Trading 212 UK Ltd., a subsidiary of the Trading 212 Group Limited, has released its annual results for the year 2017. The FCA regulated investment broker generated significant increases in revenue and user numbers from the previous year.
While 2016 saw Trading 212 finish the year with 1,093,040 pounds ($1,480,134) in revenue, in 2017 the firm almost quadrupled this figure to 4,178,043 pounds ($5,656,706). Higher revenues did mean a drastic increase in operational costs but the company still finished the year with 1,279,727 pounds ($1,732,639) of pre-tax profit.
With income tax of 235,533 pounds ($318,891), Trading 212 finished 2017 with 1,044,194 pounds ($1,413,747) in net profit. This was a substantial increase on 2016 where the company earned 358,843 pounds ($485,842) after taxes. Having retained a total of 2,575,895 pounds ($3,488,483) in profits by the end of 2017, the company was able to pay out 1,500,000 pounds ($2,031,420) in bonus shares.
Marketing Magic or Crypto Craziness?
The company's large-scale growth is due to a huge uptake in the number of users on Trading 212's website. The number of new, funded accounts increased from approximately 5000 in January 2017 to around 15,000 at the end of the year.
This dramatic uptake in new users is largely explained by the cryptocurrency boom that took place in the final three months of 2017. By mid-October, in the midst of the boom, almost 20 percent of users were new, more than double the approximately 7.5 percent of new users in January.
Having said this, the firm also spent £1,124,131 on marketing in 2017 - over three times as much as it did in 2016. Indeed, the firm noted that even excluding the final three months of 2017, Trading 212 still saw a 30 percent increase in active clients and a 60 percent increase in the number of clients trading.
