- 312,000 new customers acquired in 2023, over 77,000 in Q4 alone
- A 51.0% increase in the number of active customers to 408,500
- Q4 customer trading volume in CFD instruments increased by 4.0% year-on-year to 1.789 million
- In Q4, profitability per lot increased by 119.0% year-on-year to 276 Polish zloty
XTB presented preliminary financial results for 2023. In this period, the company achieved its highest-ever consolidated net profit of PLN 791.3m. High volatility in financial and commodity markets, coupled with intensive marketing activities, made the past year a record in terms of both the number of customers acquired and their activity.
Dynamic business development combined with a steadily growing customer base and favourable market conditions contributed to XTB’s record financial results. In 2023, the company achieved a consolidated net profit of PLN 791.3m, an increase of over 3.3% from the previous year’s PLN 766.1m. Operating revenue for the four quarters of the past year reached PLN 1,588.2m, compared to PLN 1,444.2m at the end of 2022 (an increase of 10.0% year-on-year). Meanwhile, operating expenses in 2023 amounted to PLN 693.6m (in 2022: PLN 558.6m)
In 2023, XTB dynamically increased its customer base, simultaneously encouraging them to invest in an increasingly diverse product portfolio. Only in the Q4 2023, XTB gained over 77,000 customers, which, combined with the results from previous quarters, amounts to almost 312,000 new clients in 2023. Therefore, in each of the four quarters, the company achieved its earlier declarations of acquiring at least 40-60,000 customers quarterly. The total number of customers at the end of 2023 exceeded 897,000, and by January 29, 2024, another 38,100 new customers had been added.
The average number of active customers, an important indicator affecting results, was 310,000 in the Q4 compared to 203,000 in the corresponding period of the previous year. The total number of active customers for 2023 was 408,500 (in 2022: 270,600). This led to an increase in client trading volume on CFD instruments, expressed in lots – in Q4 it was 1,789 million transactions compared to 1,720 million in the corresponding period of 2022 (an increase of 4.0%). The profitability per lot in Q4 2023 increased by 119.0% compared to the corresponding period in 2022. The value of net deposits also increased from PLN 3.42bn in 2022 to PLN 3.79bn in 2023.
Omar Arnaout, President of XTB’s management board, comments, “The results of the past year show that our chosen strategy allows us to achieve repeatable and, above all, satisfactory results. I would draw attention to the fact that in addition to a record accumulated net profit, we also achieved the highest-ever number of active customers. This shows that our platform is becoming the first choice for anyone wishing to manage their savings.”
Revenue Structure
In terms of XTB’s revenue by asset class responsible for their generation, in Q4 2023 the most lucrative were CFDs based on indices, their share in the revenue structure on financial instruments reached 53.9%. This same asset class also brought the most revenue in 2023 (47.8%). This is a consequence of high profitability on CFDs based on the US 100 (NASDAQ), DAX (DE30), and US 500 indices. The second most profitable asset class were commodity-based CFDs, with a share in the revenue structure of 39.9% in 2023 (37.7% in Q4 2023). The leading instruments in this class were CFDs based on natural gas, gold, and oil prices. Revenues from currency-based CFD instruments accounted for 10.1% of all revenues in 2023.
Costs
Operating expenses in 2023 amounted to PLN 693.6m and were PLN 135.0m higher than in the comparable period of 2022 (PLN 558.6m). The most significant items were payroll costs, resulting from the company’s development and employment growth, and marketing costs, resulting from new promotional activities. XTB’s marketing efforts in Q4 of last year focused on promoting its proprietary trading platform as an “All-in-One”, a place where investors will have a comprehensive offer to invest their funds. The global face of this campaign was Iker Casillas.
Product Plans
As in previous years, XTB will also focus on acquiring new clients in 2024 and expanding this group to include those interested not only in investing but also in broad-based financial products. Therefore, the company plans not only to enrich its offer, but also to implement changes aimed at improving the comfort of using the investment platform and mobile application.
“Our very good financial results in recent years motivate us for even more development. The result of our many months of work will be a very intense 2024 in terms of new products. This year we plan to expand our investment offering to include bonds, and Polish customers will be able to take advantage of the increasingly popular IKE and IKZE accounts. We also want to introduce a community feature, called Social Trading, on our platform that allows tracking transactions of selected users,” says Omar Arnaout.
“In addition, this year in XTB’s offer there is a product planned that gives us a chance to become a comprehensive platform for managing finances daily. This will be possible thanks to the introduction of a virtual wallet along with a multi-currency card that allows XTB mobile app users to make card transactions, payments, transfers, and currency exchange,” summaries Arnaout.
