Do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
Plus500 (LON:PLUS), one of the major forex and CFD brokers, reported that in the first nine months of this year its revenue rose 14% to $236.3 million.
According to the broker’s Q3 trading update for the three and nine months that ended on September 30, 2016, trading remained consistent with the report on H1 2016 and the company has continued to see strong growth in new and active customers, as well as revenues.
Its EBITDA margin improved from 37% in H1 2016 to 43% in Q3 2016.
The revenue from “high value customers”, particularly from Western Europe, which accounted for 75% of total revenue in Q3, remaining unchanged from the same quarter of last year.
In Q3 2016, Average revenue per user (ARPU) stood at $1,107 compared to $1,037 in Q2 2016 and $1,534 in Q3 2015. The Company’s Average user acquisition cost (AUAC) for Q3 2016 was $1,300 compared to $1,347 in Q2 2016 and $1,468 in Q3 2015, and stands at $1,320 for the nine months ended 30 September 2016.
In its report Plus500 notes a continuing rise in new and active customers and continuing decrease in customer churn, which the company believes will have a beneficial long term effect on the Company’s income and a short term impact on ARPU.
“Our third quarter continued the strong progress of the first half, with a significant number of new customers being gained, and margins recovering”, said Asaf Elimelech, Chief Executive Officer of Plus500 We remain on track to achieve our expectations for the year as a whole.”
In Q3 2016 Plus500 saw some major developments. The broker became one of the first to obtain a forex trading arena license in Israel, while its Australian unit for licensed by New Zealand’s FMA.
Also in September, the founders of Plus500 – Alon Gonen, Gal Haber, Elad Ben-Izhak, Omer Elazari and Shlomi Weizmann, have sold a combined 13% (15 500 000 shares) of the existing ordinary shares of the company and pocketed £100.75 million.
Plus500 offers trading in forex, options, contracts for difference (CFDs), commodities, indices, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs). It operates its own online trading platform for CFDs available in over 31 languages on desktop and Android, Windows and iOS mobile operating systems. According to Investment Trends report from July 2015, it is the second largest CFD provider in the UK.
Plus500 is licensed by three other regulators, besides FMA and Israel’s ISA – the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission (CySEC), UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
The broker operates in the European Economic Area (EU member states, plus Norway, Lichtenstein and Iceland), Gibraltar, Australia and certain other jurisdictions across Asia, the Middle East and elsewhere. Its subsidiaries include Plus500UK, Plus500AU, Plus500CY and Plus500IL.
