Nordnet AB (publ) ($SAVE)

Okay. Good morning, everyone. Welcome to the presentation of Nordnet's First Quarter of 2026. My name is Marcus Lindberg, and I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Nordnet. Joining me today is our CEO, Rasmus Jarborg; and our CFO, Lennart Kran. Rasmus and Lennart will present the results, and then we'll have the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] With that, I'll turn the call over to our CEO, Rasmus Jarborg. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Marcus, and good morning, everybody. Thanks for joining us. In the first quarter, we delivered a very strong performance. But before I get into the results, I want to take a moment for an important recognition. As this is my first quarter as CEO, I want to extend my sincere thanks to my predecessor, Lars-Ake Norling. Over his nearly 7-year tenure and our close partnership, we built a solid foundation here at Nordnet. And in most regards, the results we're reporting here today belong to him, and I'm honored to carry this momentum forward. Now turning to the quarter in itself. 2026 began with a high degree of optimism. Markets hit record highs and confidence across the Nordic region continued to build. However, as we often said, things rarely move in a straight line. As the quarter progressed, the macro environment started to weigh on sentiment. Volatility increased meaningfully, driven by concerns of AI-driven disruption in global tech sectors and more acutely, of course, the conflict in the Middle East. Against this backdrop, Nordnet's performance underscores the importance of a scaled digital-first franchise. While our customers are retail investors, they are increasingly sophisticated. Throughout the quarter, we saw them actively reposition their portfolios, moving between equities, ETFs and funds to navigate these shifts in markets. Our role is to be their trusted platform during these periods of uncertainty, and the engagement levels we saw this quarter suggest we're doing exactly that. Turning to Slide 2 now for the results highlights. The headline for this quarter and a major milestone for Nordnet is that we delivered a record adjusted profit before tax of SEK 1.042 billion. This is the first time in our history that we have crossed the SEK 1 billion threshold in a single quarter, reflecting the scalability of our platform. Let's look at some of the key drivers behind these results. And elevated uncertainty led clients to reposition portfolios, driving average trades per day to 302,000. Despite turbulent markets, our funds business maintained growth as customers leaned into long-term investment strategies. Net interest income is back on a growth trajectory now, supported by both rising rates and a higher deposit balance. We achieved our highest net savings and customer intake since the pandemic with SEK 28.8 billion in net savings. One full quarter after launching our new private banking framework in all 4 markets, PB net savings have hit a multiyear high. We continue to operate efficiently with the cost growth strictly in line with our full year targets. And when it comes to AI, we are elevating our digital experience with AI-powered insights, providing customers with personalized portfolio recaps and macro summaries directly in the app, while on the inside, our tech teams are increasingly agentic first when it comes to coding. Following my appointment as CEO, I promoted our product leaders to the Executive Committee, creating a new wealth management unit to reflect our ambitions within this important area. And finally, we recorded a 6-year high in deposit growth while maintaining a robust 4.5% leverage ratio in line with targets. On Slide 3 now, the financials tell a story of consistent execution. Customer, savings capital and trades were all up meaningfully year-over-year, leading to record revenues of nearly SEK 1 billion in the quarter, which with costs growing in line with guidance, meant a record profit before tax of over SEK 1 billion and an adjusted return on equity above 40%. This adds further ballast to our performance, reinforcing our ability to perform across market cycles. On Slide 4 now, you can see the velocity of our growth. We added over 77,500 new funded accounts this quarter, reaching an annualized customer growth of 13.2%, which, of course, is within our target band of 13% to 15% customer growth. Our new customer cohorts are younger and digital-native, and they are arriving with a skew towards fund-based wealth creation, which aligns perfectly with our long-term strategy. Net savings was a multiyear high at SEK 29 billion in the quarter, a savings ratio of 10%. Turning to Slide 5. Our top line growth is a direct function of our product velocity. We aren't just shipping features, we're solving for friction and democratizing professional-grade tools for the retail investor. This quarter, we launched technical analysis tools directly in our mobile app. We're putting high fidelity charting and complex indicators in our users' pockets and turning to have the same data visibility on the move as they do at a desk. We've deployed our AI-powered latest recap, which is a generative AI engine that cuts through the noise to deliver personalized news summaries tailored specifically to a user's unique holdings. We also rolled out algorithmic execution for our unique ETF monthly savings product, ensuring long-term savers get the same execution quality as professional traders. And underpinning all of this is a relentless engineering culture. We shipped 25 new versions of our award-winning app this quarter alone. This rapid iterative cycle allows us to stay ahead of the curve and respond to user feedback in near real time. Moving to Slide 6. Operating income has grown across all 3 of our diversified revenue streams, up 6% year-over-year. Transaction income was strong at SEK 730 million, fueled by volatility-driven flows. Fund-related income hit SEK 186 million and NII reached SEK 579 million, partially supported by that significant deposit recovery we saw towards the end of the quarter. Moving to Slide 7. This really shows the durability of our trading business. Even as we saw some normalization in cross-border activity, revenue per trade remains healthy at SEK 38.8 per trade. And we continue to see high engagement across all 4 Nordic markets but Norway stands out this quarter with a 60% year-on-year increase in traded value as customers took profit on investments in the energy sector. On Slide 8, our fund capital reached SEK 307 billion. More importantly, Nordnet-branded funds now represent 29% of that total. This expansion of our proprietary offering is a testament to our ability to capture a greater share of wallet. Each quarter, the proportion of customers who own a fund edges up a percentage point or 2, and this quarter is no exception, with 53% of Nordic customers now owning a fund. Slide 9 highlights our deposit growth, ending at SEK 97.2 billion at the end of the quarter. We saw record high net cash savings of SEK 26 billion this quarter alone. This led to a SEK 13 billion sequential increase in deposits from the end of quarter 4, which provides a robust liquidity base as we move into the second quarter, which, as you will recall, is a period usually benefiting from dividend season. To wrap up my section here on Slide 10 now, our NII turned to slight growth in the quarter at SEK 579 million after a couple of sequential quarters of declines. While the rate environment has been dynamic, consensus IBOR rates and our late quarter deposit growth positions us for further growth in 2026. I'll now hand over the call to my CFO, Lennart Kran, to walk through the expenses and capital position.

Thank you, Rasmus. And first of all, I would like to state that, yes, we continue to have this robust discipline over the cost where we see that we will meet the financial targets of 8%, excluding cost for Germany. If we look at the figures for the first quarter, it was SEK 439 million in cost. That is an increase of 8% but that also includes Germany. Excluding that, that's a little bit above 5% on -- in the quarter-to-quarter basis from last quarter to say. So -- and the cost for Germany was about SEK 20 million this quarter. As I said, we will meet the targets for 2026 of 8% increase of the cost, excluding Germany. And we can now go to the operating leverage. Because of this cost control, we also see that the revenue that we come into Nordnet all ends up into the profit. Seeing with the new liquidity, the higher interest rates, we see the NII expectation is coming up. And we also see that will also end up in the forward results. So we're looking forward to keeping this operating leverage forward as well. This also leads us up to the next slide regarding the capital situation, which is very, very strong, of course but less on the leverage ratio side this time as a consequence of the high deposit inflow of about SEK 13 billion for this year. So we ended up on 4.5% in leverage ratio, which is in line in the upper level of our targets, 4.0% to 4.5%. Still, this gives us a capacity of SEK 32 billion additional deposits before we reach the regulated limit of 3.5%. Also, this deposit is a perfect and very, very healthy liquidity situation, of course, so I don't have to comment on that even further. Regarding the capital structure, we have AT1 bond that has its first call in November, SEK 600 million. We're looking into how to solve that one, if we're going to replace it or if we're just going to buy it back or whatever. We have also submitted an application for further share buybacks. But with these deposits, we will look into how to act on those later on. But we need the flexibility, and that's why we do those applications. So great capital and liquidity situation going forward as well. Rasmus?

Thank you, Lennart. Back on Slide 14 now, we are reiterating our medium-term targets. As you know, we aim for 13% to 15% annual customer growth. And while growth in Q1 was at 12.1%, the customer intake in the quarter alone represented 13.2% growth on an annualized basis. Average savings capital is edging up towards our medium-term guidance of around SEK 0.5 million per user. And while our revenue margin is currently at 49 basis points, we do expect some normalization down towards our 45% -- sorry, 45 bps target as interest rates stabilize. And as Lennart said, we are managing costs within our 8% growth guidance for the full year. Turning to the last slide then to summarize. Nordnet is operating from a position of strength. We're winning market share. Our technology is scaling and our expansion into Germany is on track. Thank you.

Great. And let's start the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions] The first question comes from Patrik Brattelius at ABG.

Perfect. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Great. First off, I wanted to ask about NII. So you raised your guidance here by 19% in the quarter to SEK 2.8 billion. We all saw the underlying assumptions with unchanged volumes and you write out your forecast there on the appendix slide. But nevertheless, do you think this guidance is representative of what you truly believe the NII for the full year 2026 will add on? Or can you share any additional flavor of what you believe is more reasonable?

It's a good question, Patrik, and thank you for that. I think as we've said before, this is not guidance per se. This is a snapshot. So we're mechanically applying market consensus rates to the balances in the various currencies at quarter end. And you have to bear that in mind. So it's a purely mechanical calculation. I've already seen some analyst notes saying that, of course, the market is not going to read all of that into the forecast. So we'll see how that works out over the coming quarters. There are a couple of things to bear in mind here. We have seen sell-offs and customers moving to cash. So we're at a higher percentage cash to AUM than we have been for the last few years. But we're also entering into quarter 2, which, of course, is dividend season. And historically, we've also seen that benefit cash balances. Should we come into a risk-on environment where customers are then reentering the market, they will do so from existing cash balances. So that may change the numbers. And then, of course, IBOR rates are volatile, even though we have not yet seen central banks make any changes. So it's difficult to give you any sharper answer or more guidance than we already have in that snapshot. I think it frames what we expect to see in a pretty good way.

My next question is regarding Denmark and a peer to you, Avanza is entering into the country. So do you expect any material changes to the competitive dynamics? And should we anticipate an increased investment from your side in terms of marketing, pricing, product changes to defend your market-leading positions there?

I think it's too early to say any of that. I mean we saw the announcement as did everybody else. And of course, we welcome competition, and I'm happy to welcome Avanza into our strongest market. I think we are pretty complete in terms of a market-leading product offering in Denmark. We have a fantastically strong brand position there with among the highest brand recognition of all companies, all categories. And so we will, of course, rely on that strength on the close contact we have with the Danish customers. We will, of course, as we always do, look over both product offering, pricing and communication but there's nothing we're deciding at this point. We have a healthy belief in the strength of our own franchise and in the position we have in Denmark.

And as a last question, you've been with Nordnet for quite many years now in the operations side mainly. But now you're on top of the company, so to speak. Where should we expect any meaningful change as CEO? And where should we expect to see more continuity?

Thank you for that question. So I've been on the product side for the last 7 years but also Deputy CEO for the last 4 years. So I've been part of strategy formulation, of course, strategy implementation. As such, the strategy, as stated, stands. It's a strong strategy. It's well received by the market. It's a 3-part focus areas for us now, and that is, first of all, making sure that this German launch is a success over time. It doesn't have to be immediately and it won't be. We are long termist and we have patience. We are investing in order to have a strong domestic offering in Germany. Secondly, we are a trading platform at heart, and we will continue to invest in order to have the best trading offering for our customers. You've seen examples of that come out during the year with algorithmic execution with extended premarket opening times with 10 new trading venues with dynamic FX accounts within tax wrappers, and we will continue to make such investments. And thirdly, and this is something that we have prioritized up recently, we will, of course, harness Agentic AI and lead the AI race as we deploy this groundbreaking technology against both how we work internally but also in the type of product and features we ship to customers.

Thanks, Patrik. Okay. Next question, we'll take from Ermin Keric at DNB Carnegie.

Maybe the first one would be on kind of competition in Germany. It seems like it's heating up. You're obviously not there yet but have you changed anything in your assumptions around the customer acquisition cost and how you're thinking about the marketing spend need in that country? Then the second question would be kind of customer acquisition cost in the Nordics generally, given that you've increased your marketing, kind of do you have any hard figures that you've been able to track confirming that increased marketing has a good payoff? And then the last question would be, you mentioned that kind of the Q2 tends to be a tailwind for deposits from dividends, kind of, based on the current positioning of your clients, how much tailwind would that be during Q2 in terms of new liquidity to their accounts?

Thanks, Ermin. Those are 3 good questions. I'll try to remember all of them. So starting off with German competition and the effects on customer acquisition cost. We have always known that Germany is a intensely competitive market. That's something new that was known to us at the outset. We are now a few quarters away from launch, and we will do that in a very Nordnet organic word-of-mouth and guerrilla marketing style. We're not going to be sponsoring the Bundesliga or plastering our logo across all buses and trains in Germany. We don't have the budget for that. We need to think smarter. We need to work smarter and concentrate on the verticals and the customer acquisition channels that make sense for us. Of course, we're watching competition, and we do know that CAC will be elevated initially, and that is within the numbers we have disclosed in terms of budget. Moving to the increased marketing spend that we have deployed in the Nordics, and that is primarily in Denmark, Sweden. We do see very good traction in terms of ad recall and ad liking as well as meaningful, and we do track this with statistically confirmed numbers, meaningful improvements in brand recognition, brand preference and brand consideration. I don't think we are disclosing those numbers, Marcus, but you have to take my word for it that, that is trending. Because it's top funnel brand marketing, you're not seeing that those numbers necessarily drop into the customer intake at the bottom of the funnel yet but that is the way with brand marketing. And of course, we're supplementing brand marketing with tactical conversion marketing in our best-performing channels as well. And that's why I think we can present 77,500 new customers in the quarter, which, of course, on an annualized basis, is within the target band. And then the last question...

The tailwind from dividends on liquidity in Q2?

Good question. I don't think I will say or want to say more than what's already in the snapshot in the guidance. I think that what we saw a little bit was that as we put out the March statistics, some analysts assume that sort of the opening and the closing balances were at that level. That was not the case. We saw quite a sort of uptick in deposit balances towards the end of the quarter. So I think you have that information now. You also have the IBOR rates. And then it's very difficult for you or for us to prognosticate whether customers will pile on back into the market or whether the dividends that they receive in this coming period will indeed stay on account but we'll have to watch and see. And I think the first indication will be in our April monthly statistics.

I mean, last year, it was about SEK 10.5 billion of dividends coming in, in Q2, obviously, growth with the equity base. Then the question is, of course, how much of that they deploy, which is going to depend on the market. Just one thing on Germany. Of course, what's increased in Germany is also the opportunity when we decided to enter, we didn't count on any pension reform. So that's going to open up the more -- a bigger portion of the market and the growth of the German market accelerated last year. So over the last few years, about 0.5 million Germans have started investing, between '24 and '25, it was actually 2 million. So the upside or the whole -- the pie has also grown. So that means it's a lower bar to clear for us, and we have a fairly modest case in terms of growth to reach our targets. Great. Next question comes from Martin Ekstedt at Handelsbanken.

Can you hear me?

We can.

Excellent. Sorry to be diverting focus away from your excellent Q1 results and back to Denmark and Avanza's entry there. So Denmark is your largest market in terms of brokerage income at 34%, I think it was of the group in 2025. And this is partially because your commission income per trade is around 3x higher in Denmark than it is, for example, in Sweden, where the 2 of you have been competing for much longer. So my underlying question is perhaps how do you think competition between the 2 of you will play out in Denmark, but this is a bit high level. So let me break it down into a couple of sub-questions. So the margin compression dynamics seen in Sweden, how much of this has actually been due to the big banks waking up to the threat from you guys and dropping their prices? And how much has been down to competition between yourselves and Avanza? And then in Sweden, you have at least historically been more of a self-proclaimed follower on price rather than the price setter. I don't know if you agree with that still but implicitly letting Avanza do a lot of the fine-tuning of competitive pricing versus the large banks. But how do you see this playing out in Denmark now where the roles are a bit reversed and you will be the larger player with a head start? And then perhaps finally, a devil's advocate kind of question. Is Avanza coming into Denmark and spending around SEK 60 million per year on marketing there, not actually a good thing for your own growth since the majority of growth will come from taking market share of the large and established banks anyway, and Avanza raising awareness in the market of your business model that you have in common will be good for both of you. Do you agree with this?

Thank you for those 3 detailed questions, and it's fun to pontificate. Starting with the first question on margin compression in Sweden. I would say almost none of it is due to large banks. Large banks have in different eras tried to lower commission below us and Avanza here in Sweden, and that's had very nominal to 0 effect on customer flows. I think both Avanza and ourselves have led the prices, not to the rock bottom but prices to a low enough level where it's no longer the deciding factor for customers on which platform to choose. So I'd say that's in large already happened. Then when it comes to being a price setter in Denmark as opposed to a price follower in Sweden, that is true. And the new market entrant does not automatically mean pricing will change. We are the market leader in Denmark, and we intend to carry that responsibility. And that means we don't need to react as soon as a new player enters the market. Over the last few years, we have seen many new entrants price very aggressively in Denmark without getting traction. So price is clearly not the main factor. For example, Saxo is an established player with a long history in Denmark, strong in the ATHT segment, and they priced significantly below us for many years without slowing our growth. We don't know how Avanza will set their prices. The price levels in the Danish market are higher than in Sweden, as you say. And so there's plenty of room for Avanza to have a competitive price and a good return simultaneously. Of course, we expect Avanza to have a few hero products with attractive pricing to drive their business and this is going to really change the market dynamics, though. And even if they dropped all their prices to Swedish levels, we don't have to follow since we -- they have no brand recognition in Denmark. And then finally, with the spend, yes, I'm happy you said that I don't have to. It is an overall good that there was another market entrant. So having one more good platform in Denmark will spur us to be even better and also help drive equity culture further, which should benefit all players. And even if Avanza gets any traction in the market in a few years, there is definitely room for more players in Denmark. We only have around a 10% share of the population and 5% of the assets. So there's plenty of share to take for all challengers and the market is still growing. It's at least 5 to 10 years behind the Swedish market in terms of equity culture and equity participation. So I think I don't worry about that. We're also very confident in our own offering there and our own very strong position with customers in terms of both brand and customer satisfaction.

Just one comment on the margins. I think I saw some writing about theoretically, if you apply Swedish pricing to the Danish or Danish market, I think what you're missing, you can't really just take the brokerage margin of Sweden and apply it to Denmark because a big portion of the brokerage margin in Denmark is FX where you have a cross-border trading and that pricing is the same in all our markets. So if you -- I mean, if we just take the Swedish pricing, applying it to the Danish trading business, it would have had slightly less than 1% effect -- effect of 1% of the overall group revenue in Q1. So it's -- would not be that dramatic. And of course, it's all theoretical since we don't see that changing because of a new market entrant. Okay. Next question comes from Jacob Hesslevik at SEB.

If we start on the fund margin compression, fund capital grew 26% year-on-year, yet fund-related net income grew only 11%, implying the margin dropped to 24.7 bps from 26.6 bps a year ago. Is this compression now structural given the ongoing shift toward index funds? And at what margin level does the trend stabilize? Or is there a floor you are managing toward?

Jacob, thanks for that question. And it's true what you said in terms of the margin development quarter-on-quarter, dropping from 24.8% to 24.3% in Q1. And yes, you're right that it is structural. And we've seen that the trend of active to passive play out over several years now. It did sort of equalize for a few quarters, and we've seen another step this quarter towards more passive investments. This plays well into our strategy of having our own in-house Nordnet funds, which, of course, are all passive in addition to our Nordnet One fund-of-funds, which invest in our index funds. And so as customers reposition from active -- more expensive active funds into cheaper passive funds, they are increasingly choosing Nordnet branded funds. That's a function of the strong performance in those funds, our strong brand name but also, of course, the low cost that is associated with them. And so we see around just shy of 40% of new net buying and funds going into Nordnet branded funds. And there, of course, we're internalizing the production margin in addition to the distribution margin. So that is helpful and constructive to maintaining that margin. I don't think we are going to guide any more detail than where we are on income margin. It's part of our overall margin guidance. But you and I both know that the structural shift from active to passive will continue, and we will continue to meet that by having new Nordnet-branded funds in order to catch those volumes.

Your leverage ratio now stands at 4.5%, which is the upper bound of your 4% to 4.5% target range. With savings capital and lending both growing, what is your flexibility to sustain a 70% dividend payout while also funding the Germany launch and having a buyback program? And under what scenario would you consider adjusting either the leverage target or the payout ratio?

That sounds very much like a Lennart question.

Yes. I can give you some flavor on that one as well. First of all, I mean, we don't expect the German buildup to request that much capital. So I don't think that's a major problem really. But we also -- I mean, we shall consider that we're doing significantly revenue and profit each quarter and only is a moderate word when we say we give dividend of 70% of that one. So yes, we have this one. But it's also an elevated level with SEK 97 billion in deposits right now, which is -- makes us in line with the leverage ratio target. We will see how that one works out. And that is also why we have this dynamic level of 4.0% to 4.5%, so that we have that flexibility and also how we work out with the present capital structure for that one because if we do get more deposits, that's just fine because that will make the earning go further north and be a very good result for us. But of course, it puts a restraint on how much capital or shares we can buy back and how we can deal with the AT1. But I see no problem for this year. We have a good capital structure, and we will -- we have a plan for that as well. But we always work for having flexibility. We have those increases of deposits in our plans. And that is why we also say that we don't want to buy back too much shares in one time because that limits us with our flexibility. So that is how we deal with that, I would say.

And just a final very quick question. Saxo has previously had marketing campaigns where they offer free or at least very cheap brokerage on U.S. trading in Denmark. How has these campaigns impacted you? Have you seen slower customer acquisitions or raised voices from your own clients that you should lower your prices on FX?

That's been part of the market dynamics in Denmark for a long while. And Saxo has been pricing beneath us for many years without really challenging our growth. Of course, we're always monitoring prices carefully, and we did make an adjustment to just cross-border pricing a year or so back in order to stay competitive. It's an important market for us, and those are important flows that we want to have on our platform. But we haven't meaningfully seen Saxo's pricing impact us. They're targeting partially a different customer base and their pricing reflects the value of their product and our pricing reflects the value of ours.

Thanks, Jacob. Next question comes from Nicolas Vaysselier from BNP Paribas.

Can you hear me?

We can.

First of all, congratulations on the new role and good luck for your journey. I have 3 questions here. I take them one by one. The first one is, could you give us a bit more color into customer behavior in April and with the recovery of market? Do you see them remaining engaged and perhaps starting to reinvest that cash pile they have accumulated in March?

I'll be careful here with how much April color I give you, but April has started strongly. It's the same dynamic, of course, as the tail end of Q1 and March. We have seen continued elevated trading levels. We have not yet seen customers deploy that cash, which mostly remains on balance sheet as at the end of the quarter.

All right. That's very useful. Second one, focusing on costs, but I was looking into your annual report recently. I've seen that the costs capitalized on balance sheet that have increased quite a bit the last few years. I mean it matches roughly the rate of increase in your P&L cost base. But still, it's quite a bit of an increase and a bit more elevated in percentage terms of the overall cost base versus some of your peers in Europe. I was wondering if you expect this to keep on increasing at the same pace? And if you could give us some color on what is driving this increase? Is it projects you work on for your private banking offering, pension offering in the Nordics or if some of it is also related to products you developed for Germany?

I can just give you some top-level color then, Lennart, I'll let you answer the parts on activation and how we manage that, which I know you do in a very good way. No. So we started splitting out our OpEx growth a few quarters back between maintenance and growth. And I think that is an indication of what part of the cost base is going to just inflationary contract pricing, salary adjustments, keeping the lights on versus the investments we make in growing the future of this business and extending the growth runway that we have. And so what you've seen in terms of where the extra costs are going, it's things like setting up the pension branch in Finland for the SIP and the pension branch in Denmark for the livrente product, which, of course, is a NOK 2,000 billion market that we're addressing. It's also the increased marketing we spoke about here in the Nordic region. As you know, in the cost guidance, the cost for Germany are over and above the OpEx guidance of 8%. So those are not in there yet. And all the time, of course, we are pushing more engineering teams into more product that we're releasing to customers, and that is the investment into this platform that will keep us at the forefront of the industry. But in terms of how we allocate and how we activate Lennart?

We haven't done any changes to that. I mean it's also in respect of what we are developing. Are we seeing that we make benefit of those in the future. We always evaluate those activations as well to see if they are still valid or not. But as far as we can see, the profitability and the revenue coming from those developments are there. And thereby, we haven't made any major changes to this. But it's always specific depending on what it is that we are developing really. But otherwise, the increase is mainly due to that we have increased the speed of development throughout those years. And as long as we do that, yes, they will increase. So the revenue coming in a higher speed, that's fine with me.

And keep in mind, of course, that we depreciate that CapEx over the P&L. So you do see it in the OpEx target as well, and this is all included in the guidance. So just a different way of accounting for it potentially.

Yes, of course, your CapEx is also -- your D&A is also higher than the other guys. So yes, it goes there as well. Very clear. And then finally, the last one. Could you just give us a bit of an update on the numbers for the livrente products in terms of customer growth and assets under custody?

Sure. The livrente momentum continues. We had SEK 1.5 billion in Danish pension net savings in the quarter. I think that is according to expectation but it's also very positive that I think it's the same sort of level we had when we first launched the account when, of course, we were putting some marketing behind it, and it was a new product in the market for us. But Marcus, I don't know if you have more color on livrente than that.

No. I mean it's kept a pretty good pace when we -- I mean we had a really good start in Q1 last year with about SEK 1.5 billion of sort of total pension net savings. And then we, of course, weren't sure if that was sort of a bit of a catch-up effect or a marketing boost. But then we've seen that the pace has kept up really nicely and it's fairly consistent. I mean 2025, net savings in pension was 20% of the Danish net savings. So it's really contributing to continued growth in Denmark.

Sorry, just to make sure I got that number correctly, you said SEK 1.5 billion net savings in Q1 '26 as well.

Yes. That's total Danish pension, so both the bank and the insurance part because, of course, the customer moves both at the same time. And that's what this really enables to that now the customer can move all their pension. So it didn't only unlock the livrente part and unlocked the bank pieces that were moved as a bundle as well. So allows us to take more of that market, too. Thank you so much. Okay. Next question comes from Andy Lowe at Citi.

My question was around your brokerage margin in Q1. The average trade size was higher in the quarter but thinking about this as a share of traded volumes, which you hopefully now disclosed. Could you just talk us through what the drivers were in Q1? I appreciate that there's always a mix effect from foreign trading but it seems like there are sort of other effects going on in the quarter. So what drove the margin down? Are there any mix effects that changed in terms of activity between your different customer segments? And if you could give any sort of guidance as to how that behavior may change on a forward-looking basis, that would be very helpful.

Thanks, Andy. So you already nailed it right. It's mix. And we see mix in 3 dimensions. So it's a country mix where we saw more trading in Norway and relatively less trading in Denmark where margins are higher. It's also a mix effect between cross-border and domestic trading, where particularly then in Norway, again, it was the domestic industries in oil and gas that did very well and where customers took profit at the top of the price range, which is very good for them. And then it's, of course, mix also between the segments where we saw that active trader ATHT type customers as well as private banking were more active than retail, and they, of course, have more preferential pricing. So while cross-border trades increased in terms of number of trades from 35% to 39% sequentially, it declined as a percentage of traded value, 37% to 35%. In addition, retail represented a smaller portion of trades and PB increased, especially year-on-year but also Q-on-Q. So looking at Norway, for example, which stood for a lot of the increase in the quarter, a lot of Norwegian customers took profit in energy and shipping after oil prices spiked. And since that's largely domestic trading skewed less cross-border. And as you were also saying, Andy, trades were larger than normal. Ticket size was up 59% year-on-year, 29% Q-on-Q. So the domestic portion of traded value increased a lot more than the domestic portion of the number of trades, and that had that effect on margin that you saw this quarter. I'm hesitant to give any more guidance when it comes to the margins going forward. I think the guidance we have will stand. And it's also, as you appreciate, difficult for us to prognosticate, which segments and which sectors will trade well in the quarter but the second quarter started strongly.

That's really helpful. Could I just ask a follow-up to that?

Sure.

On the mix between retail and active traders or heavy traders as you referred to them. Could you give us an idea of how that mix compares to history?

Good question. I'm not sure we have that with us. Marcus, you may have it but I can give some color while Marcus looks up the number. There is a correlation, I won't say how much but between market direction and activity, but also volatility and activity between segments. So as markets become increasingly choppy, retail participation declines. Retail like to trade in an overall upgoing market, and they need some sort of visibility for them to be engaged at the higher levels, whereas the ATHT segments, they, of course, thrive on volatility, especially those taking intraday risk and being risk neutral at the end of the trading day, and they are also happy to be making money in an overall declining market. And that's why we see a heavier participation for those segments with the larger ticket sizes and the lower margins than we do in markets that are mostly benign. And so that has played into the effect this quarter. And I don't know, Marcus, you're looking like you might have found a number or not.

Yes. Looking at the numbers, I think it's -- I mean, it varies a lot between the quarters. I think we saw versus history retail seems to be, I mean, roughly in line if you look at the longer-term average and then just vary between the quarters. So I don't think we've seen a big shift. Of course, we've seen a bit more active trader and a bit more sort of private banking as of late since we've also grown that customer base, but no huge shifts from what you can see.

And let me also just zoom out, it's fun to get nerdy down in those mixes. But if we zoom out, what we're doing here is building a machine that's onboarding an increasing number of customers. Those customers are monetizing the new accounts and then they're being active in the markets to a larger or lower degree. So as we grow the customer base, we also see trades per day and commission income rising meaningfully over time. And that's, of course, the sort of the foundation of the growth that we're building here in this company. And then we'll have mix effects. We'll have volatility effects in any given quarter. But for the valuation of this company and the future of this company is based mostly on onboarding and activating a steady stream of new customers.

And even though I don't like lower margins for 1 quarter or for 1 month or not even for a day but still, it's a sign of the diversification that we have because it's -- if we didn't have Norway, then it would have less trading this time. So the diversification between segments within retail, ATH, [ camp ] and whatever it is, it's so important for us to be stable. Next question comes from Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes. We can, Enrico.

Congratulations, Rasmus, on the appointment. A couple of questions, if I may, on AI from 2 slightly different angles. So one, you mentioned in the report that you are developing using AI in different forms, which is good to know. I was just wondering, in the current context of obviously increasing competition with players like yourself expanding in different markets and perhaps a bit of pricing pressure, how important do you think is to have a very good integrated AI offering from a front offering point of view. So I'm thinking about what the clients can use, what the clients can see and how they can use AI to manage their savings. Is this the key to prevent commoditization or to make sure that you retain your market share and you grow it further? And perhaps can you give us your opinion on where do you think you stand relative to the offering of some other platforms? There are some others that have been quite vocal in terms of what they're doing with AI proposition that they already launched and others seem to be a bit behind the curve perhaps. So I was just curious to hear your thoughts on this subject. And the second angle also related to AI. AI perhaps can increase also risk, right? You could have more hacking, more breaches. This is something that we've seen in the press. And at times, it might be completely unrelated but you had some small issues, for example, with your website. I think you disclosed that early in March, you had a small glitch due to very high volumes. And last year, there were a couple of relatively small hiccups. So I was wondering whether you think the platform is ready and is protected enough from that point of view and whether there is a risk that maybe a bit more CapEx or OpEx will need to go in that direction to make sure that you protect your customer from a technology point of view.

Cool, Enrico, very good questions and fun to speak to AI. First, when it comes to the -- how important integrated AI from a front offering point of view is, I'd say, very important. And it is a key to prevent commoditization, but I think what is really key to prevent commoditization is personalization. So being able to use proprietary data, both customer data but also Nordnet data in the product. And so at the moment, we have a dedicated AI front-facing team that have a pretty broad mandate to explore and innovate. And so the products we've shipped to date have come out of that team's imagination. And so at the moment, we're starting at, as you can imagine, the easier things where we're summarizing public data. So we're giving AI news summaries, which has seen us consumption rise by 86%. We've done AI quarterly results summaries. There's going to be one coming out for us now. But on that particular one, we have Marcus in the loop, human in the loop before we publish. And we've done also a latest update, which really gives you unique updates regarding the holdings in your portfolio, including macro and what's affecting the valuation of your portfolio. These are exciting products, and we're calling them AI news and et cetera. And I think that's going to go away, just like everything was i, something, iMac, iWatch, iPhone in the 2010s and how everything, including us was net in the 1990s. So I think it's not going to be an AI product. It's just going to be a product that is better because of AI. But like I say, we need to move from the summarizing general information into summarizing and giving you insights into your performance into your portfolio and your concentration risk and make sure that we're getting close to but not overstepping the boundaries into advice. When it comes to how we stand versus others, I think there was one of your competitors put a note out that actually ranked us #1 among European platforms on AI. I take that with a grain of salt. I always think it's healthy to be a little bit paranoid and to be forward leaning, but we are very forward leaning and not just in AI when it comes to the customer channels but also AI, how we're developing. So some 40% plus of our engineering teams are now Agentic first in how they build and ship new code. Some 43% of code written to date was co-authored with Agentic AI. So I think also in the kind of the speed and the output we're seeing from our engineering teams, it's definitely been boosted by AI. And then thirdly, we are using AI selectively in processes and in high-risk operations, including for example, scanning for adverse news in terms of extended diligence on politically exposed persons as well as ascertaining and using multimodal capabilities to ascertain identity in countries where there's no central register and many other such use cases. And so we're seeing efficiency gains. We're taking down risk and we're shortening lead times for customer service and customers. So I think it's very important to be forward leaning all of this. I'm happy with our teams, and I'm proud of what we've done, but we're not satisfied. We're going to keep pushing in this area. And lately -- lastly, you asked about increased risk. And I think we all saw the news on Anthropic Mythos. And of course, we are looking at that as well. We're already on the offense. We're using AI for so-called red teaming today, which means actively deploying the best commercially available AI models to simulate attacks on our own code base and infrastructure, both cloud and what's left on-prem. And so -- and AI with full access to our outsource code architecture, internal context will always find bugs and vulnerabilities faster than an external attacker working blind. And we don't need Mythos specifically to do this. We are using the best tools available now in the development teams and from the platform teams, infrastructure network and agents aggressively. And so we also have a new site reliability engineering or SRE team with the explicit authority to prioritize operational security hardening tasks. And so you should never be satisfied with cybersecurity. Cybersecurity is and remains our top risk but we are investing fully into this, and that's within budget and nothing you will see come across the OpEx or CapEx line.

Great. Thanks, Enrico. Next question comes from Ian White with Autonomous Research.

Two from my side, please. First couple just on Germany. Given some of the commentary there around essentially sort of more crowded or competitive marketing environment, can you just clarify what's your appetite to spend more than initially expected on marketing to build a presence there? Are you sort of completely committed to the original sort of plan that you gave us in terms of expenditure in Germany? Or is there some flex there to go higher if needed? The second point, I just wanted to clarify something that you said earlier. You mentioned that pension reform, I think, was an incremental tailwind versus your initial expectations for Germany, and there's now a lower bar to clear. Does that mean we should expect breakeven performance there sooner now than 2029? Just a bit of clarification around that, I think, would be helpful. And then finally, just back to AI. Can you provide us with a sense of the efficiency or cost-saving opportunity there? You've talked about a shift towards being AI first in a number of areas, particularly coding. So I'm just wondering, is the optimal model still to run the business with nearly 900 people? Why would 8% remain a sensible medium-term cost anchor given some of the opportunities that you talked about?

Ian, great questions. So let's start with the beginning. when it comes to marketing in Germany and our flexibility to potentially spend more than originally expected, of course, we have the flexibility. It would be obtuse to say otherwise. But it is too early to even comment on that almost. And we've always said that within the spend for Germany that we've communicated, marketing is the most of the square brackets because we need to launch first, and I've been talking about getting that product market fit right, and we're working on the go-to-market strategy right now. But we won't get it right. We'll get it 80% right, and we need to sort of tweak that go-to-market and that product market fit. At the same time, as we look at the customer acquisition mechanics and making sure that they're all firing and converting at the rates they should be converting. So I don't think it's wise to throw sort of money at the problem and then sort of brute force a customer acquisition. I'd rather get the product market fit right make sure we're converting correctly in all the verticals, and then we will add more money if we see that we have the traction that we want to have. And at that point, we'll come back to the market with such guidance. But again, we need to launch first, and that's several quarters away, and then we need to see how that product market fit and that conversion traction works, and then we will revisit the question. When it comes to German pension reform being a tailwind and whether that leads to a breakeven sooner, I think it's too soon to say. I mean, we're there for the long term. So being breakeven even slightly earlier is not as important as building a long-term sustainable business model in Germany. And that pension reform certainly makes that prospect more likely. It also gives us what we call reason to speak. The German government has been very explicit in that they're looking to the Nordic model in Sweden in particular. And so of course, we speak with some credibility when it comes to private pension savings, and that's going to help us in the long term. And -- when it comes to the last point on AI cost savings, again, I think too early to say. At the moment, we're really pushing into this area with all the speed and sort of investment that we need in order to make sure that our both engineering teams but also our product remains cutting edge when it comes to using the latest technologies. My gut feels the same as yours, Ian. Over time, yes, this will lead to efficiencies. But I think some of the efficiency promises that have been made by competitors, particularly American companies maybe are a bit premature and rather reflect an overstaffing than a belief in the technology at this stage.

Thank you, Ian. Okay. Next question comes from Oliver Carruthers at Goldman Sachs.

Can you hear me okay?

Yes.

So I just have one question left. Thanks for the very thorough answers Rasmus. My question is just on the stickiness of the deposit balance in Norway. I think it was up almost 50% Q-on-Q. I think as a proportion of total savings capital in Norway, it's still sub-9%. So it's not out of kilter with the other regions. But when I hear your comments earlier on the call about some profit taking from Norwegian customers and shipping and oil and gas. And I guess given the rate implications of the Norwegian market, just your NII is relatively sensitive to this balance. So any comments you can say specifically about April to date or just the general stickiness of that deposit balance would be helpful.

No, I understand the question. It's an important driver of NII. So it needs to modeled correctly. But it is difficult for us to prognosticate. And the color I've given is that initial balances in this month have stayed at approximately the same levels. But of course, deposits can decline or increase in any given quarter depending on the balance of net cash savings and customer net buying, and that is hard for us to know from the outset. This quarter, we had the strongest net cash savings so far. And so with everything, right, it's always reasonable to assume a return to mean. And so net buying increased in the quarter but only really by SEK 7 billion as customers trim positions. So with most of the deposits sitting in investment accounts, not savings accounts, we would expect them to be deployed back into the market at some point. And this will, of course, depend on market direction, market volatility. And last year, we had a rise in deposits with that deposits to saving capital ratio that you mentioned peaking at 8% and then coming down gradually in subsequent quarters. And this year, the rise in deposits was also at larger levels, they may remain higher for longer, particularly as we're entering dividend season now, which should help keep deposits at a high level. And last year, like Marcus said earlier in the call, we saw some SEK 11 billion of dividend cash flow onto the platform. And this number grows every year as the equity assets grow and as the number of customers grow. But again, difficult for us and for you to forecast this with any accuracy.

Okay. Thank you. I think, yes, that was the last question for the day. So thanks a lot for listening to this presentation. If you have any questions or want more information, you can find the report and presentation on our website, nordnetab.com or reach out to me. Now, have a great day, everyone. Bye-bye.

Thank you so much for joining. Thanks. Goodbye.