Plus500 (LSE:PLUS) — Half Year Results

0:00 Good morning. Welcome to the PLUS500 LTD investor presentation. Throughout this recorded presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the q and a tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Please just simply type in your questions and press send. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. And I'd like to hand you over to Owen Jones. Good morning, sir. Morning, everyone. Thanks, Charlie. Thanks for joining. Very much appreciated. This follows part on the heels of our interim results that we put out on on Monday of this week. So the full range of of materials will be on our website, the investor relations section of our PLUS500 website. So I'm gonna be using the same materials as we presented on Monday.

0:46 You you may see me skip through a couple of slides as we go just in the interest of time. So if you if you do see that happening and there is a particular slide that you like to go back to, as I said, it will be on the available on our website for you to for you to have a look. So we as I said, we delivered our interim results on Monday of this week, where we showcased once again really strong financial and operating momentum across across our businesses. We achieved record results financial results, which directly reflect the compounding quality of our customer base, resilience of our global businesses, and the power of our best in class proprietary technology, which is something that you will have heard us talk about many times before.

1:31 And all of this underpins our deliberate evolution into a diversified global multi asset fintech group. And the aim of today's presentation is to highlight the continued delivery of our key strategic initiatives. A key part of our strategy and driven by the large significant opportunities we see in the prediction market space is our US business, sometimes referred to as our non OTC business. The broader structural opportunities across our overall market also remain substantial, and they continue to expand. We entered the second half of twenty twenty six with real momentum, and we look to the remainder of the year and beyond with confidence and excitement as to what is to come.

2:24 So turning to slide four. This shows some of the key takeaways from the first six months of twenty twenty six. Our record results demonstrate the continued delivery of our strategic objectives, as I mentioned, which, as a reminder, are entering new markets, broadening our product offering and deepening customer engagement wherever we can. And together, these drove significant and accelerating financial and operating operational momentum across the group. Customer income, which is a key KPI for us, reached a five year high, and revenue grew to a three year high, reflecting our continued focus on high value customer.

3:13 During the period, we deliberately increased investment in customer acquisition, technology, product and local operational capabilities, which are required to scale our expanding geographic footprint. Investments are incurred ahead of the associated revenue, but they are already converting into customer income more quickly than the prior periods. And this disciplined conviction led approach to investment is intended to support the growth of the group into the medium term and beyond. Second, our US business continued to scale represents a multiyear growth engine for us.

3:58 And highlighting this, non OTC revenue grew significantly by approximately 30% in the first half year on year. We deepened our existing strategic relationships. It's another really important driver for us. And we recently welcomed Wealthsimple in Canada and NeoLogica in Brazil as new b to b partners, reinforcing our position as a trusted partner of choice in this industry. Third, our CFTC regulated prediction markets business. We achieved a major milestone here with the launch of our b two c offering in February, which we followed in June with the wider launch of our sports event based contracts, which is the the highest engagement category in this particular segment.

4:51 And this builds on a strong performance and excellent strategic position in our non OTC business. And this business is on track to deliver annualized revenue of approximately $140,000,000 this year. And if you take that back three or four years ago, it would have been a significantly smaller number. So that business has grown really quickly and really successfully, and it's something that we're that we're really pleased with. And then finally, early this week, as I said, we we announced additional shareholder returns of just over $182,000,000 comprising dividends and share buybacks. Share buybacks totaled 100,000,000 the total dividend totaled $82,500,000 and that equates the dividend component of that equates to about $1.2 per share.

5:44 So to conclude on this slide, our robust financial position underpins everything that we do, we remain highly cash generative and debt free. And at the end of June, we held approximately $860,000,000 of cash on our balance sheet, and that is our own cash that is not customer cash. The the highlights I've just run through together with our disciplined approach to generating investment returns for our shareholders is a key priority for us. And PLUS500 is a business that has transformed and will continue to grow. We have become fundamentally stronger, and the record results that we have delivered today, I think, highlight that highlight that progress that we've made in recent years in particular.

6:36 The next slide here picks up on that theme of our track record, it's one that we have established since our IPO in 2013, which some of you may have may may have participated in or at least remember. Our performance since then is built on four fundamentals, operational efficiency driven by technology and automation business model stability consistent growth through market and product expansion and a strong financial position, which I just mentioned. Since listing in 2013, we've generated $4,000,000,000 in cash from operations, dollars 3,300,000,000 in cumulative net profits, and we have returned $3,100,000,000 to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, including those returns I've just run through.

7:25 And combined with a strong share price performance over that period, our total shareholder returns stand at approximately 12,000% at the end of June, making PLUS500 the best performing share in the all share index over that over that time frame, which is a a remarkable achievement and something that we are extremely proud to be able to to showcase. Slide six. This highlights our evolution from a single product provider to a market leading global multi asset fintech group, now covering OTC futures, fair dealing and, as I mentioned most recently, prediction markets in The US. This deliberate evolution reflects a clear and consistently executed strategy to broaden the product offering to expand our geographic reach.

8:18 Every growth opportunity has been pursued with discipline and with the infrastructure to support it at scale. The The result is a business that is not only more resilient, but is also structurally better positioned to capture the compounding growth opportunities that we see across multiple areas at once. We continue to operate in attractive growing end markets with powerful structural growth drivers, and we'll highlight these in more detail during today's presentation. On the left hand side, you can see our OTC business, which many of you will be familiar with. We also enhanced this recently with twenty four five trading on stocks and ETFs.

9:04 This is continuous round the clock access during the week for our customers, which is a trend that has that has gathered momentum in recent months and and over the last twelve months, which is extending trading opportunities for retail customers. And in the futures and bridge markets business, again, we cover large and rapidly growing addressable markets here with significant long term potential. This business can be split further into B2B and B2C businesses. And we've recently added a new B2B2C subline, which I'll come back to in more detail shortly. Together, these channels provide execution and clearing services across across a a growing range of global exchanges and venues to an expanding list of partners.

9:55 And a key component of that is our PLUS500 COGNOS platform, which we include on the slide here. This is our industry leading client portal, and this has become a meaningful and growing source of accelerating customer onboarding and retention within our B2B futures and prediction markets business. I think overall, our expanding offering provides customers with a broad and extremely relevant set of products, and and it is an offering that allows customers to tailor their trading strategies to their individual needs and requirements. Looking to the next slide. This slide is designed to show PLUS500's role in the global financial ecosystem.

10:45 And it this is a a critical and increasingly important role as we become and as as we establish ourselves as a provider of accredited and trusted institutional grade market infrastructure to a growing range of customers. Our role has evolved significantly as we've diversified our operations. And as I said, we now sit at the heart of the financial ecosystem, connecting global customers to a wide range of exchanges and clearinghouses globally. This slide, slide eight, starts to pick up on some of our unique sorry, the unique features that we have that in turn become a compounding growth engine as we scale and as we move forwards.

11:37 On the left hand side, we show the pieces or the part of the proprietary technology stack that we own, which includes our full clearing and execution capabilities and our institutional grade B2B infrastructure. This complete ownership allows us to power the entire offering across channels to our customers within our futures and prediction markets business. And on right hand side, you see how this capability is delivered in practice through our different platforms. So we highlight here PLUS500 Futures, P4 Pro and also PLUS500 Cosmos which I just mentioned. And because we have built and controlled every layer of this stack ourselves, each component reinforces the other, creating a structural and competitive moat that compounds as we as we scale and as we grow our market share.

12:29 And that's particularly relevant to this slide, shows our our friction markets offering. This This is a market and a segment that represents a compelling and fast growing market opportunity for PLUS500 driven by surging retail and institutional engagement, regulated exchanges and next generation trading tools as these financial asset classes experienced significant growth over the past twelve months. Prediction markets enable customers to trade on real world outcomes within a trusted CFTC regulated framework underpinned by advanced technology and infrastructure, which generates a seamless and highly intuitive trading experience for our customers. And our customers can trade on highly robust and reliable trading platforms, providing them with direct regulated access to real time events as they unfold.

13:22 Our technology led position in this market speaks for itself and explains why we are established as a provider of choice for a growing number of blue chip partners. And we combine peak market expertise, institutional grade infrastructure, and a robust proprietary ecosystem that continues to serve our expanding customer base. We entered into production markets in late twenty twenty five as a clearing partner for a joint venture between the CME and FanDuel. And then in early twenty twenty six, as I mentioned, we launched our own b two c offering, our direct retail offering. And then in June, we expanded that product set to include sports event based contract, which is the highest engagement category, and it's the category that represents the highest share of volume currently.

14:13 And thanks to the unique strengths of our deep competitive advantages and our proprietary technology, we are exceptionally well positioned to maximize the substantial opportunities in front of us. And really, the most exciting part is we are just getting started. The next few slides include the operating overview for the first six months. And here on slide 11, we start to detail some of our financial and operational highlights for the first six months. As I said, we delivered record financial results.

14:59 Customer income grew by 24% year on year, and revenue grew by 12% year on year. And this performance is really strong performance, reflects momentum across both our OTC and our non OTC businesses. As I said earlier, in our non OTC business, revenue grew by 30% year on year, and it now accounts for approximately 15% of total group revenue. And this momentum was driven by significant developments across our US business, where we expanded our capabilities to accommodate customers across our B2B, B2C and our new B2B2C channel. We continue to strengthen our position at the center of fast growing US futures and friction markets, onboarding new b to c futures customers and expanding our b to b customer base, leveraging our end to end Omniset solution.

15:51 And internationally, you may have seen we announced the completion of our acquisition of Meta in India. We did that in February 2026. And we also recently secured new strategic partnerships with Wealthsimple in Canada and New Lodge Home Brazil alongside our existing b to b partnerships with the likes of CME Group, FanDuel and Topstep. And building on this momentum, our OTC business accelerated performance by converting acquisition investment into revenue faster than prior periods, And we significantly advanced our localized offerings, tailing our local trading platforms to align with local customer preferences. And that included the launch of new products like the 20 fourfive product, which I mentioned.

16:39 And we also continue to expand our global footprint with the recent launch of our Canadian business progressing well and our existing businesses, such as the one that we have in The UAE region, which grew strongly and contributed a strong level of revenue and profit, thanks to our enhanced local operation in the region. So the next slide details some of the features of our global operations and some of the growth drivers that is really powering our performance. You can see here that we now serve more than 34,000,000 registered customers across more than 60 countries. And this global scale, combined with a tailored localized offering, is a really important source of both current and future value as we focus on maximizing activation, retention and monetization of our global customer base.

17:34 This is further supported by our highly innovative and agile offering, driving customer engagement with our compelling multi asset product set as well as a strong debt free balance sheet that provides flexibility to keep investing both organically and inorganically to generate growth. And all of this is underpinned by our global portfolio of 17 regulatory licenses that pair with our proprietary technology to enable rapid expansion of our global operations, as I mentioned. Slide 13 shows some of the KPIs that we track in a bit more detail. As we've consistently demonstrated historically, new customer acquisition and deeper engagement with existing customers lay the foundations for future growth, making new customer acquisition and investment today to drive value creation over the medium to long term.

18:29 And as we've demonstrated in recent years, our increasing focus on attracting and retaining higher value customers keeps us well positioned to drive sustainable, high quality growth well into the future. During the first six months of this year, as you can see on the slide, we onboarded more than 65,000 new customers, which represents growth year on year of 17%. This was supported by continued momentum in our strategic growth markets. And related to that, active customer numbers increased by 10% year on year to just over 197,000 customers. We continue to invest and attract sorry, we continue to invest in attractive growth areas, including customer acquisition, new markets and product development.

19:15 This is also reflected in total customer deposits, which rose by 10% year on year to $3,400,000,000 which equates to an average deposit per active customer of more than $17,000 moving to the next slide. Will be familiar to many of you who've followed us for the last few years. It shows the improvements that we've been able to make in customer retention going back to 2021. We've invested consistently over the years in our retention technologies, in and particular our global premium account programmes, to enable a superior customer experience. These programmes aim to deepen engagement with high value customers and extend customer longevity, and we've been very successful in doing that.

20:02 We aim to establish long term relationships with our customers through technology enabled potential initiatives in a wide range of products and services, supported by our best in class robust intuitive training platforms. Operating entirely on a self directed basis, customers retain complete discretion over their trading activity. And as can be seen on the pie charts on the slide, in the first half of twenty twenty six, approximately 20% of OTC revenue was generated by customers who've been trading with us for up to one year, while 50% of OTC revenue was generated by customers who've been with us for more than five years. It's this one the last fact there, in particular, is an excellent achievement, which is more than double the equivalent metric in 2022.

20:50 This reflects the depth of trust and engagement our proprietary training platform platforms inspire with our customers and our ability to acquire high value customers at attractive levels of of ROI. So turning to Slide 15. Customer income is a key measure of our underlying performance. And in the first half of twenty twenty six, it reached a five year record high of approximately $461,000,000 as you can see on the slide. This equates to a year on year growth rate of approximately 24%, which a really good, significant achievement. This growth reflects the expanding scale of the group's operations, the increasing quality, longevity and value of our customer base, made up of more sophisticated customers, continuing to engage with our reliable and scaled proprietary training platforms.

21:50 It also demonstrates the wider progress we have delivered, including the structural resilience of our OTC business, alongside the increasing revenue contribution from our non OTC business, which I mentioned earlier. The group continues to expand its global footprint both organically through new regulatory licenses and the establishment of local operations and inorganically through selective bolt on acquisitions. Every part of the business contributed to this record result, and that breadth of contribution is exactly what we have been working towards in recent years. And over the next few slides, I'll impact I'll highlight the impact of our non OTC business on the group as a whole, and in particular, the futures business and how that has impacted the group revenues, customer mix and other KPIs.

22:41 So here, we show the growth of our non OTC or US business. Here, revenue grew by approximately 30% year on year. And as I mentioned, now accounts for approximately 15% of the group's total revenue. It also accounts for 23% of new customers, which really reflects the fact that the business has now evolved into a material and rapidly expanding driver of the group's overall performance. The non OTC business is anticipated to generate annualized revenue this year of approximately $140,000,000 representing a meaningful contribution from this business as it continues to scale. Really, we see three growth drivers powering this growth. First, it's our B2B business as it continues to establish itself as a trusted provider of critical market infrastructure where we continue to grow the number of strategic B2B partners that we have.

23:40 Secondly, on the B2C side, which is our retail offering, our PLUS500 Futures and T4 Pro platforms have enhanced their performance significantly over the past year, with both customer acquisition and trading volumes growing. And this is underpinned by our integrated infrastructure and best in class proprietary technology. And third, our B2B2C channel, a new sub line in our US operation, allows our partners to power their own customer trading experiences using PLUS500 proprietary technology and infrastructure. And by embedding this technology across those three channels, together with our clearing and risk management infrastructure, we provide really valuable technology to our customers and this is really what has driven and will continue to drive growth and the scaling of this business.

24:28 And overall, this strong performance has driven a near doubling of our non OTC revenue from around $35,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty four to approximately $70,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty six. And we expect this positive momentum to continue. And turning to Slide 17, this shows our the strategic foundations that we have in place, which is which is one of the reasons that has enabled our US business to perform so well. In our futures business, we have a portfolio of exchange and clearing memberships, including with ICECLEAR US and ICECLEAR Europe well as with KelsiClear. And this allows PLUS500 to offer b to b customers a holistic solution covering clearing, execution and order routing, all with direct API connectivity across venues and geographies.

25:19 During the first half of twenty twenty six, we added six new exchange memberships in India with the with the acquisition of Meta, which I mentioned earlier. And this really serves to strengthen our global position as as a a an infrastructure provider. Within our institutional offering, as I mentioned earlier, have PLUS500 COSMOS, is our integrated proprietary platform built for our b to b futures customers, which really allows them to manage their business and service their own customers. It brings together a full range of services, doing fund management, real time risk monitoring, and streamlined onboarding services all within a single scalable platform, which has significantly improved the experience for our customers.

26:05 And across all three of our channels, we have expanded our core technology architecture to deliver dedicated clearing, order routing and risk management solutions. In the frictional market space, our focus has been on developing and launching a high quality product with a full service offering, positioning us to build quickly across all three channels in one of the fastest growing segments in today's financial markets. And as I mentioned, we launched our B2C collection markets offering in February 2026. And in June, we expanded that to cover sports event based contracts as well. We will continue to target additional B2B partnerships to further extend our reputation as a premier provider of market infrastructure, as I mentioned. Picking up on that point, the next slide here shows our our existing portfolio of B2B partnerships with blue chip companies.

27:01 We recently announced partnerships with Wealthsimple in Canada, which has more than 4,000,000 customers and with Neologica, which is a leading trading technology provider in Brazil, marking our first expansion into Latin America with a B2B partner. And we'll also continue to build on our role with our existing partners with Fanuel Prediction Markets and the joint venture that they have with the CME Group. I think the partnerships are really important because they reflect just how much we have developed our offering in The US and how our status as a provider of market infrastructure has expanded rapidly in recent years. They also serve to demonstrate the strength and maturity of our operational processes and our our status as a multi asset fintech group that is open to innovative partnership arrangements where necessary.

27:53 We think together the combination of our advanced technology, our regulatory position and our robust clearing memberships underpinned by a strong financial position, this really sets us up extremely well in this market and serves as a meaningful barrier to entry. And this leaves us very well positioned to capitalize on the growth opportunities that we see ahead of us. We turn to the next section. This is our technology section. I think many of these slides will be familiar to many of you, so I'll I'll skip through these relatively quickly. In the interest of time, we can into some questions at the end. The technology within PLUS500 really is our our our key enabler, and it it's the reason why we're able to to operate so efficiently at And at our core, we are effectively a technology company, that ethos spreads across everything that we that we do.

28:50 It allows us to deliver specialized services such as search and data analytics, whilst also continuing to power our own marketing initiative, payment processing, customer onboarding, and many, many more aspects of the customer journey. Our different domains, as shown on the slide, are built using our own technology, and they are integrated and optimized with one another, which is a key reason why our trading platforms are so robust and a key reason why our customers continue to come back to PLUS500. The next slide shows our seamless customer journey in a bit more detail. As I said, we've powered the whole customer journey ourselves using our own proprietary technology the very beginning all the way through to the end.

29:41 And our penalty stack here covers every touch point in the customer experience. And every part of this journey, whether it's onboarding, payment processing, or trading, The fact that we've developed everything ourselves directly reduces friction and improves conversion rates and materially enhances the experience and therefore the lifetime value of each and and every customer. It also allows us to to have developed and to maintain our diverse product offering shown on this slide. We offer over two and a half thousand different underlying financial instruments to our customers across more than 60 countries and in over 30 languages across our different channels. And you can see on this slide the interface and the overall user experience within our mobile first product offering is is seamless, and it's a highly intuitive set of products, which is a a a key reason, again, why customers continue to to come back to PLUS500.

30:46 And here, we show some of the different platforms that we've launched more recently, so the prediction markets, features and PLUS500 COSMOS. And then on this slide, we show some of the more recent launches that we that we rolled out to customers. So going from left to right, we have a $24.05 trading, which I mentioned on on leading US stocks and ETFs. The middle product there is our our our single stock features, which we launched very recently in the last few weeks. That's to our features customers in The US. And on the right hand side there, we show a an offering called AI Bytes, which which delivers real time market insight across our OTC business to customers.

31:36 And that covers a range of offerings, so real time market analysis, which enables customers to rapidly process complex datasets and translate this into an easy to understand insight. It also includes AI driven news summaries, clinical analysis, and real time sentiment displays. And I think the the launch of PLUS AI Fight really reflects our ongoing commitment to equipping customers with with innovative and effective training tools. And altogether, on slide 25, you can that 90% of revenue in the first half of this year was generated by customers trading on mobile tablet devices. And this really highlights the fact that the majority of our customers have a mobile first approach, I. E, the vast majority of our customers trade on on the the go, go, on the move, if not necessary, then sitting down with a computer and logging in and then trading.

32:34 So we have to cater to that product, to that customer preference, and that's highlighted by the offering I've shown you on the last few slides. Also 80 to 10% of customer trade took place on mobile and tablet devices as well, just to reiterate that point. The next few slides cover our financial performance in a bit more detail. I think that I've I've touched on many of these points already. So again, I'll I'll skip through them relatively quickly. This slide shows a bit of a a a highlight reel of what we managed to achieve and deliver in the first half of this year. And again, on this slide, we show the income statement in a bit more detail. I've touched on many of those points as well.

33:22 I continue in this slide. Here Here, we we show show the cost breakdown in a bit more detail. I think this is an important slide. It highlights not only that we have a disciplined approach to cost management, but also reflects the fact highlights the fact that we have a highly flexible cost base with over 70% of our costs being variable in nature. I'll pick out a couple of the numbers on the slide because I think I think they are important. So advertising technology and marketing investment increased by around 16% year on year to $81,000,000 And this was really driven by the increase in customer acquisition investment that we flagged after the first quarter trading statement earlier this year.

34:11 Payment processing cost increased by around 10%, which reflects higher customer deposit volumes and the continued success in attracting and retaining a larger and more sophisticated customer base. And commission and fees that you can see here increased by around 34% year on year. And this reflects the continued growth and scaling of our US futures business, where this cost base directly scales in line with trading volumes, growing customer numbers and also a growing revenue line as well. We view this dynamic very positively and expect to continue as our non OTC operation in The US continues to grow as well. Here we show the balance sheet.

34:56 It should go to this straightforward. As I mentioned, dollars $860,000,000 of cash at the end of the period and no debt, no loans, consistent with our historic trends. And here, we show the cash flow in a bit more detail. And I think the key thing here to pull out is the fact that our operating cash conversion was 99 in the first half, which continues to reflect the fact that we have an extremely cash generative high margin business model. And that directly contributed to that really healthy cash position that I just mentioned. Capital allocation, I'm sure, is an important topic for many of you.

35:42 Slide shows the breakdown of that cash position that I just mentioned. So regulatory capital of around $550,000,000 with a surplus breaking to around $310,000,000. And that surplus is clearly very important. It gives us significant flexibility to invest in future growth opportunities, also allowing us to continue to deliver enhanced returns to shareholders, which we show on this slide here. We announced on Monday $182,500,000 of additional shareholder returns, split between total buybacks of $100,000,000 and total dividends of $82,500,000 That takes the total shareholder returns announced in 2026 to $370,000,000 which is broken down between $200,000,000 in share buyback programs and $170,000,000 in total dividends, which equates to a total dividend distribution for the year of around $2.4 per share.

36:51 This is consistent with our capital allocation framework, and it reflects the record financial performance and robust balance sheet position that we have established year to date. So final section, summary and outlook. This slide shows the five growth engines that we have identified across the business and how they will affect the group going forwards. As you can see on the slide, our growth is driven by five key components. Firstly, geographic expansion, done on the far left hand side of the slide. We will continue to target new markets and boost our existing portfolio of global regulatory licenses, which currently stands at 17, with areas of focus to include continued expansion in Latin America and to new parts of Asia.

37:51 Secondly, customer quality and retention, where our efforts have delivered real and significant benefits across the group, and we will to drive this initiative forward. Third, our US futures business, where continued product enhancements build on a highly successful infrastructure program so far, and that will include the integration of Meta in India. Prediction markets, where we've launched our next generation offering sports contracts, as I've mentioned and we've extended our early mover advantage in this fast growing dynamic and transformative new asset class And then finally, underpinning all of what I've just mentioned is our proprietary technology and trading platforms, which are not simply operational enablers, they are engines of our customer economics, continuously improving acquisition efficiency, retention rates and overall lifetime value.

38:46 Together, these five drivers give us a clear, compelling and well funded path to sustainable growth. Value creation from our unique position in the futures and prediction markets has already begun, and we expect growth here to compound over the medium to long term. And this next slide shows why the opportunities ahead of us remain so compelling and why we're excited about the future of PLUS500. So we have a clear and durable technology driven edge in large, growing addressable markets. The retail trading opportunity is substantial with meaningful sustained growth expected across experienced traders' futures prediction markets and OTC markets over the coming years.

39:32 We hold strong, differentiated positions across all three. We are a global leader in OTC. We have a rapidly scaling futures business, and we held an early mover position in prediction markets. Our technology experience and infrastructure put us in a really strong position to capture growth across all of these markets as they continue to expand, and we intend to capture it as best we can. On the next slide here, we show our investment case. In recent years, we've evolved significantly, as I mentioned, and we've materially diversified our operations to become a leading global as global multi asset fintech group.

40:20 Over the past thirteen years as a public company, we have delivered and established an exceptional track record of growth, innovation and attractive shareholder returns. And importantly, as we have grown and diversified, we've maintained a highly cash generative business model, and we continue to invest in our group wide capabilities. Our financial position remains extremely strong with significant levels of cash and no debt. And it's this financial strength gives us the flexibility to pursue growth opportunities both organically and inorganically while continuing to deliver attractive returns to shareholders. And then finally, the next slide here, we show our outlook statement.

41:07 And I think it it really captured everything I've said so far. Opportunity for PLUS500 and the growth runway ahead of us has never been more significant. We are accelerating strategic progress across the group, including b to c prediction markets and additional b to b partnerships I mentioned. The second half of twenty twenty six has started well, supported by positive momentum across our financial markets and continued progress on our strategic priorities. We are confident in delivering full year results in line with current market expectations, which have been upgraded several times during the course of 2026 so far. Over the medium term, we will continue to expand our non OTC operations, receive repeated growth through targeted investments of bolt on acquisitions and continue to expand into new OTC markets and deepen customer relationships.

42:04 And over the long term, we have a solid financial and technological foundation to keep delivering expansion, innovation and attractive shareholder return. We look to the future with confidence, and we are absolutely focused on executing with precision against our strategic priorities and deliver growth and value creation for our shareholders. So that concludes the formal presentation. Can see that we do have some questions that have been submitted. Perfect. Thank you, Anne, for updating investors today. Could I please remind investors to submit your questions just by using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen? And for your reference, a recording of today's presentation will be available in the Investor Meet company platform shortly after the meeting has ended. Owen, as you said, we have received a number of questions during today's presentation. If could just hand back to you now to read out the questions and give responses where appropriate to do so, and I'll pick up from you at the end.

43:04 Sure. Yeah. So just taking them in order here. First one is about treasury shares. What's our long term plan? So whenever we buy back shares, do hold them in treasury. And once they are held in treasury, they don't receive dividends, and they are not eligible for voting in any of our company meetings. Under Israeli corporate law, treasury shares are effectively cancelled, but once they are held in treasury, they are really difficult and expensive to cancel. So that's the reason we don't technically cancel them, but for for any calculations that you're doing or for any metrics that you're looking at, you should effectively treat the treasury shares as being canceled.

43:52 Share buybacks, when will they end? And is there a total number of shares outstanding that the Board is aiming to get to? No. I think we continue to see our shares as undervalued. I suppose that's the key message. And we will continue to buy back shares as long as we believe them to be undervalued. And as I said, we've just announced new buyback programs of $100,000,000 on Monday, and that takes the total announced this year to $200,000,000 for share buyback. So hopefully, that is a pretty strong signal that we continue to see value in doing that. Next question here is about prediction markets. Yes, the regulatory picture with prediction markets is continuing to establish itself. They are regulated already today by the CFTC, which is the federal regulator in The US.

44:46 So that gives a really strong regulatory backdrop. And what's happening at the moment is on a state by state basis, individual states are treating prediction markets in different ways. And I think that process will play out for the foreseeable future. But where we are operating at the moment, we have chosen states that are what are known as green states, so where prediction markets are allowed and there are no restrictions. And then as the as the regulatory picture continues to establish itself, we will then be able to roll out our offering across the country, which will take a little bit of time, but we're very confident in our position. Who do we consider to be our main competitors?

45:33 Obviously, it differs between different business lines. So on the OTC side of the business, our main European competitors would be those also listed in London, so CMC and IT group. There is a a Polish company called XTB, offers similar similar access to markets. And then on the non OTC side, it differs quite significantly. So companies operating in futures and prediction markets would be the likes of Robinhood Interactive Brokers, eToro would be a couple of listed examples. There's a longer list of private companies. And then on on the institutional future side, it's companies like Marex and Stonex, are both listed in The US. And then, again, there's a longer list of of private companies as well.

46:31 Nasdaq listing, currently no plans for a listing in The US. I think the shares have done extremely well in recent years being listed in London. That continues to be our core listing venue and where the majority of our shareholders reside. So no plans to change that. I think that's all the questions. Charlie, I'll hand them back to you. Perfect. Thank you for answering those questions from investors today. But just before we ask investors to share that feedback, which you know is particularly important to the company, Owen, if I may, can I please just ask you for some closing comments?

47:17 Yeah. Sure. So as I said at the beginning, thank you very much for joining. We really appreciate it, and I look forward to speaking you speaking with you again in the future. Perfect. Thank you. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as you now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback, which which help the company better understand your views and expectations. On behalf of the management team of PLUS500 LTD, we would like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.