Euronext Athens Holding S.A. (EXAE) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Let's get started. So good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and good morning for those of you who are listening to us on the other -- from the other side of the Atlantic. I would like to present the financial results of the group for the Nine months of 2024, which were published yesterday and are available on the IR section of our website, and then take any questions that you might have. I will start by giving the floor to Nick Koskoletos, our CFO, for some intro comments before we begin our detailed performance. Nick, you have the floor.

Thank you, and good afternoon, good morning to all. We're trying this new setup with regards to our financial results communication and conference call -- instead of a conference call, we're doing this new medium of presentation along with a PowerPoint just to go over some key figures. So overall, one of the main attributes of the -- of our performance that drove our performance this 9-month period was obviously the increase in the trading activity in the cash market. 9-month period close to EUR 130 million standing close to 22% higher versus the same period of last year. The rigorous market weaker in terms of the actual number of contracts traded average daily number of contracts traded at 38,500 close to 18% lower. Market cap a nice increase there, 24% higher, close to $100 billion. We're hovering around those levels even to this date, predominantly driven by the [ 41% ] increase in the market cap of the banking sector that is represented in our market. But even ex banks are very respectable close to 19% increase in at EUR 74 billion. Just a few points here on the traded value. A part of that average daily traded value is obviously helped by the placement of shares that took place in both Piraeus, mainly Piraeus and if earlier part of the year and then NBG.Those because are part of prioritization, those are actually priced at a discount as per our pricing policy, there's a 60% discount off of those that has actually impacted the average traded. The average fee on trading that we generate on top of the new bundles that we've introduced in the marketplace starting January 1, 2024. Average daily traded value up until yesterday, year-to-date is running close to EUR 133 million. So we're quite hopeful that the levels seen arming year-to-date up to the 9-month period is actually maintained. Now if we go to the more high-level revenue items in terms of the actual income statement performance. Turnover increased by 15.6%, reaching close to the $40 million mark for the 9-month period versus the 34.4 last year. And that is on the back of strong performance in the post-trading. We had some activity OTC there as well that has helped maintain the growth rate there. And then in our service portfolio, we had some notable performance from services like the electronic book building and the fact that our contracts with NX and the cross-selling opportunities that we're capitalizing there are working quite nicely. Operating expenses increased by a more moderate 5.8%. Obviously, personnel costs there, are the main driver and maintenance and IT support, and we can talk about that in more detail and bottom line at EUR 13.2 million for the 9-month period, 37.5% higher versus 9.6% last year. And just to make a reference here that starting Monday, our trading engine is actually operating off a new operating system, and we're quite happy with that because we had -- we managed to deliver a seamless transition to this new operating system that basically exhibits significant lower latency, and we expect to capitalize that with our members and expanding the network of the exchange hoping to increase trading velocity given the lower latency that we have there. And with our marketing efforts, we continue to promote the great capital market and broaden the -- in our attempt to broaden the investor base along with our members. In early December, we are organizing and participating in two roadshows, the [ flagship ] Roadshow in London where we expect most of our large cap companies will be represented at the highest level and then on December 5, we have our mid-cap conference in Geneva. And basically, I'll stop here and let Stelios go through our performance in more detail, and we'll be happy to take any questions at the end. Stelios?

Thank you, Nick. So let's pick up the presentation of the 9-month performance where Nick left off. The consolidated turnover of the group in the 9-month period was EUR 39.8 million compared to EUR 34.4 million. In the 9 months of 2023, that's up almost 16%. And as you can see, revenue breakdown is roughly the same as in the 9-month period last year with trading and post-trading collect to be accounting for 61% of total revenue. Revenue from listing accounted for approximately 11%, 12%. And 28% coming from services, namely data services, IT digital and other and ancillary services. If we look at revenue from trading, it's up 2.7% at EUR 6.6 million compared to EUR 6.4 million due to higher trading activity in the cash market, as already been mentioned. And we also mentioned that starting January 1 of this year, we have a new pricing scheme that went to effect in the cash market, replacing the 1.25 basis points flat rate. We now have, in effect, trading bands, bundles, which were introduced with minimum guarantee charges, which members have to prepurchase each month. And the fee is further differentiated depending on the market phase, whether it's at the open and closing auction, you continue trading more at the closing phase. And of course, the higher the band selected the lower the corresponding fee. At the end of the day, the effective fee on equities trading in the 9-month period of 2024 is approximately 1.1 basis points. Revenue from post trading is up 18.2% to EUR 17.8 million compared to EUR 15.1 million in the 9-month period of last year, again, on the back of higher trading activity in the cash market. A few words now about revenue from derivatives markets, both trading and post-trading. In the 9-month period of 2024, trading activity measured by the average daily number of contracts, dropped by about 13% to 38,500 contracts compared to 46,800 last year. Revenue from derivatives was down 12.5%, with the average revenue per contract, up 7.6% at EUR 0.258 compared to EUR 2.39 per contract. Our fees, as you know very well, for derivative contracts depend on the type of investor, the product being traded and the prices of the underlying securities. And as a result, market volumes and our revenue do not always go hand in hand. Lastly, on derivatives, trading and post-trading revenue in the 9 months of 2024 was EUR 1.8 million compared to EUR 2.1 million last year and that corresponds to 7.4% of all trading and post-trading revenue. Revenue from listing is up 8.6% to EUR 4.4 million compared to EUR 4.1 million last year. And this line includes the quarterly subscription fees paid by listed companies, fees on rights issues and IPOs as well as some other services to issuers. In more detail, listed company subscriptions are up 18% to EUR 2.6 million on higher average market cap. Fees from corporate actions are down 28% to EUR 1.1 million while fees from IPOs are up 140% to 580,000 in the 9-month period of this year. Moving on to services. Revenue from data services in particular, includes the fees that we collect from data vendors for the provision of Athex market data, and that is up 11.6% in the 9-month period. The fees that we collect from market data depend essentially on the number of data terminals to which these data vendors disseminate our market data team. And there, as you know, we mentioned that several times, we continue to gradually increase our data feed prices, and this is reflected in our revenue increase, among others. Revenue from IT digital and other services is up 28% to EUR 6.5 million compared to EUR 5.1 million in the corresponding period last year, and that includes revenue from digital services, infrastructure and technological solutions to the Energy Exchange Group and Boursa Kuwait. And this category also includes revenue from services such as electronic building, AXIAline, AXIA e-Shareholders Meeting, Colocation services and some others. And lastly, on services, revenue from ancillary services is up 39%, and that includes our revenue from support services to the energy exchange some rental income that we have, et cetera. Moving now to the expense side. Total OpEx increased by 5.8% in the 9 months of 2024, coming in at EUR 19.7 million compared to EUR 18.6 million. And if we break that down, we can see that personnel costs are up 7.5%. And at EUR 11.5 million compared to EUR 10.7 million in the 9-month period of last year. And that's, of course, due to continued wage inflation and some increased benefit costs, while all other OpEx was up 3.6% and EUR 8.2 million compared to EUR 8 million in the 9 months of 2023. The key drivers there our first third-party remuneration, which was down 22% due to reduced consultant fees. While on the other hand, we had both maintenance and IT costs as well as building and equipment costs up about 27% each. Personnel, remuneration and expenses account for 58% of total OpEx compared to 57% in in the 9 months of 2023. And head count at the end of September this year was EUR 251 million compared to EUR 253 million in 2023. Turning now to profitability. The earnings before interest and taxes of the group increased by 34% to EUR 15.3 million compared to EUR 11.5 million in the 9 months of 2023 and the net after-tax earnings of the group amounted to EUR 13.2 million, up 37.5% compared to the 9 months of 2023. On the balance sheet, the cash and cash equivalents of the group on December 30, 2024, were $65.1 million compared to $63.3 million at the end of 2023. And with this last comment, this concludes our initial remarks. And we would, of course, be happy to take any questions that you might have. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions]

I'm not used to the new platform. So I actually ask the questions in the Q&A. But all right. I have some questions. First, on costs. Yes. So personnel costs came a bit hotter than I was expecting. Question is what kind of dynamics can we expect for the fourth quarter. Then I also have a question on revenues from trade settlement. I mean can you provide some color on what was the reason for the significant Q-on-Q increase. And then also on this new training system that you've mentioned. The question is, like how do you expect to track high-frequency traders. You plan to have like an incentive scheme that is targeting specifically high frequency traders or these new bundling scheme should cover these demographic, so to say. And final question, it's about your expectations for fourth quarter. If you can already tell us like what you're feeling. I mean, looking at ADTV, it's looking better than the third quarter, probably helped by [indiscernible] and the [ Synergy ] share capital increase. So I guess, like revenues from trading and post-trading should benefit on your listing as well. So yes, like what's -- what are you seeing in the fourth quarter?

Yes. So help me out here if I forget anything, just jump in and -- so let me start off with the first one with OpEx on the personnel. I think we -- we've established a high single-digit run rate that's kind of coming off. So I would expect the same to happen in Q4 overall. I think we're not going to be in the double-digit territory with regards to where we stand in terms of overall OpEx and the same applies to the personnel figure. So that's how -- what we're estimating towards the end of the year and pretty much that's how we see things sizing up. We grew the OpEx base because we needed to support the things that we're doing in terms of all the initiatives that we have. There's widespread wage inflation, especially in the IT sector. I think we've talked about that in length in the past. So -- we expect, obviously, the rate of change to decelerate, but we'll maintain a single digit, and we're not going to be moving into double-digit territory, if anything, it's coming off. So that's one thing. Second, on the -- on the settlement, basically, what we had in the 9 months, there was a -- we collect fees for over-the-counter transactions, things that happen off the exchange, we collect 3-1/4 basis points off of that. So there was activity in the -- in that specific territory was related to [ one ] basically was a transaction for one particular name that kind of created that growth. But there's on and off these things happen. Over the last couple of years, you'll see that line has increased, and it's quite sticky. So it's a percentage of the cash -- the on-exchange market, I think it's something that you can model as fairly consistent, so that was related to that. In terms of average daily traded value, yes, you're right, things are shaping up at least in November, quite nicely. There is some index rebalancing happening December. You can't know like we've had Decembers that have been extremely active and then Decembers that haven't been that active. And obviously, as we go towards the end of the year, we expect some weakness. But overall, as I mentioned in my introductory comments, we do not expect a significant deviation from the current run rate for that fact. And I mean the year-to-date run rate. So EUR 130-something million probably is a plausible figure for year-end. On the trading system, no, it's -- we do not -- we have not planned something additional. We're not so much going after high-frequency trading because that's a little bit more difficult given the sales tax in the Greek market. But we do anticipate more participation from algorithmic market makers that type of geography, as you mentioned. And we created the bundled pricing scheme in order to accommodate those type of business models as well. So we will not be coming up with an additional pricing scheme and our pricing scheme has tied into the geography that we seek as more participants could capitalize on the more vibrant and lower latency system that we have. And how we expect to do that. We are regularly in touch with our own ecosystem. I think or even our own members will attempt to capitalize on this more robust and faster executing system, but ourselves, when we market ourselves, we make a point of bringing that to the attention to anybody we talk to. So that's the component for there. And then you had a question on what was the -- have you had one more question?

No, I think you got it. You got everything was perfect.

Just one last thing. Just as a reminder, when we do have capital market activity, like as you mentioned, Synergy and Attica, all those, those are revenues that are booked that are allocated over time. Just because of the accounting standards. So from a cash flow perspective, we do collect the fees. But in terms of the revenue recognition, that's spread out over time. So we do like any secondary offerings, those are over a 3-year period and then any IPO would be over a 5-year period. So just as a reminder with regards to that in terms of how you go through your numbers.

We have another question. I don't know if [ John Calero ] take the floor back, I can read the question in the chat. You mentioned new pricing policy in the trading area. Could you specify again, please? It's a question from [indiscernible].

Yes. So John, at the beginning of the year, what we did is that over the years, we had a flat 1.25 for trading in terms of fee. And I was agnostic whether it would be -- it was at the auction or if it was during continuous trading. What we did is we differentiated the pricing at auction and continuous and then we offered bundles to our members. So our member can subscribe to a bundle and depending on that bundle that has a minimum charge. The effective fee basically declines, so the run rate that we saw for the 9-month period is at 1.1 basis points. And the reason we're putting it out there is just for the clarity and going forward, we expect that run rate to stay sticky. It seems that there's been a take-up from a significant part of our members and the actual volume that's transacted is priced at these bundles. And then we have members that haven't attached themselves to any bundle and basically priced off the traditional basis point in a quarter. But the effective fee is at 1.1. So we wanted to put it out there. So the market can now -- we've seen that it's helped our volumes. There are more quotes that come into the market. There's more volume that is generated, especially from some specific segments of market participation. There was more order. So overall, we think that it's actually helped trading value.

I had a quick question on my end as well. Congrats on the 9-month results. Just if you could give us some color and some recap on the developed market status. So like as of now, what's happened and basically what we're waiting for in 2025 regarding watch list, just that.

Okay. So yes, the -- so we are on a watch list from S&P, and we basically entered the watch list for [indiscernible] as well. That was announced in October. So there's the usual as per the rule books usual consultation with the marketplace. These are reviewed over a 6-month period. There is no news on that. And then what is outstanding in terms of watch list are from the 2 other index providers, namely MSCI and stocks. So we continue to push through with any market improvements that we are working on, and we make sure of communicating these market improvements to the marketplace and then effectively contribute this new information and hopefully is taken into account within the consultation period that have officially already started with S&P and [indiscernible]. And then hopefully, we can get some strides with the other 2 index providers.

So we have Eleni, who had raised your hand. I don't know if she put down since, but we give the floor to Eleni Ismailou.

Congratulations for the strong results. Just a follow-up on the [indiscernible] stages. How is the new trading system that you're planning to launch soon will help you with the criteria of the watch list for MSCI specifically. And when you say you -- that you would like to capitalize on it, have you tried to quantify that? Is any further color you could give us on that on the revenue lines.

Okay. So with the actual criteria the trading system per se and the latency for that matter, those are not requirements. But on the other hand, as part of the consultation period and they're talking to their own stakeholders, we do not want to be -- we're striving for market improvements that will facilitate the conversation. So when we had a system -- a trading system that exhibited latency above in the mill -- over millisecond and now we're sub-millisecond, we're talking about microsecond latency, that is obviously a positive attribute to our system. And now the other thing is that by changing the -- given the upgrade that was done and the revamping of it, for that matter, it adds additional possibilities for new functionalities. Different type of orders that are embedded into our own trading engine. And those are attributes that are commonly asks from our members and other market participants, so to the degree that these are -- we're responding to the feedback that we're getting from our trading members and investors and other participants, and that's just not only the trading side, even on the post-trading side, all these are attributes that we make sure to highlight, to communicate, to promote in order to make sure that those that are consulted also have the most recent information available in order for them to actually have a more informed opinion as to what constitutes the attributes of the Greek market. In terms of the actual capitalization, it's more of a -- it's not a quantitative exercise, but we do a lot of things internally that we look at. But on the other hand, the more -- by discussing with our stakeholders, when you get backlash saying that, you know what, your system is slow, there's not much that I can do, then you improve it, then you see more orders coming in, additional activity that makes our own members and other participants think about additional things that they can do. So for us, as an infrastructure, our prime objective is to create a robust simple and more up to date, if you will, infrastructure that will facilitate market participants to participate in the most efficient way possible. So that indirectly helps more activity come into the market. So it's not a matter of capitalizing in a direct way where we expect x amount of orders, but we are seeing signs that these increases, whether it be the pricing scheme or the -- how activity is facilitated by the improvement in the market microstructure by having a trading engine that is faster in execution, we expect those to be positive things that our participants can be discussing.

[Operator Instructions]. Thank you. Nick, we don't seem to have any questions.

So thank you all for participating in this new medium of us communicating with you. Hopefully, it was a little bit more insightful and cater to your needs and looking forward to seeing you again. And as always, our team and myself are always at your disposal. So with that, enjoy the rest of your day.

Okay. Thank you also from my side, and we would be happy to speak to you in private if you have any questions. Thanks again for participating.