Gielda Papierów Wartosciowych w Warszawie S.A. ($GPW)

Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Warsaw Stock Exchange Q1 2026 Results Call. Thank you for joining us today. Let me introduce our today's speakers. We have with us the CEO of Warsaw Stock Exchange, Mr. Tomasz Bardzilowski; the CFO; Mr. Marcin Rulnicki; and the CEO of the subsidiary, the Polish Power Exchange, Mr. Piotr Listwon. We have planned a 20, 30-minute presentation for you followed by a Q&A session. Now without further ado, let me pass the floor to Tomasz.

Thank you, Lukasz. Welcome, everybody on our first quarter earnings call. First of all, it was a record quarter for the Exchange. We recorded a record high revenues of PLN 169 million, which is up 27.5% year-on-year on the back of a very strong turnover growth. The turnover in cash equities rose by 42% year-on-year in the first quarter, and this was driving our revenues from financial markets, which grew 34% on a year-on-year basis. We also noted and recorded very strong revenue growth in Commodity segment, 7% year-on-year to over PLN 50 million in revenues. In terms of operating costs, our operating costs rose almost 12% year-on-year. However, our cost income fell to the lowest levels in 4 years, below 58%, over 800 basis points lower than a year ago. As a result of operating leverage, our earnings went up significantly on EBITDA level, up 42% and on net profit level, 38% up on a year-on-year basis to almost PLN 70 million. In April, we have, as a Board, recommended to our shareholders a record high dividend of PLN 3.40 per share, which represents almost 8% growth over the previously paid dividend. Key developments in the first quarter. First of all, we are very happy to see an active market in terms of transactions. Even despite high volatility, we had 6 [ debits ] on the main market and the total value of the primary follow-on deals year-to-date was over PLN 4 billion. We also had 4 new listings on the NewConnect market with a total deal value of PLN 130 million, a quite active bond market. The number of new listings on the Catalyst market was 126 nontreasury bonds and total value of new listings of almost PLN 12 billion. Also, we had 13 new ETFs year-to-date and the turnover of ETFs more than -- went up by almost 200%. In terms of strategic initiatives, we're focused on activities and at attracting both new issuers like GPW IPO Academy and also investors, more focus still much -- lots of focus on the NewConnect market, and we had a NewConnect Focus Day Con for us, but also we expelled 20 companies from the NewConnect market for not being compliant with our reporting obligations. In terms of regulatory works, we cooperated with several other exchanges in the CEE region and presented a joint position paper on investment union. However, one of the biggest events on the -- so far this year was our 35th anniversary. We had an event on the 16th of April this year, and this was under the -- the main statement was from Transformation to Innovation. The Stock Exchange 35 years ago was a symbol in Poland of switching from a communist to a free market economy. Now we want the Warsaw Stock Exchange to be a symbol of innovative economy of financing of innovative companies. We also point out that last 3 years were one of the best periods in the history of the Exchange. In this period, the market cap of domestic companies went up 2x to PLN 1.2 trillion and average daily turnover went up by more than 2x to PLN 2.6 billion. Going back to the statistics of the past quarter. As I said, very impressive revenue growth, internal growth of 42%. And in terms of turnover growth, we've been one of the most active Exchange in Europe. In terms of turnover velocity, we are still one of the top Exchanges in Europe just after Deutsche Börse and Athens Stock Exchange. A very period in terms of ECM transactions, 6 new companies on the main market with an IPO of Rex Concepts, it's a restaurant company, which raised almost PLN 500 million on the Exchange in new capital. Also the 2 other compounds, which made its IPO and debut in the first quarter, they already conducted and executed successfully follow-on offerings. Here, I'm speaking about Niewiadow, a defense company; and Quantum Creotech, which is the first company in Europe listed on the European Exchanges from Quantum computing sector. Also quite strong SPO market and ABB market, as I said, in total over PLN 4 billion in the transaction values when we hope to see this activity to stay at similar level or even be stronger in following quarters once the volatility will slightly decline in the market. Strong activity also in the nontreasury bond market Catalyst with the new listings and the total value of listings on the [indiscernible] market went up by almost 20% year-on-year to over PLN 160 billion. On the ETF market, because ETFs, we continue to say that to broadening ETF of our income is one of our key priorities for this year. We have the assets of ETFs listed on Exchange increased by 30% in the first quarter to PLN 2.8 billion. We have now 3 new ETFs, and we hope to have around 50 ETFs by end of this year. And let me now pass to Marcin to guide you through our financials.

Thank you, Tomasz. Hello, everyone. In the next few slides, I'll try to explain details of our financial performance in Q1 at '26, starting with the summary of our P&L. So as Tomasz already mentioned, we had a record high revenue with PLN 169 million in sales in the first quarter. And it was driven by both the financial market and the commodity market. In the financial market, it was obviously due to high revenue in cash equities, but also a very good quarter for Armenian Stock Exchange, and also in sales of market data, we made a big progress year-on-year. But also in the commodity market, we had a very solid quarter, more than 17% up year-on-year. And this is basically in all business lines like trading on energy and gas as well as transaction settlements, all these activities went up compared to the first 3 quarters of 2025. Yes, in the operating cost, we had almost 12% increase. That's explained in a few separate slides in a second. So let me not go into details here. But our cost income ratio was below 58%. So it was at a super low level, the lowest since 4 years as far as I can remember. Very good operating performance, operating profit over PLN 70 million, EBITDA almost PLN 78 million, and net profit at the level of almost PLN 70 million. So it was a very, very good quarter for the Warsaw Stock Exchange Group. In the structure of our revenues, as small increase in the financial market-related revenues. It went up to almost 68% in the overall revenues of the group. Of course, thanks to -- mainly thanks to very high turnover in the cash equities and related revenue. Commodity markets stands for 30% in the first quarter, so slightly down compared to Q4 '25. Looking at the slide, we usually also comment revenue, which is not related to trading. And in Q1 '26, the share of this revenue was slightly lower than in the previous, it went down from 34.2% to 31.8%. It was obviously not because of declining revenue, but because of the revenue growing slower, yes? So the revenue related to trading went up almost 29% year-on-year, whereas the revenue nonrelated or related -- non-trading-related revenue went up almost 25%. So I would say slower, but not small. Looking at the trading-related revenue and per class of assets, we can see that cash equity still dominate here, and they represent like PLN 63 million out of PLN 76 million total trading-related revenue after the growth of 40%. And this is obviously following the record high turnover on cash equities in the -- on Warsaw Stock Exchange, it was almost PLN 158 billion in Q1. But also on other classes of assets, we see increases. We see higher revenue from derivatives. We see higher revenue from that. And here, both treasury bonds, both Poland and Catalyst markets noticed much higher revenue than the year before. Let's move on. Looking at other business lines within Financial Markets segment, we see a very solid, very good growth in the information services, selling data, more than 15% up year-on-year, more than PLN 18 million in revenues in Q1 only. And this is a very fundamental growth, thanks to new clients for both real-time data and processed data. We have seen this growth for a few quarters now. Stable revenues from listing but a very, very good growth in Armenia Stock Exchange. As you can see, both in deposit-related activities, this is like the dark blue part of the bar as well as exchange activities. In the deposit-related activities, the growth comes mainly from revision of fees for services that took place in July last year. So Q1 and Q2 will still benefit from lower base. And in exchange activities, the growth comes from high activity of market participants. This is mainly related to new issues of corporate bonds. We had like 30 of them during Q1. Maybe one more thing to mention here about depository activity in Armenia. In Q1, in January and February, we've had a number of quite significant nonrecurring transactions. And they elevated this revenue to the level of PLN 11.3 million. I would say that recurring revenue from Armenia depository after the revision of rates should be between PLN 9 million and PLN 9.5 million per quarter. So Q1 is, I would say, higher than this, let's say, recurring revenue level we should be expecting in the coming quarters. Let's move on. Piotr, if you could comment on commodity market revenue, please?

Sure. Let me present the revenues from the commodity markets. We have a very good first quarter behind us in which the revenues from trading on the commodity markets amounted to over PLN 28 million, which is over 19% increase year-on-year. The gas market continue in first quarter, it's good streak from 2025. And the record total turnover year-on-year increased by almost 55% and the revenues by almost 58%. It is worth mentioning that January and February were the months with the highest turnover on the spot gas market in the history of Polish Power Exchange. We also achieved good revenues on the electricity market, which grew by almost 28% year-on-year, mainly due to the foreign market whose volumes increased by over 59%. Higher contracting on the forward market can be seen from the lower prices of emission allowances during this period. The third place in the volume goes to the fees from the market participants. We've increased over 22% year-on-year and a level of PLN 9 million, mainly resulting from the -- our commodity clearing house fees for the management of collaterals contributed to the settlement guarantee system. The property rights market fell below our expectation with a 25% decrease in revenue year-on-year. On the one hand, this may be related to the smaller number of certificates issued and imported into the -- our registry and change in the strategy of entities obliged to purchase and redeem certificates as a result of the level of the redemption obligation that was established for 3 years now. And on the other hand, so far, unrealized turnover may be appear later in this year, we hope. Next slide, please. Similarly to trading, the clearing and segment in first quarter recorded mainly due to increased volumes on the natural gas market, an increase in revenues by 27%, reaching the level of PLN 16.7 million. In registers, we recorded an increase in revenues in the service of guarantees of origin by 12% year-on-year, while similarly to trading in property rights revenues in registers fell by more than 23% year-on-year.

Okay. Thank you very much, Piotr. And now coming back to consolidated numbers, let's have a look at the operating expenses. In Q1 '26, we had like PLN 97 million of OpEx, and it grew almost 12% compared to the previous year. The drivers were mainly the same as in previous quarters. So the main component of our operating expenses are personnel costs, and they grew 14.2% for the reasons we already explained in the previous conferences. So we have a high number of full-time employees. This is related mainly to Warsaw Stock Exchange and the IT teams, which we had to strengthen during last year. But also in the Armenian Stock Exchange or mainly the Armenia Depository, we have a number of new employees, and this is related to new services and new fees that were approved by the Central Bank of Armenia, also under condition that the company will invest part of the additional revenues into strengthening the team and IT infrastructure. So this translated to higher costs, obviously. And one more component of personnel costs, which contributed to this difference were provisions for variable remuneration because of record high results of Q1, we have higher provision for variable remuneration basically in all companies of Warsaw Stock Exchange Group, which additionally contributed to higher personnel expenses. The other significant component of our costs are external services. And in here, we see significant growth mainly in those costs related to IT. And this is a mixture of 2 different kinds of costs. So one group are costs related to our significant projects that are in progress, and of course, we cannot capitalize part of them, but part of them land in OpEx. And here, I mean both WATS, but also the new accounting system, new building system, a number of initiatives that we have in our IT area. And also a number of the new licenses or new elements of our IT infrastructure, which is sold in the model of software as a service. And this is, as you know, replacing the traditional CapEx and amortization model of sales and many providers of new services in this software as a service model. What is also worth commenting here is lower depreciation and amortization costs. It went down more than 13%, like PLN 1.1 million. And this is due to the write-offs we had in the noncore components at the end of the year. We wrote off intangible assets in these components, they are not amortized and more. And also, our UTP license was fully amortized in Q4 last year. So this cost also disappeared from our P&L. Let's move on. Okay. In this slide, we are trying to analyze the underlying operating expenses increase. And I'm not trying to make a point here that those costs, which we are excluding from the analysis are kind of nonrecurring or unusual. I'm rather saying here that they are related to a very dynamic growth of business, which was not included in our original plans. Yes, as you know, in our strategic KPIs, we assume the growth of revenue between 6% and 8% annually, and the accompanying growth of operating expenses at the level of 4% to 6%. So we are saying, okay, we are much higher than 4% to 6%, but it is also related to a very dynamic growth in business. And we identified 2 components of this, of course, which are related to this growth. One is variable compensation. This is what I mentioned. We have record high results in the whole group, and our provisions are relatively higher for variable remuneration of our employees. And also in Armenia Stock Exchange, we had like over 130% growth in revenues, and we have additional operating expenses that are associated with this external revenue that exceeds our long-term expectations. Working the other way our savings we are making in noncore companies. They are operating expenses declined by PLN 800,000 in Q1 year-on-year. So excluding these 3, we see the growth on operating expenses of less than PLN 5 million. It's approximately 5.7%, and it's much closer to our long-term target. Speaking about noncore projects, we are still in the process of minimizing their negative impact on our results. So we are either looking for investors or liquidating the companies or reducing their operating costs. So without, let's say, going into details here, I would like to emphasize that this is still our priority. And we hope that we will see gradual result of our efforts here. And I think that from Q3 this year, it will be more visible in our P&L. A few words about capital expenditures. When you look at Q1 '26, we ended up with PLN 14.3 million investment. It looks really low compared to previous quarters and especially compared to Q1 of 2025. But please keep in mind that in 2025, we had a shift of almost or around PLN 10 million from Q4 to Q1. So we made a number of orders and even received deliveries in Q4 '24, but we paid for these deliveries only in the first 3 months of 2025, which, let's say, elevated the value of investments in -- especially in those, let's say, tangible equipment pieces in Q1 '25, and that's why this data is not quite comparable to what we see for Q1 '26. But anyway, this is also a result of postponing, delaying certain planned investments. So I would say that overall CapEx plan for 2026 will be also on a quite high level comparable to 2025, I think, and we will be catching up in the coming quarters. Speaking about CapEx, maybe there is one more thing worth mentioning here. We revised the budget of our WATS system. The original budget that was assumed by the management in September 2024 was PLN 152.9 million because we delayed the go-live date and prolonged the period of working on the system, and now the go-live date is 6th of July. We revised the budget and we assume that total investments and expenses related to this project at the go-live date will be PLN 164.5 million accumulated. In liquidity, maybe one thing to comment here is that we are used to seeing our operating flows to EBITDA ratio at around 90%. You can see that for 12 months ending in March, it's closer to 82%. So it seems low especially looking at the growth rate of the operating profit. And we were investigating what happened here. And the explanation is quite easy and technical. I mean because of the change of the accounting system in Warsaw Stock Exchange and 3 subsidiaries, we had some technical issues with monitoring overdue receivables. And we lost some automatic procedures that we had in our previous system for, let's say, collecting these receivables. So at the end of March, we had an unusually high value of overdue receivables, but we are catching up with it, and we are adjusting the system to be more, let's say, operational. And right now, we are at the levels comparable to last year. So I would say it was temporary and technical, but translated to a slightly worse cash flow from operating activities, and you would expect looking at the operating profit dynamics. Anyway, we are very safe in terms of liquidity. Our net cash at the end of March was PLN 453 million. So it gives us a very good starting point for discussing the dividend. And let's move to the next slide where we summarize our proposal of the dividend payment. So in April, the management of Warsaw Stock Exchange recommend the payment of PLN 142.7 million from 2025 net profit. It translates to PLN 3.4 per share, 8% higher than last year. The payout ratio is 72% of consolidated net profit for 2025, and the dividend yield is 4.4%. The management proposed the dividend date, 23rd July and the payment date on August the 6th. Of course, this is a proposal. It was reviewed by the Supervisory Board and approved, but the final word is with the shareholders' meeting, which will take place end of June. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Marcin. Let me now share with you our guidance. But before that, a few words about our most strategic project, which is the rollout of the proprietary trading system, WATS. At the end of April, the Board together with the Exchange members, we have confirmed the new timetable for the rollout of the system, including the 3 dress rehearsals and then subject to successful dress rehearsals, and also the full readiness of GPW and also all trading members. We have set up the migration date, which is 4th to 5th July, and then go-live date was set at 6th July. We have already conducted the first dress rehearsals. We are quite satisfied with the result. Almost all brokers took part in the era. Some of those who didn't take part, they requested for them to have a special tests the coming week. And we tested the capacity of the system. We tested the transfer to the system and overall are quite happy with the results. As I said, there's still a few areas for further improvements, especially in the applications around the WATS, which we need to integrate with WATS, but we will be working on them and fixing them before the next dress rehearsal, which will take place on the 6th and the 7th of June. And just to really underline that in terms of WATS, the key priority for us is the safe rollout, safe migration. If we will not be 100% ready, sure that we can have a safe rollout, we will reconsider the timetable. In term guidance for the coming months and quarters. In terms of cash equity trading, we've seen some lower volume growth in April, May compared to the first quarter, but still at solid double-digit levels, 15% in April and 7% in May, and this is mainly due to the high base effect, not to the fact that the volumes are lower right now. In terms of commodity market, let me perhaps ask Piotr to just give some update about the trends here, especially as we see some declines in the turnover, both in gas and electricity.

Yes, sure. I would just explain in brief the reason of the little smaller volumes that we expected to be bigger. So currently, volumes on the gas and electricity markets are lower than those recorded last year as I mentioned before, we had a record high volumes in April and May last year, especially on the gas market. In relation -- related to the gas, we are dealing with the very high fluctuation of the gas prices in the European gas hubs, including Poland, resulting from the situation in the Middle East and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. In the recent weeks, we have observed a trend of increasing gas indexes, which translates into a lower level of activity of our participants on demand on the demand side that are not willing to pay too much for the gas mostly used for the electricity production and industry processes. And on the electricity market, we observed a decrease in trading volume year-on-year, mainly due to the rising CO2 emission allowances prices that have direct impact on the duration of the energy sales on the forward market. But we expect the volumes to recover in both markets in the near future. The first symptoms of the recovery can be seen in the last sessions of the gas market. So we are expecting that in the near future the volumes shouldn't be coming back to the Exchange.

Thank you, Piotr. On operating costs in the following quarters, we continue to anticipate a high OpEx level mainly due to the expected sharp increase in depreciation after the launch of WATS and the recognition of previously capitalized costs in the P&L. Also, we would, following the increase, sharp increase in revenues in AMX, there will be some still increase in operating costs going forward in our Armenia subsidiary. On the other hand, we hope that some of these increases will be offset by further cost reduction we see at the level of noncore subsidiaries. In terms of CapEx, we expect to see increasing CapEx in the second -- especially in the second quarter, mainly due to the intensification of works on implementation and all of WATS, and also further investments in cyber security and development of digital tools also looking also related to AI. It was worth mentioning that there are some significant initiatives here in Poland related to capital market development, one that we are really waiting for R&D introduction of special investment accounts, OKI, tax efficient without a capital gain tax and [indiscernible] law on OKI has been adopted by the government on 5th of May, and the launch is planned on 1st of January next year. We continue to believe that the new investment account which will enable retail investors to invest up to PLN 100,000 free of capital gain tax in shares and capital market instruments, this could be a real game changer in terms of retail flows on the Exchange. Also, there is a bill on -- new bill ETFs uses regime. The draft law has been passed on 20th of April. And we believe that this law will come into force by the end of this year, enabling local Polish ETF providers to issue at least the ETFs on the foreign markets, usage regime also in Poland on usage regime, which will enable also an easier distribution, especially in the banking networks. Okay. And overall, what we want to say is something that we continue to repeat on many occasions is that we continue to see a huge upside, long-term upside in the development of Polish Capital Market, the size of the market compared to economy, up 27% in new count domestic market cap to the GP is significantly lower than other European markets and same thing, you can't be lower than the needs of Polish economy. So we believe that the market will continue to grow, and we will remain a key beneficiary of this growth going forward.

Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation, and let us move to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] I see a raised hand from the -- Miguel Dias from Wood & Company.

Okay, okay. I guess you've introduced me already. But my name is Miguel, and I'm with Wood & Co. So I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, congratulations for, again, a strong set of results, impressive. In terms of the quarter, like for information services came in higher than I was expecting. Like is this broadly the new run rate for the rest of the year, would you say? And also what drove the increase?

Miguel, I think that in this business, basically the growth comes from gaining new customers for the data. So it's very organic, I would say. And I think that we don't have so many cases of customers resigning from the service. So I think the growth is pretty, let's say -- or the level that we reached is pretty sustainable. We cannot guarantee that the growth rate will remain the same, but we have observed a solid growth for many quarters now. But I believe that we don't see declines on selling data-related revenue. So I would say I believe that staying there and adding a bit to this number is a safe, a pretty safe assumption. I'm not sure if there was any one-off in Q1 '26, not to my knowledge.

Okay. So if I understood correctly, we could expect a small quarter-on-quarter increase moving forward, yes?

This is what we have observed for quite a long time now, and I hope we can maintain it. But of course, the rate of this growth is hard to predict.

And maybe if you could just [indiscernible]. If you could just give some color on the new customers, like who is buying the data or who is interested in the data, if you could disclose?

I don't have these details off the top of my head, okay? So let me check if we can disclose anything specific here and we can get back to you.

Appreciate it. On other fees paid by market participants in the commodities, this is also particularly strong. So if you could please provide more color on these, like what drove the good print? And also, if we can view this level as the new run rate for 2026?

Yes, sure. There are 2 main drivers. Of course, there are other fees that are like the customer annual fees that we onboard some new clients. So they paid the annual fees. So it's also paid in the first quarter. But additionally, as I mentioned, this is the increase caused by the -- our commodity clearing house fees. Last year, we changed the way how we collect collaterals from our clients, our participants. And we thought that this change may cause the situation that our customers will withdraw some of the collaterals because we made it more efficient for the clients. But they did not. So even more, they put more quadrants more than even we expect them to put from the spot market. So this is the fees, the channel fees that came from the -- managing the security system. And also, the third driver is our daughter company InfoEngine, which collects more clients and volumes coming from the operation between the traders and the physical delivery in TSO, so I mean the transmission system operator we are gaining more clients and also revenues from this area.

Okay. Got it. And you would consider this level to be sustainable moving forward, yes? So I can extrapolate these as a run rate for the rest of 2026.

Of course, it depends. The contrast comes with the spot and the forward market. So depending what are the differences in the segment prices. So it's hard to predict those numbers. However, because I mentioned that fluctuation of the gas market is pretty high. So it is hard to predict. But in case of the InfoEngine customers, our production are just the solid ones that the volumes should be staying at a similar level.

All right. All right. Understood. Okay. Now on costs, probably a bit more detail is needed here. Like can you please provide a quarterly cost bridge for the rest of 2026, specifically like quantifying the WATS depreciation and amortization, like what's related to OpEx, the Armenia Exchange costs. And also, how much of these cost increase that you are expecting can be offset by the gains or the efficiency gains or cost savings in noncore parts of the business?

Okay. Let me take this one. Let's start with the amortization, depreciation of WATS. I would say that the accumulated investments, also the value of the asset when we go-live should be around PLN 140 million, PLN 145 million. Yes, because out of this PLN 165 million budget, a part was operating expenses, I think from PLN 20 million, roughly calculating. And I think that the amortization period should be between 10 and 15 years, okay? We are still analyzing what the useful -- or the expected useful life should be, but we have many cases showing that exceeding 10 years in the core system of the stock exchange is nothing unusual and also our adventure with UTP confirms this approach. So I would say PLN 140 million, PLN 145 million accumulated investment depreciated over 10 to 15 years, probably more than 10, I'm not sure if 15, maybe something in between. In terms of operating expenses, when we go live, we avoid giving specific guidelines -- guidance here, but let's say that our, let's say, quarterly investments are around PLN 9 million, yes? So it's like PLN 3 million per month. I would say it will consist of, let's say, 3 parts, yes. So what we see in the investment right now will be split into 3 parts. So one part will remain in CapEx, and it will be the effort of the team to develop new versions of WATS and expand the system to other markets and other companies in the group. The other third part will land in OpEx, and it will be related with maintaining the system, fixing the box basically like and let's say, maintenance needed by the system, but already operational, so not to be capitalized. And then the third part is probably something we will be able to resign from. And here, we have a number of also contracts with the subcontractors and companies supporting us in this project. So I believe at least part of them we will be able to depart. In terms of Armenia and the cost there, I think they still will need a little bit more investments in the team and IT infrastructure. But I would say that meeting this 65% cost/income ratio on new services that they introduced from July last year shouldn't be a problem for that, okay? So I hope it explains more or less the profitability level on additional services that you would like to know. And last but not least, you're asking about the offset from noncore companies. Quarterly cost of DAI and 2 smaller components are around PLN 1 million. And I think this, we can reduce basically to 0 from Q3. And for the logistics company, their costs are significantly higher, but we are in the process of looking for an investor, okay? So it's hard to say if we can find one and how long it will take. But here, the possibilities are, let's say, bigger but the time can be locked.

All right. Got it. Understand. So based on the first quarter '26 OpEx run rate and we expected WATS and the administration cost step-up, I mean it looks rather challenging to stay within the previously 4% to 6% OpEx growth guidance that you had during the strategic updates, right? So is this still a realistic range for 2026? Or should we assume a higher full year OpEx growth rate for 2026? And if so, how much would the step up be?

Yes. I think it will be a challenging year in terms of operating expenses. But 4% to 6% is something that we would like to achieve in the long run and also to achieve with assumed 6% to 8% growth in revenues, okay? So I believe that, yes, in 2026, it will be challenging, considering all this, what you mentioned. But I think in the long run, it is possible. And also, we are looking for possibilities to offset the growth, which will come from WATS. However, 2026 will be challenging also because of one more reason that we still need to maintain the infrastructure to run 2 systems in parallel, yes. And these costs will stay at least until the end of 2026, maybe a bit longer. But I hope that focusing on one system and resigning from one, let's say, infrastructure, data centers and all the related infrastructure will also result in some savings, but probably in 2027 at the earliest.

But out here that, obviously, there will be some cost capitalization. On the other hand, we will try to offset this with some reduction in other areas. But what's most important for us, WATS will enable us to attract new clients, to attract new members, to develop new products and to increase our revenue base. As we have finished on many occasion right now, we're operating at full capacity with the current system. We cannot really attract new clients. And we cannot really implement new products. So that's really an additional opportunity and a huge opportunity for us in terms of organic revenue growth, which I believe, and I'm convinced that will, in longer term, offset higher costs, which we will see in the P&L from launching the system.

Sure, sure. We appreciate it. But when you talked to the strategy, I mean, costs are the one thing that you can control, right? But okay. Just finally on 2027, is this range 4% to 6% still in play? Or you also are seeing maybe a possibility to overshoot this range?

Yes. Well, we don't really comment right now on the level of 2027 costs are apart from what we have in our strategy published last year. But as Marcin said, that we are clearly able to -- and will be seeking to offset and compensate for any related cost increase with -- in other areas, including noncore. And also, as also we said right now, we are double paying for various costs related to IT. We are paying for 2 data centers, and there's a number of such costs that we may eliminate going forward.

Okay, okay. Great. I mean I'll just ask one more question and then I'll leave space for other participants to ask questions. I had some more on what, but we can take it off-line. So the last question would be, if you are clearly beating the guidance on the top line, but you are missing on OpEx. Why don't you update the guidance? Because I mean, I would say that relying on the guidance at this point, it's a rather poor way of forecasting the business, right? So what is keeping you from updating the guidance?

So basically, this is where our -- what you said, Miguel, that what you refer to our long-term strategy aspirations that we have presented in our strategy update 2025, 2027. Next year, we will work on the new strategy, and we will announce that towards end of the next year. And then I believe right now, what we see is the second tailwind from higher revenues. So we will continue to compare ourselves versus the strategic KPIs, especially related to costs for this 3-year strategy. And for the new strategy, we'll work on that next year.

We have another hand raised, which is the one-off [ Ronald Conran. ] It's great to see you with us.

Thank you very much. My name is [ Ron, ] I work for a private hedge fund. First of all, congratulations on a spectacular quarter. Starting with that, how do you explain such a sharp increase in equity trading? Does it come from institutional, private investor or banks? Where did it come from?

First of all, part of it is basically a higher level of indices. Year-to-date, we are up 70%. Last year, the market was up 40%. So when you take the last 12 months, probably you will end in the, I think, high 30s. And we see some more activity in terms of some foreign vessels also in terms of retail investors. There's a bit more activity there. We also were able to gain one [ algo ] client in the first quarter, which added a bit of probably 2 percentage points to the overall growth.

Okay. Same question. There's no conference call without AI. So you mentioned increase in expenses, but in a lot of companies that are talking about they see how AI will reduce their expenses in the next few years. Do you also see it as something viable for you?

I think that what we want to achieve to be more efficient because we are starting with projects aimed at higher efficiency. The first area -- second area is to -- we are a factory of data, and these are our proprietary data, the prices and the market prices and all related to the Exchange. Right now, we are working on putting those data into format, which can be used by external entities, AI ready. And this is our big project with many people involved. So 2 main areas: one is efficiency; and second, being capable to capitalize from the data that we produce.

To be more precise, do you see any current goals in order to save money with AI? Or it's something you're still looking at and you do not have specific goals?

No, for the time being, we don't have any cost reduction goals related to AI.

Okay. And last question, if I may. Regarding increasing dividend, after such result in profits and the fact that you are highly cash positive, do you consider increasing the dividend?

In terms of the dividend policy, our dividend policy is between 60% to 80% of consolidated net profit. And what's important for us with the stated ambition to grow dividend year-by-year. So we want to keep dividend going up in the period when the earnings growth will be a bit less spectacular as what we have last year when we paid a dividend at the top end of this range, maybe even higher than the range as we did last year. But the overall principle is a dividend to gradually increase. Yes, we have high cash position on our balance sheet. It's over PLN 450 million, and there's even a bit more in the receivables. But we want to be also ready with any new investments, any new investment opportunities. So until those investment operated, these are not materialized. We most likely will continue to have some cash on our balance sheet.

Are there any further questions? This might be the last call. So take advantage of it. If there are no -- I don't see any further questions. So thank you once again for joining us, and I hope to see you all on our Q2 results conference in September. Just to mention, if you would like to contact us, reach out to the IR team. We Will be in London in mid-July, and I'm looking at all of the London-based shareholders and investors, [ Emmanuel, ] I see you on the guest list on the chat. So let us know if you would like to meet. And yes, that sums up what we had to say and goodbye, and see you, hopefully, in September.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, bye.

Thank you.