do a lot of development for those countries and reach scale there before we could focus on anything else. I think it was the right move to pull out of Germany to focus on the Nordics. Now we have profitable growth and a very strong base in the Nordics, and now it’s a better time and also more mature market pockets in Germany.

Markus Lindberg, Head of Investor Relations, Nordnet: Okay, great. That was actually the last question for today. Thanks everyone for attending this presentation. Please visit our website nordnet.com if you need more information or you can reach out to me. Thanks again for your interest in Nordnet. Have a nice day and a fantastic summer. Goodbye.

Lars-Åke Norling, CEO, Nordnet: Yep, bye bye.

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