We would love to hear your thoughts about our site and services, please take our survey here.
London South East prides itself on its community spirit, and in order to keep the chat section problem free, we ask all members to follow these simple rules. In these rules, we refer to ourselves as "we", "us", "our". The user of the website is referred to as "you" and "your".
By posting on our share chat boards you are agreeing to the following:
The IP address of all posts is recorded to aid in enforcing these conditions. As a user you agree to any information you have entered being stored in a database. You agree that we have the right to remove, edit, move or close any topic or board at any time should we see fit. You agree that we have the right to remove any post without notice. You agree that we have the right to suspend your account without notice.
Please note some users may not behave properly and may post content that is misleading, untrue or offensive.
It is not possible for us to fully monitor all content all of the time but where we have actually received notice of any content that is potentially misleading, untrue, offensive, unlawful, infringes third party rights or is potentially in breach of these terms and conditions, then we will review such content, decide whether to remove it from this website and act accordingly.
Premium Members are members that have a premium subscription with London South East. You can subscribe here.
London South East does not endorse such members, and posts should not be construed as advice and represent the opinions of the authors, not those of London South East Ltd, or its affiliates.
Thanks, where did you find the date? i was looking everywhere for it!
16 April
Should be good update with Vix rising, UAE CFD business roaring, and growth of US operation
Any ideas what date we can expect the Q1 trading update?
@ggplyr A FinTech listed on NYSE with a P/E of 7.5 would get an immediate upgrade. The Yanks do not do P/Es of 7.5
This is what BUR (Burford Capital) did and it's worked a charm. One thing they had do was increase HY reports to quarterly, which is a bonus.
What are the impacts of a dual listing for individual investors? do we notice anything different at all if it were dual listed tomorrow for example?
The Annual Report published on 2 April notes the London office of US law firm Latham & Watkins LLP as a new legal advisor. This would indicate to me that a US dual listing is well progressed and likely imminent. My guess would be sometime around September.
There is also the likely IPO in London or New York of e-toro later this year. They have indicated they are seeking a valuation above $3.5bn (twice Plus500’s current valuation). In some ways e-toro (Israeli FinTech established 2007) have a very similar profile to Plus500 but without the 10 years+ track record of significant shareholder distributions of $2.1bn. If they get that IPO away at $3.5bn+, Plus500’s current valuation at $1.8bn looks extremely low.
Can we infer much from the number of US downloads & what it means for revenue and profit? according to Appmagic there have been over 200k since the US app launched, still over 50k in last 30 years. The buckets are quite large on app magic, it seems to be >5k, > 10k, >20k, >50k, >100k, >200k etc so difficult to get exact numbers out of it.
The fees Plus earn for the futures are a commission fee of $0.49 per Micro contract and $0.89 per Standard contract (per side). So as Seatank points out its low margins as Plus are just the middle man for the futures rather than taking a side like they do in the CFD business
App downloads data is a nice find!
Trying to piece it all together.
This is the stats for the download for the US app, "Trade & Invest". which is the us futures platform
https://appmagic.rocks/google-play/plus500-trade-and-invest/com.plus500.futures
it shows in the last 30 days its had over 50k downloads from the US. thats half of the all the downloads in the most recent month since it launched A few months ago, that sound like its growing very fast. not all downloads result in a revenue generating customer of course.
Their accounts show customer margin/deposits of their CFD businesses in Europe and elsewhere, which is on-balance sheet. They are the counter party to the customer's positions, I believe. I don't know how the Cunningham futures business works but presume that customer positions are held in custody accounts along with customer deposits and are not on-balance sheet. The revolution PLUS brings to this market is the real time data and trading interface, as well as ability to tighten spreads for the customer and margin offsets if the customer has multiple positions in opposite directions, as they are a full clearing member of the exchange.
It is of course much lower margin business, so the customer deposit size in the US as per the spreadsheet generates around ~10% of the revenue the retail CFD business does.
I think I might be halfway to understanding how the US business works, frankly, but I am quite sure the data from CFTC is legitimate and telling.
I don't quite follow it, but while it's not on the balance sheet it is in the accounts as an in and an out on note 7.
Google appmagic for downloads. No idea if it's any good or accurate mind. Just found it the other day.
Good spot ggplyr
Segregation of Customer Funds: https://www.cftc.gov/IndustryOversight/Intermediaries/FCMs/fcmsegregationfunds.html#:~:text=Segregated%20accounts%20must%20be%20titled,the%20event%20of%20FCM%20insolvency.
As I understand it, assets/margin on futures instruments are not on PLUS500's balance sheet, so do not appear in their accounts
Where do you go to find data on App downloads?
@seaTank. delving a bit deeper and im a bit confused. at the end of december 2023 the CFTC data report shows customer assets in segregated account of $369m
whereas in the preliminary results for 2023 note 7 shows "Segregated client funds" of $249.6m. The preliminary results of course show the figure for all (including non US) segregated funds. so you'd expect this to be alot higher than the CFTC data. any ideas?
Thanks SeaTank, very interesting.
Downloads of plus 500 app is getting big from the US. in the last 30 days there have been over 50,000 downloads from the US, thats 18% of the total downloads in the last 30 days. It must be starting to get material.
If you want to track PLUS's activity in the US futures market through Cunningham Commodities, this is the way to do it:
https://www.cftc.gov/MarketReports/financialfcmdata/index.htm
As I understand it, "Customers' Assets in Seg" = margin or capital held on behalf of clients, which is a precondition to trading activity.
The growth in assets is lumpy. Cunningham's customer assets grew 23% in July last year and almost 40% in the second half, but only 5% in Q4.
For the full year, Dec 2022 to Dec 2023, customer assets grew 75%.
The lumpiness doesn't matter in my view, as long as the trajectory is positive and upwards.
Cunningham are a tiny player, with around 0.13% market share of customer assets.
This suggests to me that Cunningham alone could become a revenue and profit driver for PLUS. The US contributed 5-10% of revenues last year, of which most was Cunningham. If their technology is so very revolutionary, which they claim it is, PLUS will grow this business by multiples.
No idea - I thought turmoil was good for PLUS. Thought this would go to £19 after the results.............but no.
Any ideas what is driving today share price rise?
For long-term holders a reduced share price can still be considered good, since it allows the company to buy back more of their own shares for less money. I'm happy that they made use of the opportunity and increased the amount of shares they bought.
Personally, I was too impatient. I had sold the day before and bought back yesterday, but too early (for an average price of £17.40), since after the good opening I did not expect it to drop so far.
Unless you go through the hoops for a reduced WHT rate you lose 20% so effectively 108p drop for 60p dividend, not a good day today unless you sold out and missed divi.
Oi oi, it's simple maths.
Yesterday it was known that today you'd get £0.75 per share if you held the shares. Therefore you expect the share price to drop by £0.75 as soon as the market opens. Any other movement is just the daily noise.
I do hope so. I'd missed it had gone ex. SPI announced to me at least excellent results today. Obviously I don't understand the Markets!! I was hoping that had gone ex- too!!
Is that why the share price has dropped (as people sell the shares they'd bought to take advantage of the divi payment perhaps)?
Ex-dividend today. Approximately 75p gross and 60p net less 20% WHT.
I'd call the P/e 8 rather than 7 to be comparable to other UK listed companies for the withholding tax on dividends.
Still decent
What I would focus on is simply
The ex div price is about 17.20
Eps consensus, probably fair, is around 240p.
Pe close to 7.
If you only use 7 times on interest earnings that values the cash pile at about a 70 per cent discount! To illustrate for every 100 pounds you earn on cash at about 4 per cent net of tax you multiply by the group pe of 7 to give you a valuation of 28 for every 100.