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* Plus500 reports jump in revenue, profits
* Co also announces $25 million share buy-back
* Co declares $29.4 mln special dividend
(Adds detail from statement, background on retail trading)
By Muvija M and Priyanshi Mandhan
Feb 17 (Reuters) - Online trading platform Plus500
said on Wednesday it would pay almost $30 million in special
dividends and buy back $25 million in shares as it reaped the
profits of small-time traders making record bets on financial
markets.
But a suggestion that revenue in the current year may not
match up to the $872.5 million Plus500 recorded for 2020 dragged
shares lower by 2.2% by 0853 GMT. A company-supplied consensus
forecast pegged this year's revenue at $433.3 million.
"We don't know where this year could go. 2020 was an
unprecedented year. We cannot treat it as a normal year in any
aspect," Plus500's Chief Executive David Zruia told Reuters.
The company still expects the revenue to grow from "more
normalised levels" it saw in 2019.
It reported a 146% surge in profits in 2020 to $516 million,
as it signed up nearly 300,000 new customers, triple the
equivalent figure from a year earlier as traders kept at home by
lockdowns bet heavily.
A frenzy around GameStop and a number of other U.S.
stocks has also shone a light on Plus500 and European rivals,
such as IG and CMC.
Historically more focused on heavily-leveraged bets on
currency prices, all have seen their main measures of
performance boom since the pandemic helped to stoke volatility
on stock, commodity and currency markets.
The results were also driven by the rise of easy access
trading apps that require little more than a credit card and a
mobile phone to access.
"A number of market trends emerged and had an influence on
the performance of the company during the year," Plus500 said in
Wednesday's results release.
The company, which offers more than 2,500 financial
instruments, including equities, indexes, commodities, options,
foreign exchange and cryptocurrencies, said new customer
sign-ups rose to 294,728 from 91,388.
"The record FY20 results are due to more than just
favourable market conditions," Liberum analysts wrote in a note.
(Reporting by Muvija M and Priyanshi Mandhan in Bengaluru;
Editing by Patrick Graham, Rashmi Aich and Barbara Lewis)
