Flow Traders Ltd. (FLOW) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Hello, and welcome to the Flow Traders' Q2 '21 Results Call. My name is Molly, and I'll be your coordinator for today's event. Please note that this call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions] I will now hand you over to Jonathan Berger to begin today's conference. Thank you.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Flow Traders Second Quarter and Half Year 2021 Results Call. As you've no doubt already seen, we released our results first thing this morning. I'm joined here on the call by Flow Traders CEO, Dennis Dijkstra; as well as Chief Trading Officer, Folkert Joling, who will run through the results presentation. Afterwards, they'll be happy to take any questions you may have. Before we begin, let me draw your attention to the disclaimer on Page 2. Please be advised that if you continue to listen to this presentation, you are bound by this disclaimer. Also, please note that the results we will discuss in this presentation are unaudited. With the formalities out of the way, I would now like to hand over to Dennis for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Jonathan. Good morning, and thank you all for joining this call, where we will provide additional color on our second quarter and half year 2021 results. The first half of 2021 overall saw more normalized levels of market activity when compared to the exceptional market circumstances experienced in 2020. Accordingly, market ETP value traded decreased 14% year-over-year. The second quarter of 2021 was more subdued than the first, and this was reflected in the ETP market value traded, which decreased by 14% quarter-on-quarter. Our own ETP value traded essentially tracked the broader market in the second quarter, decreasing by 15%. From a year-on-year perspective, Flow Traders only decreased by 6%, which clearly outperformed the broader market. Consequently, these market environments, along with Flow Traders' own pricing and hatching capabilities, translated into a net trading income of EUR 94.4 million in the second quarter of 2021 compared to EUR 142.2 million in the first quarter of 2021 and EUR 229.9 million in the second quarter of 2020. This contributed to NTI for the first half as a whole of EUR 236.6 million. We demonstrated yet again strong margins with an EBITDA margin of 43% in the second quarter of 2021 with an EBITDA of EUR 40.3 million. Overall, in the first half of 2021, our EBITDA was EUR 119.6 million with a margin of 51%. The second quarter 2021 net profit amounted to EUR 28.7 million with a basic earnings per share of EUR 0.66. Ultimately, we recorded a net profit for the first half of 2021 of EUR 90.2 million with a basic earnings per share of EUR 2.05. Taking all of this into account, Flow Traders proposes an interim dividend for 2021 of EUR 1 with an interim dividend payout ratio in line with our -- with the prior years. This will be paid on August 20. We are cautiously monitoring the evolution of the pandemic, and our business continuity plan remains active with the health and well-being of our colleagues being of the utmost importance. We once again retained a strong focus on implementing our strategic growth agenda during the second quarter, which saw further confirmation of our structural growth. Accordingly, we have worked to a larger ETP footprint and have taken further steps in enhancing coverage of fixed income cryptocurrency and commodity markets. These investments are positively contributing to the top line, and we expect even greater contributions going forward. Now let's take a closer look at the market developments as well as a deeper dive into Flow Traders' performance and accomplishments. Firstly, we will review recent ETP market dynamics on the next slide. As shown at the top left-hand side of this slide, ETP market value traded declined 14% in the second quarter of 2021 compared to the first quarter as markets further normalized. Market volumes for the first half of 2021 were also 14% lower compared to the same period in 2020. Implied volatility also trended downwards during the second quarter from the higher levels seen in the first. Accordingly, this reduced market philosophy in the second quarter after an uptick is seen in the first. ETP assets under management surpassed the $7 trillion mark for the first time in the first half year as we -- perspective driven by equity ETFs. The first half also saw record ESG and crypto inflows. Naturally, as a key part of the ETP ecosystem, Flow Traders facilitated trading across all these ETP asset classes. In summary, it is fair to say that momentum and the outlook in the ETP universe remained extremely positive in the first half. Now I will hand over to Folkert, who will review Flow Traders' regional performance in greater detail on the next slide.

Thank you, Dennis, and good morning all. On this slide, we present an overview on some of the key performance indicators for the second quarter and for the first half 2021 on a regional basis. As Dennis mentioned earlier, Q2 was more subdued generally from a market activity standpoint, and that is very much reflected in the performance by region. Encouragingly, our own ETP value traded outperformed the market in every region in Q2. In Europe, we maintained our position as the leading liquidity provider in ETPs, both on and off exchange. The region delivered a robust trading performance in Q2 with contribution from crypto market-making activities. And once again, Europe remains the largest NTI contributor and Flow Traders' most important market. In a consistent theme across all of our regions, we have sought to deepen and expand our overall footprint. In Europe, we opened a new office in Paris partnered with ICAP on the launch of a new crypto platform and successfully connected to the Bloomberg's digital platform. Moving to the Americas. Again, the trading performance reflects lower levels of market activity. The Americas remain a growth region. And accordingly, we continue to expand our Lead Market Maker activities with issuers, as evidenced by iShares ETFs. From a footprint perspective, we connected with additional counterparties as a single-dealer platform and also commenced coverage of Grayscale products in Canadian crypto ETPs. Lastly, in APAC, we were active in equity exposure trading for counterparties across all major U.S. ETFs on a 24/5 basis. In terms of building out our footprint, and as an example, we act as a market maker in the newly launched CNH Futures on Hong Kong Exchange. And we have submitted our Q3 registration for China trading. I will now hand over to Dennis for the next slide, where we cover the cost base in greater detail.

Thanks, Folkert. The main drivers of the 8% year-over-year and 4% quarter-on-quarter increases in fixed expenses related to new hires and technology investments. We have incurred in the first half of EUR 1.3 million of additional one-off expenses in the first half, which relate primarily to the ongoing COVID-19 related expenses. Our headcount increased by 2% versus the end of the Q1 quarter with a focus on technology and development hires to support growth and product coverage, asset classes and trading platforms connected to. The business overall continues to demonstrate healthy EBITDA margins. In terms of cost for the full year, we still expect a maximum growth in fixed operating expenses of circa 15% for 2021. Now we will take a closer look at Flow Traders' capital position on the next slide. We show our required CET1 capital levels on the top left-hand part of the slide. After accounting for the interim dividend, Flow Traders' capital buffers have remained strong and remain comfortably above all requirements under CRR or IFR. Our own fund requirements increased to EUR 271 million at the end of June from EUR 226 million at the end of March. This reflects the nature of the trading book at that point in time with increased crypto and fixed income trading. We had a total CET1 of EUR 449 million at the end of June 2021. On the top right-hand side of the slide, you can see that our solvency ratio with the prime brokers as at 30th of June reduced slightly from the end of the first quarter, reflecting the reduction of accumulated trading capital to EUR 619 million. Again, we are comfortably above our prime broker requirements. The new IFD/IFR prudential regime finally came into force on June 26, 2021. The initial impact has been broadly neutral as lower capital requirements have been partly offset by growth business activities, which are more capital intense. We remain in ongoing discussions with the DNB as to the precise implementation of these new requirements. Considering all these developments, Flow Traders has set the full year 2021 interim dividend at EUR 1 per share. Now I will hand over to Folkert again to discuss our strategy and medium-term growth focus areas.

Thank you, Dennis. This slide will be familiar to all of you. And again, our growth focus areas remain as we outlined previously. Recent developments during the first half of the year have further confirmed our strategy with the structural growth in the business very much confirmed. Taking to enlarge our global ETP footprint means that we can align ourselves with the structural growth in passive investments, which has continued the pace in H1. ETP assets under management surpassed the $7 trillion mark for the first time in H1. We have also seen record inflows into ESG and crypto, which has translated into increased trading activity in those areas. Our goal is to remain a market leader in Europe and seek to be top 5 in the U.S. In terms of enhancing our coverage of fee income, we want to build on the fact that fixed income continues to be a growing ETP asset class by becoming the global top 3 liquidity provider in fixed income ETPs. We will also leverage access to the underlying. This will be done through promoting and driving market electronification, which will create a more level playing field. From a currency trading perspective, we are leveraging our global infrastructure to provide liquidity to currency pools and counterparties. Our aim is to be a top 15 FX liquidity provider on Euromoney, and we want to grow commodities by leveraging our top 5 rank on ECNs for spot metals. Lastly, we will further develop our crypto business by unlocking additional liquidity pools and maintaining our #1 market maker position in crypto ETPs in Europe. These growth focus areas have the ultimate goal of driving structural NTI growth. I will now turn to the final slide of the presentation and review our strategic progress so far in 2021. As Dennis mentioned earlier in the presentation, we once again retained a strong focus on implementing our strategic growth agenda during the second quarter. We are confident of delivering additional progress during the remainder of 2021. In the first half of the year, Flow Traders built on our leading global ETP liquidity provider position and grew our presence in all regions, especially in the U.S. and Asia. Highlights include acting as a Lead Market Maker on an increasing number of new issuers in the U.S., commencing coverage of Grayscale products and Canadian crypto ETPs and further deepening our ecosystem relationships in APAC. Globally, we now trade around 1,900 institutional counterparties. In the second half, we will focus further on expanding our counterparty base as well as increasing and deepening product coverage, connecting with additional venues and following up on our Q3 registration. We have enhanced coverage of fixed income in the first half of the year through expanding our infrastructure. And we have retained our #1 off-exchange position in fixed income ETFs. Focus for the rest of the year is on further enhancing our pricing capabilities as well as accessing more liquidity and increasing volumes as well. From a currency and crypto perspective, we are now constantly trading more than EUR 5 billion daily as we build collateral connectivity and trade processing. During the first half of the year, we have successfully completed our connectivity migration to increase our counterparty reach and partnered with ICAP on the launch of a crypto trading platform. Work will continue in the second half and scaling FX bilateral counterparty business and increasing our product coverage. I'll now hand back to Jonathan for the rest of the call.

Thanks, Folkert. This now concludes the formal part of our presentation. We'd now like to open up the floor for any questions you may have. Operator?

[Operator Instructions] The question today comes from the line of Thomas [indiscernible] calling from KBC Securities.

Maybe the first one on -- yes, on competitive pressure. I think during the third quarter, you mentioned that the lower volatility levels in that quarter caused a lot of competitors to reenter the market compared to earlier in the year, which weighed heavily on the results then. This quarter despite significantly lower volatility, we're not really seeing that effect and with NTI still quite a bit higher than the third quarter. Did something change in terms of like the competitive landscape? Or is this difference more linked to your increased footprint or the type of products traded? Any comments on that would be helpful. And then maybe a second question, maybe a bit more general. With the VIX levels now back around longer-term averages and yet no specific events in this quarter, like the COVID-linked selloffs or the sector rotation that we saw in the first quarter, would it be fair to say that Q2 is sort of a standard quarter for you and maybe a good basis to extrapolate from going forward? Or are you still seeing some elevated and thus unsustainable activity coming from COVID?

On the -- thanks for the questions, by the way. I think on the competitive landscape, we have not seen any big changes in the last 3 to 6 months in either region. I don't know, Folkert, if you can add anything there. But...

No, I agree, there haven't been any major changes in the competitive landscape.

Anywhere. So -- and on your second question on kind of the lower volatility environment, I think the second quarter demonstrated that the investments we've done in the last few years on kind of diversifying but also increasing the footprint, focusing on the right parts of the ETP ecosystem being kind of ESG-related, fixed income related and also crypto, where the growth is, also kind of focusing on being a kind of incremental part of the growth in ETP, not only kind of historically but also going forward in addition to the investments we've done in kind of improving pricing, but also diversification into other asset classes started to pay off. So also there, the purpose of those investments is to also structurally grow our NTI into more asset classes, more products, broadening the kind of the investor base we are connected to in every region. It's hard to say whether this is a normal quarter, but I think it's just a confirmation of the focus and the investments we've been doing in the last few years. I mean this is the focus there or...

The fixed index obviously describes the implied volatility for the S&P Index, and we're trading many more asset class and different products, so it has been a standard quarter. I think if you look at all the different asset classes, probably it's difficult to say that, if you look, for instance, on the crypto side, on the fixed income side. And so we look at more indicators for that. Equity was relatively quiet, but fixed income is even more quiet and compensated a bit on the crypto and it was pretty active mostly in May as well with some downtick, so it's a mix.

And maybe as a short follow-up on that, and I think the question has been asked in previous calls as well, so apologies for reasking that. But on crypto, any plans to maybe provide some additional color or guidance on that financially, I mean?

No. As the probably answer is going to be the same in -- for the previous questions that we don't disclose NTI or contribution to NTI per asset classes yet.

Yes, that's clear. No problem.

The next question comes from the line of Michael Roeg from Degroof Petercam.

Yes. I have a couple of questions on China, where you filed for approval to trade. How long does such a filing generally last? Is it a couple of months? Or could you perhaps take a year before you can start trading? Then second, once approved, how much of that Chinese market is then addressable for you? Is it all of it or only parts? And then finally, is revenue captured there roughly comparable to that of APAC?

Thanks for the question. So the Q3 registration was filed kind of a couple of weeks ago. We expect an answer reasonably soon, that this will allow us to kind of start trading some of the exchanges remotely. But it is expected that we need to follow up probably with more onshore presence down the road to really cover kind of all exchanges in China Mainland. So this is a very important first step towards trading on China onshore markets. So it's hard to say anything about kind of the revenue capture that's available for us. But we do see that it is a very significant market, it's a high-growth market, and also they're teaming up with kind of other market's participants. This should be a very nice growth opportunity.

Okay. So then since you'll be starting remotely, is it fair to assume that you can only address a certain part of the market? And once you have an office there, all of it could be open to you?

Yes.

Okay. Well, considering an onshore presence now, a nasty question. How will you protect your IP?

Well, we trade kind of many asset classes in many countries, right? So we take kind of security in the cybersecurity very serious. So we have the ability to kind of separate kind of entry points to any market from kind of the core and kind of isolated. So we kind of -- China is not the only market which might have a perceived higher level of kind of security, so that's something we have been dealing with and also we'll deal with going forward.

Okay. Clear. Well, and then I also have a question on crypto. And I think in previous calls, you didn't quantify it, of course, but you -- I think it was also downplayed as by suggesting that it's contributing but it's not huge within the NTI as a whole. However, my perception is that crypto in general is volatile, but in Q2, it was even more volatile than usual. So having said that, it was probably relatively modest in your NTI in Q1 and also in Q2. But quarter-on-quarter, was there quite a good improvement because of that increased volatility? Or would that also be too much for you to disclose?

That would be a bit too much detail. But what we can say on the focus it perceives is that this market is developing pretty rapidly, also impacting the entire financial ecosystem. And that's also a reason that we are active and present and following everything that's happening because it will change some of the process in the financial world. So we have a relatively strong team monitoring this because we expect this to have a lot of impact going forward. But we're not going to [indiscernible] with the NTI growth here.

Okay. Well, too bad on that. And then given those huge swings that we've seen in the past few weeks and months, that hasn't resulted in any kind of inconsistent trades or losses or the model is working fine in spite of bitcoin halving in a couple of weeks?

You mean 30% down on a day? No?

Yes, yes, yes. You know that is not all of a sudden leading to mistrade or your parts and now everything is working fine. Your model is indeed able to digest all of that?

We didn't have a loss on that day. The exchanges obviously are not that mature. So the trade capture and the stability of the platform is slightly less than regular exchanges, so this is something we have to deal with. But on our positioning and risk side, we have not encountered any problems.

Okay. Good. That's reassuring. That's it from my side.

The next question comes from the line of Lotte Timmermans calling from ABN AMRO ODDO BHF.

One question left from my side. On U.S. revenue capture, it was a bit light, especially compared to last quarter. And now you profited from some good fixed income flows last quarter, also supported by strong creation and redemption of 50. What share would have been relating to this activity in Q1? And could you say anything about potential pricing pressure or market share going forward in the U.S.?

Yes. So indeed, the lower exit in the fixed income play a role here, but it's not the only factor in the market. If you look at the equity side, it's broadly applied it into an international segment where we do really well. And the KPIs look in line with what we want, maybe a bit higher and with the domestic side, where they're slightly behind, so we're working on that as well. And in that area, there's a lot of volume. So the impact, for instance, the market share metric, if you would look at that one, call it, isolated. So it is a combination of the way that behavior of the market is versus our strategies. So it's a bit above on the lower activity on fixed income and a slightly more challenging environment on the domestic side, which is traditionally not our strongest point. But on the international side, we're doing pretty well. So I think it's looking good still. We wanted to be slightly better. So I think it's slightly below our expectations. Yes, hopefully, next quarter, we can update that is back on line again because there is definitely growth still visible on the longer-term trend.

So not any structural issues or pricing pressure there, just market-related slowing down of the market and large disruptions?

Yes.

The next question comes from the line of Martin Price calling from Jefferies.

I've got 2, if I may. The first one is just on capital. I was just wondering if you could provide some quantification of how much lower the new capital requirements are relative to the old regime perhaps assuming the trading book unchanged. And are you hopeful of much further capital relief as a result of the discussions that you're having currently with the DNB? And secondly, just on China, would establishing an onshore presence result in any noteworthy uptick in capital needs or investment requirements perhaps relative to your existing cost guidance?

On the capital, as the new IFR regulation is relatively new, so we're still kind of finalizing some kind of nitty-gritty details with the regulators. So kind of both of us want to start with a conservative approach. And so hopefully, and we are kind of confident as always, but there are opportunities to kind of get it more kind of proportionate for also the market risk we actually take and have on our balance sheet. So I think also historically, we were expecting and also kind of the new regulation was aimed to have more kind of proportion of capital requirements. So having capital requirements which are reasonably in line, yes, it's kind of -- I think it's going to be more a bit more sophisticated. So we are confident we can lower it. So it is in line, and it kind of differs kind of with the positions, but it's -- there is no big swing. So think about kind of 5%, 10% range of the old capital requirements. And on your -- the China question, it's kind of relatively similar to any other office we will open, whether it's U.K. or a bigger trading setup like Hong Kong or New York. But a big part of the infrastructure is already built, so all the trading applications. So opening a new office is predominantly about kind of a slight increase in kind of fixed costs like rent, probably some connectivity from a data perspective but no big kind of capital or cost changes in the foreseeable future.

That's very helpful.

[Operator Instructions] The next question comes from the line of Michael Werner calling from UBS.

Just 2 questions from me. One, on the tax rate, I think the tax rate went up a bit in Q2 versus what we've seen over the past couple of quarters. I was just wondering if you can explain what was going on there. And then second, with regards to Flow Traders being the #1 market share leader in crypto ETFs, I was wondering if there is a magnitude in terms of that market share that you could provide.

Thanks for the question. So on the tax rate, that has -- this has mainly to do with the tax treatment of equity or share compensation for our -- for the employees, which is, to a certain degree, not tax deductible in -- especially in the Netherlands. So that's the reason for the slight uptick in Q2. We don't expect long term any changes there. So the guidance of kind of an effective tax rate of 20% remains in place especially kind of the longer term. The second question on the magnitude of the market share, I think...

So most of the ETPs are listed in Europe at the moment. And the rest of the world is slowly seeing more listings coming. So for instance, in the U.S., not yet, we have some other plans, so we're focusing on the true ETPs here, but it's mostly Europe. So we're -- on the whole of Europe, we have market shares on-exchange around 40% and off-exchange 20 high to 30%. And for the crypto, it's slightly higher than that, but there is not a huge number of things. It's a bit more variable because of the low number of listings, but you could say between 35 and 45 more or less.

Very helpful.

Thank you. We have no further questions coming through on the phone lines at this time, so I'd like to hand the call back over to your host. Thank you.

Thank you, operator. I'd like to thank the analysts for participating in today's call. Please note that we will host our next analyst call and when we release our fourth quarter and full year 2021 results early in 2022. Details for this call and the time of this call will follow in due course. Our third quarter trading update is scheduled to be released on the 28th of October 2021. This now ends the call. Thanks again, everybody, and have a good day.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines. Hosts, please stay connected.