Plus500 (LSE:PLUS) — Preliminary Results for FY 2021

0:01 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the PLUS500 Preliminary Results Investor Presentation. Corner of your screen. Just please simply type in your question at any time and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question it receives during the meeting itself. However, the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where it's appropriate to do so. Before we begin, we would like to submit the following poll. And if you would give that your kind attention, I'm sure the company would be most grateful. And I'd now like to hand over to Ilad Evanshan, CFO and David Juria, CEO from PLUS500. Good morning, everyone. I'm David Churia, PLUS500 CEO, and I'm joined by Lade Van Fenn, our group CFO.

0:49 Thank you for joining us today.

0:53 Turning to slide two, we chose the agenda for today. Once we run through the presentation, we will be happy to take your questions. I will start today with a brief strategic overview. Just to remind you of our vision on Slide four, which is for PLUS500 to enable trusted financial opportunities for our customers across a wide range of financial instruments, countries and devices. This has been driven by our continued progress as a global multi asset fintech group supported by organic investment in targeted acquisitions. This will help to further diversify our revenue base and drive higher customer retention. The strength of our vision and strategic positioning was significantly validated in 2021 by a number of important proof points achieved in the year. In particular, we delivered a strong set of results ahead of market expectations.

1:51 We developed and launched a new proprietary shared dealing platform. We executed the group's first ever acquisition, which ensured diversification of our offering and extended our product offering into the futures and options on futures market, which is a significant growth opportunity for the group, in particular, in The US, but also globally. And we developed a range of new customer retention and monetization technology. These achievements provide comprehensive evidence that we have clear vision and strategy on which we are already delivering against. Our vision, strategy and performance are supported by a robust investment case on Slide five.

2:37 We operate in a supportive market environment with access to a number of significant long term growth opportunities. Our ability to activate this growth opportunity is the result of our powerful proprietary technology, which drives our operational excellence, our market leading product offering and our cutting edge marketing approach. Supported by a robust financial foundation, these factors have ensured that we have been able to maintain a long standing high value customer base. This is highlighted on the next slide, which shows that last year, we achieved milestone in reaching a total of 22,000,000 customers registered on our platforms. This is the first time we have disclosed this number.

3:23 This achievement reflects our market leading offering and has been driven by continued investment in marketing technologies and platform development. This substantial latent registered customer base represents a major opportunity for continued customer retention, activation, and monetization initiative with a view to triggering higher conversion rates. Ultimately, of course, this will enable us to access further growth in our active customer base, thereby increasing revenue and EBITDA over time. These dynamics have resulted in a number of clear differentiators and areas of competitive advantages for PLUS500 on Slide seven. Firstly, we have built a long track record of financial performance with over 25 percentages compound annual growth in revenue since the IPO year, with an average EBITDA margin of approximately 57% in that time. We have remained debt free since the business was established and have returned approximately $1,400,000,000 to our shareholders since our IPO 2013.

4:36 This track record is testament to the quality of our people. Our headquarters are in Israel, a major global hub for technology and innovation, where there is a skilled and educated workforce, which is highly trained in technological development.

4:53 We have fostered a high performance organizational culture that reflect Israel's technology based environment. This has been led by highly skilled management team with specialties, expertise, and experience in technology and finance. Our agile customer centric business model, which its unique edge in attracting and retaining customers through multiple channels, has ensured that we have consistently driven an attractive ROI over time. All of these factors are a consequence of the strength of our proprietary technology on Slide eight, which reminds our fundamental competitive advantage. Our technology enables PLUS500 to respond with agility to customer requirements, fast emerging market developments and regulatory changes.

5:45 At the heart of our technological capability is that every element of our technology is fully and seamlessly integrated and interconnected across our operations, systems architecture, product, and marketing capabilities. It has taken us many years to develop this technology with consistent upgrades, continued innovation and introduction of a range of new features, new services and new capabilities over the last decade. As a result, PLUS500 is now a highly developed business with a long track record of innovation and a market leading technological capability operated by highly skilled engineers and specialists. The next slide illustrates our technology stack in action, showing the main steps of customers joining.

6:37 This starts with our marketing technology, which includes artificial intelligence characteristics, characteristics and its optimization process is made as a result of its big data capability. Once a customer has decided independently to open an account on our platform, the operational element of our technology is initiated. At that point, customers go through a stringent, rigorous verification and onboarding process in accordance with applicable regulation, supported by twenty four seven localized customer care and a best in class payment processing service, utilizing a range of possible payment methods for our customers. Once onboarded, the next stage of the customer journey is the product experience, including a range of educational and training tools, new features, new analysis tools, new products, and new financial instruments.

7:34 This journey is supported and secured by robust system infrastructure with a powerful CRM platform, cybersecurity and anti fraud protection features, and a robust risk management framework. Also, it is important to note our scalable and reliable system architecture and platforms capabilities, which cater for our customers' trading activities. The evidence of our success is in our numbers on Slide 10. As you can see, we have consistently delivered growth and value on all financial and operational metrics over a long period of time.

8:15 We have further added to this track record in 2021, as highlighted on Slide 11. Our strategic road map continues to be based on expanding our core product offering, launching new products and deepening engagement with our customers. We made progress in each of these areas in 2021. We made ongoing investment in our core product offering of CFDs with further expansion in the range of features, functionality and instrument and product enhancements for customers. In line with our strategic goals, we also successfully launched a new proprietary shared unit platform PLUS500 LTD, which includes over 1,500 financial instruments comprising of the world's most popular equities, we executed our first ever acquisition of Cunningham Commodities, a regulated futures commission merchant and Cunningham Trading Systems, a technology trading platform provider.

9:18 As a result, we have immediately expanded our geographic footprint and product offering in the significantly growing but underpenetrated U. S. Retail credit market in futures and options for futures. We will continue to invest in future growth through further organic investment and by actively targeting additional acquisitions as well as by activating potential strategic partnerships to further drive our strategic position as a global multi asset strength group. I will now hand over to Elad to take you through our operational performance. Thanks, David, and good morning, everyone. Our strong performance during the year outlined on Slide 13 was well ahead of pre pandemic levels and driven by our ongoing success in customer retention, monetization and activation.

10:10 This ensured that we maintain continued high customer engagement, including a high level of active customers on our platform. This was fundamentally achieved as a result of the scalability of our business and our robust system architecture, which enables our platforms to handle tens of millions of transactions every year. In 2021, for example, we seamlessly and efficiently managed over 57,000,000 customer trades on our platforms with consistent service delivery maintained for our customers despite many significant waves of demand, which ramps up at very short notice. Customer income, our key underlying growth driver, was around $7.00 $3,000,000 demonstrating the high quality revenue and earnings streams of our business.

11:00 Client deposit, a key measure of our customer confidence and trust in PLUS100 remained very strong at around $2,100,000,000 This operational performance translated into excellent financial results on Slide 14, highlighting our clear strategic approach and robust business model.

11:22 Total revenue was at the level of $118,700,000 EBITDA was at the level of $387,100,000 and margins were around 54%. This drove cash conversion to 99 percent, helping us to end the year with cash balances of $750,000,000 up from $594,000,000 at the end of last year. With the business remaining debt free, as has been the case since its inception and following our excellent financial performance in 2021, PLUS500 remains in an outstanding financial position from which to invest in sustainable long term growth and continue to deliver value for shareholders.

12:10 Now I will run through the progress we made to further develop each of our product offerings during the year, starting with our core product on Slide 15. CFDs remain an attractive product for customers around the world as well as offering the ability for customers to trade and leverage and to access market liquidity. Our product offering is aligned with regulatory requirements in the countries in which we operate, ensuring customer protection and education through elements like our free unlimited demo account and negative balance protection. With our offering, customers have the comfort that they are trading on attractive commercial terms, and they can access everything they need through one multichannel solution.

12:58 With a long track record in innovating our CFD platform, we offer customers a wide range of financial instruments and asset classes on a global basis. We continued to add more instruments, features, and analysis tools to our core product offering during 2021 to help further deepen customer engagement. Feature growth of our core product offering will be driven by further expansion of our reach and footprint through entering new markets, further developing our technology, including the launch of new associated technologies, launching new instruments, and enhancing our offer.

13:40 On the next slide, you can see how our core product track record has enabled us to achieve leadership positions across certain key markets. According to InvestmentRent, we remain the largest CFD provider in Germany and Spain. We were also ranked as the fastest growing trading platform in The UK and the most chosen CFD platform for mobile app in both Australia and Singapore. We also have a leading position in both app installs and ranking.

14:14 On slide 17, you can see that there is a substantial untapped customer demand potentially available outside of our current geographic footprint. We will continue to target new potential markets to launch our core product offering through obtaining operating licenses in those markets, either organically or via acquisitions. Current target markets include various countries in The Americas, Asia and The Middle East with new regulated markets in which we do not currently operate and where there is a huge growth potential being a particular focus. Slide 18 gives some context on the growth outlook for our futures and options and futures product offering both in The U. S. And globally.

15:03 There were record derivative volumes traded last year, 50% of which were futures contracts and 75% of which were commodities and equity futures. In addition, crypto continued to move into mainstream with, for example, the launch of Ether, Micro Ether, and Micro Bitcoin futures by the CME last year. We believe that this is a major strategic opportunity for PLUS500 as we look to expand in this significant potential market, which is being driven by the substantial management focus and continued investment in technology and people.

15:43 Supported by a clear regulatory framework, PLUS500 is a real opportunity to be a technology disruptor in this market, where the competitive environment is fragmented, the utilization of technology is relatively limited, and the range of asset classes for customers to access is becoming increasingly broad and accessible. On Slide 19, you can see how we plan to disrupt this market. With this integration of Cunningham and CTS now well underway, we have already recruited a number of R and D specialists with a specific focus on leveraging our best in class technology to optimize the acquirers. Ultimately, this will enable us to deliver market access to the millions of potential US customers looking for new trading opportunities and ideas.

16:40 We can also cater for higher potential trading volume as a result of our strong financial foundation and balance sheet.

16:49 We are therefore very confident that we will be able to offer accessible futures and options in future products to a mass retail audience, delivering on a major market opportunity for our business. I will now hand back to David. Thanks a lot. Onto our new shared learning platform PLUS500 Invest on the next slide. This product offering provides more diversification, access a customer retention tool and gives us access to new marketing opportunities. At this early stage, the product is already live on over 15 countries across Europe and was recently launched as a dedicated mobile app for Android. With continued organic investment being made in PLUS500 Invest, it will be rolled out soon on iOS and in additional target markets in 2022.

17:42 New equities and ETFs will be added, helping to drive the further expansion of the group's product range in the future. Slide 21 provides some highlights on the main developments of our technology during the year. For those who are not familiar with our business model, let me say that PLUS500 is a technology company with a high performance, entrepreneurial culture and a strong track record of more than thirteen years of developing the most innovative technologies in our space. On the back of our plan to incrementally invest approximately $50,000,000 in our R and D capability between 2021 and 2023, we continue to invest in this area during the year.

18:29 This was evidenced by our ongoing recruitment of talented engineers, programmers, web designers, and product managers at our R and D centers in Israel. Also, during the year, the operations team implemented additional technologies to enable new payment methods and develop additional tools to support product launches and partner improvements in customer service. We continue to invest in systems architecture to support customer requirements. The implementation of Google Cloud Services provides further flexibility, security, and scale to the platforms, additional server capacity

19:10 and redundancy, as well as enhanced data analysis, data processing and business intelligence capabilities. Our platforms have consistently delivered the capacity to support significant volumes, including the multiple volume spikes, which are rapidly and sometimes instantly risen on demands in recent years. All this activity ensures that PLUS500 continues to lead the industry across the mobile and tablet space. Over 83 percentages of our CFD related revenue were generated from mobile or tablet devices, and more than 79 percentages of CFD related customer trade takes place on mobile or tablet services in 2021.

20:00 Moving to slide '22 on KPIs by region. Importantly, all metrics remains well ahead of pre pandemic levels. Our active customer base remained robust at over 407,000 supported by another strong year of new customers onboarded of over 196,000.

20:22 The development of our customer base over recent years has been driven by continued significant investment in our marketing technology as well as an ongoing focus on initiatives to drive customer retention, monetization, and activation. Average revenue per user in 2021 was strong at over $1,760, while average user acquisition cost was at the level of $877 with ongoing investment in strategic market

20:55 to help us attract high value customers. Average user acquisition cost is expected to rise steadily over time as our customer profile continues to shift to higher value customers and as we start to invest in attracting customers to the new products and target customers in strategic geographies. Elad will now take you through our marketing investment starting on Slide 23. Thanks, David. We have a multilayered and diverse approach to marketing, fundamentally driven by our technology. With the support of key strategic partners such as Google, we operate multiple marketing initiatives in paid search and organic search, as well as running numerous content marketing and PR campaign.

21:42 I'd like to know that PLUS500 is considered to be a leader within the marketing technology space, and our superior technology is being optimized every year to deliver continuous improvement in our results.

21:57 The value of our marketing strategy can be seen by the revenue trajectory of our long term customer cohorts outlined in the graph on Slide 24, which shows cumulative revenue per customer from the date of their initial deposit to the end of twenty twenty one. You can see that twenty fifteen customer cohort on the long guard blue line has generated total revenue of around 5,000 per customer on an accumulative basis over seven years, while 2015 AWAC was at the level of approximately $1,200 demonstrating the strong ROI delivered over the years. This highlights the long term value delivered by our approach to an investment in market.

22:45 The next slide shows the return achieved from our investment in marketing technology in recent years, with each bar chart showing cumulative returns from annual customer cohorts. For example, the graph on the right shows that we have already generated revenue of $444,000,000 in two years from the investment of $221,000,000 we made in 2020, with much more to come in the future. I will now hand back to David.

23:16 Thanks a lot. Over the last year, we have placed an increased emphasis and investment on developing new retention and monetization technologies. On Slide 26, you can see some examples of initiatives related to these technologies, many of which were introduced in 2021 that we are currently running. This include tailored and multichannel customer notification strategies to drive retention, conversion, and build trust with customers.

23:47 We have also launched a new premium account for customers, which offers features such as professional paying webinars, weekly analysis research, and additional tools. We also make sure customers have a sight of important news and market events, which can present them with compelling trading opportunities. Turning to Slide 27, which shows the average position duration on our platform since 2017 against the total number of new open positions. You can see that in 2021, the average position duration increased against a record year in 2020. This is clear evidence that our retention strategies are having the desired effect and that our customer trust our offering to cater their long term trading needs.

24:37 The next slide is further evidence of our success in customer retention in our core business. As you can see, our customer relationship remains high quality and long term, with nearly 80 percentages of our revenue for 2021 coming from customers trading with us for more than one year. This strong level of customer loyalty gives us great confidence that our customers are using our platform on a sustainable long term basis and is the consequence of our continuous investment in our product offering, our consistently innovative mindset and our ongoing customer centric approach. With these factors in mind, we see significant long term potential from the 2021 customer cohorts going forward.

25:26 I will now hand back to Elad. Thanks, David. I will now discuss risk management and regulation starting on Slide 30.

25:36 We have a robust risk management framework with three lines of defense, which is implemented across the business with ultimate oversight of the board.

25:47 We aim to ensure that our risk exposures are aligned with our risk appetite across our product portfolio, with market risk being managed through internalization, we targeted hedging as took place in 2021 to cover any remaining exposure, which may be breached predefined risk limit. This is supported by real time monitoring technology embedded in the group's platforms, which is driven by specific, tailored algorithm and sophisticated technology. This approach aligns our interest with our customers, helping to deliver a more stable revenue stream over time. As evidence of this, our revenue represents around 98% of customer income that has been generated since PLUS500's IPO in 2013.

26:37 We're currently investigating and testing a more holistic automated hedging capability, and we'll provide information on this approach if and when it is implemented. Finally, on this slide, it is worth noting that at the current time, our view is that approximately $450,000,000 of our capital is being retained for regulatory and other purposes, including working capital, hedging and clearing requirements.

27:07 Clearly, with around $750,000,000 in cash balances at the year end of last year, we had substantial headroom over and above this required level of capital. Now turning to regulation on the next slide. We thought it would be interesting to show you the established global regulatory network in which we operate across our product offering.

27:33 EOSCO, that's the International Organization of Securities Commission, sets global regulatory guidelines and approaches, and these are implemented by its members, including each regional regulator as applicable. PLUS500 has maintained a highly robust, customer centric approach to compliance, supported by our expertise in the applicable regulatory standards and our long standing relationships with regional regulators in the markets and industries in which we operate. With an established global regulatory network outlined on the next slide, we remain well positioned for potential future changes to the regulatory environment. Global regulatory alignment has continued in the market in which we operate, with recent regulatory changes being mirrored across various territories.

28:24 The most recent regulatory changes in the CFD industry were implemented by the Australian Security and Investment Commission in Australia in early twenty twenty one. We are supportive of and complying with these changes, which are expected to enhance the CLV trading landscape and provide additional protection for customers. The impact of these regulatory changes on our operational and financial performance is in line with our initial expectations. Our portfolio of operating licenses was further strengthened with the addition of a new license in Estonia, granted by the Estonian Financials Provision Authority last year. This new license will further support our business across European market in our core product offering and is supported by the establishment of a new local operating subsidiary in Estonia.

29:19 Our portfolio of licenses is an increasingly valuable asset for PLUS500, given its scarcity and the growing complexity of obtaining new licenses.

29:30 We're currently actively looking to broaden this portfolio with applications in process for several licenses in additional market. I will now hand back to David. Thanks a lot. The next slide covers our progress in the areas of governance and sustainability during the year. There were a number of independent nonexecutive director appointments made to the board during the year, including the appointment of the renowned global economist and business leader, professor Jacob Frankel, as chairman of the board. These appointments have ensured that the representation of women on the board is well ahead of the 33 percentages target set by the FTSE Women Leaders Review framework.

30:20 In addition, through their global networks of contact, these appointments have enabled greater access to the new growth markets, in particular, The US. We remain focused on our key priorities in ESG, in particular customer care and organizational culture. Customer care and protection are supported by measures such as negative balance protection and maintenance margin protection on our CFD platform. We continue to introduce educational and training tools and features on our platforms to help inform customers of the potential risk involved in trading. On organizational culture, we operate working environment, which empowers ongoing improvements in employee development through training, learning, and career progression.

31:11 This culture has helped to drive employee attraction and retention and has ultimately led to enhancements in the capability of our technology. I will now hand back to Elad. Thanks, David. Now moving to the financial overview, starting on Slide 35. Since our IPO in 2013, we have generated a total of $2,400,000,000 cash from operations, supported by an average operating cash conversion of 99% since that time. This has supported our approach to shareholder returns for which we have delivered around $1,400,000,000 through dividend and share buyback. We are delighted to announce today on further attractive shareholder returns of $200,200,000 for the year.

32:01 This includes dividend payment of $120,000,000 which comprise of a final dividend of $37,800,000 and a special dividend of $22,200,000 both of which we announced today and are to be distributed in July 2022. In addition, we distributed an interim dividend of $60,000,000 in November 2021. Our shareholder returns for 2021 also include share buyback programs of $80,200,000 This comprised of a new program announced today to purchase up to $55,000,000 of the company shares, which includes a special program of $29,800,000 The program of $12,600,000 was announced in August 2021 in respect of h one twenty twenty one with an additional program of $12,600,000 announced in October 2021 as part of full year 2021 final program.

33:06 The special dividend and the special share buyback program are directly related to the benefits relating to PLUS500 accreditation as preferred technological enterprise by the Israeli tax authority. Our shareholder return policy is to return at least 50 of net profits to shareholders as normal return on a half yearly basis with at least 50% of this distribution being made by way of dividend. In addition, the Board will continue to consider paying special dividend and conducting special buybacks at year end. Now let's look at the financials for the year, starting with our income statement on Slide 36. Revenue was driven by consistent levels of capture incomes during the year, which resulted in a strong EBITDA performance, which was also supported by our lean and flexible cost base.

34:02 Net profit was at the level of $310,600,000, and basic earnings per share was at the level of $3.06 supported by the updated corporate tax rate of 12% or PLUS500 following the achievement of the preferred technological enterprise accreditation, which has now been successfully extended up to and including the year of 2026. Our lean and flexible cost base on Slide 37 remain well controlled. 72% of our costs were variable and therefore positively correlated to enhanced performance and higher volume. Marketing investment remained at a relatively high level as planned at around $172,100,000 and we'll continue to make to ensure that we can capture opportunities to drive attractive return on investment.

34:57 Total SG and A expenses were at the level of $134,100,000 the major element of which were this marketing investment as well as processing costs and payroll expenses. Turning to the balance sheet on Slide 38. Our business has never trade any debt and our balance sheet remains very healthy. PLUS500, therefore, remains in a great position to continue to invest in growth opportunities and business continuity. Slide 39 covers the cash flow. PLUS500 remained highly cash generated, supported by low level of capital expenditure due to our automated processes and and technological capabilities with 99% operating cash conversion achieved in 2021.

35:49 With net cash generated from operations of $405,500,000 and after the completion of the share buyback program totaling to $64,900,000 and dividend payment of $144,900,000 cash balances at the end of the year increased significantly to $749,500,000 I will now hand back to David. Thanks a lot. Let's now look at the outlook on Slide 41. The Board continues to expect that PLUS500 will deliver sustainable growth from all of our product offering over the medium to long term. This expectation is supported by our significant operational and financial momentum over recent years, which validates PLUS500 strategic roadmap.

36:39 Future growth will be enabled by ongoing investment in developing our position as a global multi asset Fintech group, in particular, through further organic investment by actively targeting additional acquisitions and through potential strategic partnerships. The positive momentum achieved in recent years has continued to date in 2022, driven by the underlying strength of customers' income. Consequently, the Board remains confident about PLUS500 prospect for 2022. So that's it from us. We will be happy to take your questions now. That's great. Thank you, David, Ilhan. Thank you very much indeed for updating investors this morning. Ladies and gentlemen, please do continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. I just want the company to take a few moments to review those questions submitted already. I'd like to remind you that recording of this presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your Investor Meet company dashboard.

37:39 David Ladd, obviously, you can see there is a number of questions that have been submitted by investors today. So thank you firstly to all those investors that have taken time to submit questions. If I may, I'd like to hand back to Rob Gurner, Head of Investor Relations, to manage through those Q and A. Rob, if I could ask you to read out the questions and say who they're from, and then I'll pick up from you at the end. Thanks, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for the great questions. I've tried to consolidate some of them. There's some similar themes and issues to be covered. So I'm trying to consolidate some into to generic questions. If we can start with acquisitions, David and Aladd, if you could discuss the approach to acquisitions, And do you expect acquisitions to live to deliver the same return on equity as has historically been delivered by the business?

38:27 Absolutely. So as as you know, recently, we have acquired Cunningham Commodities and CTS, both companies in The States to allow us to enter the futures and futures options and futures in The States. The acquisition was quite moderate. Basically, there are 63 FCMs in The States, and this allows us to put their hands on one of these licenses, which relatively not too high cost. This is the kind of the type of acquisitions that we are looking for, usually bolt on, but not limited to bolt on acquisitions, to allow us assets as licenses and technology to enter new products and new geographies.

39:18 So we are currently looking at potential looking for and looking at potential acquisitions that will allow us either in both, to enter with the CFDs to new geographies as well, to enter and to introduce new products to the market. That's in general. Of course, that we evaluate everything. We have many options. There are always many acquisitions available, to be done on the table. We are looking at this with our advisers, with the board, evaluating the needs. Of course, that we are not willing to pay non realistic prices, but rather to pay the multiplier similar to the one that we are trading in.

40:11 And with these factors in mind, we are, actively looking for acquisitions. Yeah. I additional questions? Rob, can you hear us okay? Okay. Well, let me if I may, I may jump in and ask some of these questions in in the meantime. There's a couple of questions, and I think as as Rob previously did that I probably merged. But one of the questions that we have here is from Stuart Kay. When you strip out the cash required to operate the business, the p is about five times to 22 with a high payout ratio.

40:58 Why do you think the shares are so lowly rated? So obviously hi, good morning. So very much, agree with you that, multiple is quite, low, as an understatement, more specifically, when you take, the cash reserve. I believe, the company has changed its strategy and agenda, approximately two years ago. And currently, also, the market assess and is within the process of, to accumulate, that level of data and the the the change of the vision and the strategy of the company. And it means that a couple of years ago, we changed also the infrastructure of, our next steps, I e, we expanded our development into new product.

41:48 We went for the development of the, invest of the shared dealing product. We went for, with an understanding to acquire additional businesses and to expand into other verticals. Before then, the view was, just to distribute a chunky amount of the capital of the company without much focus on the growth with new verticals. And that, was changed, while we also engaged McKinsey, a couple of years ago. We worked, very hard on a five year plan, including among others, the expansion plan into new geographies, new products, and where we would like to be in a few years' time.

42:34 And very much, we we deliver what we put in front of, the management and the board, I e, since, we fulfilled or finalized that plan, we indeed acquired those two companies in The US. We, got additional license in Estonia, which will enable us, very much to have additional redundancy also in Europe following the Brexit. We're currently with outstanding applications in other geographies across the globe if it's in Asia, if it's in The Middle East, and very much within some other jurisdictions, including among others, we're looking for the expansion into new products. And and very much this is something that, is currently being distributed from messaging to various shareholders.

43:26 Yes. Indeed, the COVID period was a time that, we couldn't meet face to face a lot of investors, but we did. And we are currently in a very intense process also to have more meetings face to face on on the road in order to bring across new investors into the register and also ones that appreciate, the uniqueness of PLUS, I e, its technological, edge and also the growth opportunities. And when we are saying growth, it's not slogans as may be applicable for other companies. When we're looking for the track record of PLUS500 over the last thirteen years, we out delivered year by year. And when you're looking at the numbers, the KPIs, all of them are very strong. We have a very solid and strong level of fundamentals if it's from the financial operational KPI and more specifically, from the technological edge that we bring to the table.

44:30 That's great. Thank you very much indeed. If I may, I'll turn to a question from Simon C. Simon asks, are there any geographies you would like to have further market penetration in? And what are the barriers you see that need to be removed to enable you to achieve further growth? Yes. So absolutely, obvious to say that U. S. Is the largest market that we are not or we weren't operating until now. So beside of the futures, we are looking at potential additional products to offer in The States in order to create a market over there. Beside of that, we are aiming to Asia, specifically Japan, and additionally countries in The Middle East and specifically UAE.

45:20 We are actively working on licenses in these jurisdictions. This is with CFDs. And without CFDs, obviously, there are additional product that we are looking at to enter additional markets. Thank you. Just regarding the barrier, sorry, I didn't answer. The barrier usually is a time barrier. To obtain a license may take time, sometimes may take years. We are already actively working on licensing in few jurisdictions. It's a long process also looking at potential acquisitions to obtain licenses.

46:08 This is the main thing. Beside of that, PLUS500 has our own marketing abilities, onboarding and most of all the technology to allow us bypass these these barriers whenever we enter. So for us, the the main barrier is to get the license to operate. The rest is something that we know how to do and and we have done in over 50 countries over the years. Great. Thank you. Can you talk about The US and how the business is performing there so far? Is it is it to your expectations to date? Yeah. Absolutely. We've just conducted acquisitions a few months ago.

46:55 We are already actively working on the enhancement of the businesses and enlarging the base of customers and introducing a new platform. So, it was split into two. We have, bought Cunningham commodities. This is the FCM. Cunningham commodities, a business that works, mostly with IBs. We are working to improve, to recruit new IBs, and also, to create a direct market of retails using a new application that we will release to the market soon. In addition to this, there is CTS, which is a technology company with a platform named T4, which is offered as white label to other FCMs out there.

47:42 We are also working on the improvement of these to be able basically to offer better product to IBs sorry, to FCMs. In addition, we have purchased 10 out of 11 seats required to have a full membership in the CME. Once we'll have this, we will buy the last one soon. Once you'll have this, we'll be able to do the basically to offer the clearing to other FCMs very reasonable prices among the lowest in the market and also be a large player in this area. So everything is being progressed very fast.

48:29 We have allocated a new operational manager from the headquarters that is now sits there operating there. We have a few teams dedicated for this and all is working by the plan. Thank you. A question here about, you know, I think we've covered this in the presentation, but can you just talk a little bit about our competitive advantages and what sort of milestones should investors be looking for when when tracking performance in the future? Yeah. So absolutely, PLUS500, since the beginning, we're the most technological company in our field. We offer the the most intuitive platform out there for many years.

49:15 As a technology company, we developed everything in house. So if it is the, the marketing machine, which is a dedicated platform, which is connected directly using APIs to most marketing venues out there, including Google, Facebook, and other networks. And we do all the bidding using AI and BI automatically and manage to bring customers with a great ROI over many years now. If it is the the onboarding of customers or the verification of customers, this is being done by our system. If it is the the payment processing, all of the management of the transactions, all the cashier infrastructure is being managed by using a platform that we built. We're not using a third party solution.

50:11 By the way, this can be each of these elements can be a stand alone company if if we'll decide, but it's not the core business. But, this is great technology that allows us to optimize and do great things. If it is the risk management infrastructure, all of the management of the trading itself, if it's the CRM that we have developed it internally, so we have one CRM for all system. It's it's self in house developed. It's connected to the trading platform, to the risk management, to the customer support, to the marketing. Everything is within one database, one brain that controls it all. If it's the trading platform themselves, so we developed everything. It's our own proprietary technology.

50:58 That means that we can optimize it. That means that when we get licenses and onboard new country, we just make the adjustments to the regulatory funnel, and we can onboard the country and the customers very quickly. I I think that, in general, if I summarize, is the technology. The way we are doing thing, we are very a thing. We we are not a heavy company with thousands of employees. We we try to be very efficient with the level of employees. Everything is by the way, most most areas are being managed by engineers.

51:43 For example, if you look at our marketing department, if you compare it to the peers, they have marketing agents, we have marketing engineers. All of the employees that are managing the marketing campaigns are all engineers, the the the product team, operations, even the heads of the customer support, all engineers, and it gives us a different ability and and way of looking at things and doing the optimization. We are doing AB testings for everything. So we'll never just change a button or release a feature just because we believe that it's good. We'll always release it to a test group. We'll do AB testing, sometimes ABCD testings. And only then once we've proven that it's efficient, we will release it and it's correct for everything. Even the customer support tickets, the queries are being analyzed using quality control team.

52:49 Every button and color of the website of the platform, everything is being analyzed. I think that's in a nutshell. Perfect. Thank you. I think there's two or three more questions to come through. What lots of people are asking about capital returns and and and broadly, how how does the board think about cap capital returns to shareholders in the context of growth as well? And can you talk a little bit about the balance between dividends and buybacks on that basis? Sure. So very much as when we went out as a public company back in the days, almost nine years ago, we went with a shareholder returns of 50%. Since then, we obviously, upgrade to 60%. And, last year, we also took it to the level of 50% back in order also to support the growth element of the business as just mentioned.

53:43 We're consulting with our financial advisers and have a deep discussion together with the board and the management for the needs of the capital onwards. Obviously, we have, the the benefit to have our chairman, professor Jacob Frankel, who was the chairman of JPMorgan Chase International and also the governor of the Bank of Israel for many years. When we're assessing the shareholder returns policy, we're taking the composition, first of all, of the actual capital needs of the company, where the company would like to be at and where it would like to be positioned in a few years' time, the actual kind of allocations of the capital as the first layer. And secondly, of course, we do engage with our stakeholders, with our shareholders.

54:29 We do hear and appreciate the different views, And therefore, we also analyze the composition of the dividend, including, among others, the share buyback. I do believe, that, you could see that there is a great level of support and belief of the board and the management in the company through the acquisition of hundreds of millions of dollars of, the buyback plan over the last few years. We truly believe that the company is undervalued and where, the company is, it may enable us, of course, to continue to acquire our own shares in a discount. But, of course, this is, something that, we would like to be accompanied with actually continued investment within the growth opportunities. So as for the refer reference point of the $450,000,000 that we've had yesterday morning, That includes, among others, of course, the regulatory capital itself as the first layer, then, of course, the working capital that we believe is required for us to be on the with the front foot to optimize the level of spend if markets are with the hype as we saw in 2020 and also within other, time periods.

55:39 And, of course, other allocations as for hedging and clearing. From the clearing perspective, there is a necessity, and there is a benefit also to have that extra capital in order to expand our footprint within The US operation. And we already can see that once we are kind of investing and injecting that level of capital with our US subsidiary, the the different parties as for IPs and other FCM that may clear with us their transaction. They get extra level of comfort. They would like to engage with us, and one makes the other, I e, the capital also enable us to bring more business. So the composition is very much being determined on a few parameters while we are very much with the view to continue to expand the the operation.

56:30 Thank you. And I think we've got two final questions, if we could just finish with these. Firstly, a quick update on the legal case in Israel. And secondly, can you just discuss the benefits of the Estonia license that was was gained last week? So as as for the Israeli matter, indeed, that litigation came into force in 2018. It is very much important to say that it refers solely to the Israeli subsidiary, which accounts approximately 1% of the group's operation, group's revenues, and so. Therefore, the potential impact if, by all, it will be approved, by court is very, very minimal. And, also, when the lawyers, including among others, the auditors, I e, PWC, are assessing that all provisions already within the account, very much, the the potential impact is limited, and we do believe that we acted a 100% in line with what we had to be in line with.

57:35 Having said so, we'll enable, of course, the court to assess the case within itself. And when there is and will be a conclusion, we'll, of course, update the market while we don't see any potential meaningful impact to come out of it. The Estonian, matter or the license which we obtained last week was a a very fruitful result on the back of approximately a couple of years where And nowadays, just to refer also to previous kind of discussion on barrier, time is one, but also the regulators and the regulatory framework nowadays is very much different to the one to be historically. And we do see that there is a merit to be in our scale position, I e, to, have more than a few assets to behave and to accommodate regulatory framework as PLUS500 do across the globe. And the regulators appreciate it very much. We don't have any regulatory issues outstanding, and and it's not by coincidence.

58:40 Our very skilled people all across the globe is the one to lead that way, including all of our lead advisers. The Estonian regulatory license will enable us to have redundancy in Europe. We do believe that redundancy is important, and we had that level of redundancy until the UK Brexit referendum obviously took place last year. We do believe always to have, that level of redundancy is essential, not because there is something outstanding problematic, but rather it's one of the merits and the benefits of the company. Including among others, the Estonian framework is very much advanced and also from a technological means, the regulator is within a very good position.

59:31 David, Iland, thank you very much indeed for your presentation today for being so generous with your time, particularly given I know you have a very full institutional roadshow. So thank you once again. And And thank you to all the investors that submitted questions today. And of course, the company will review all questions submitted today. We'll publish those responses on the platform, and we'll send you an email when that's ready for your review. David, I know, Ilad, I know investor feedback is particularly important to the company, and I'll shortly redirect to investors to provide you with their thoughts and expectations. But perhaps before doing so, David, I could just ask you for a few closing comments to wrap up with. Yes, absolutely. So first of all, I thank you all for attending today and for the questions. Maybe to sum up, would just would like to say that during recent years and specifically in 2021, we further strengthened our strategic position with a strong performance last year, with a positive start at 2022.

1:00:32 It leaves us well placed to deliver sustainable growth over the medium to long term. Both Elad and myself, we started a new journey two years ago with my appointment. We changed the the strategic thinking and the vision of the company, and we have delivered a lot since then with acquisitions, with the new products, and we will keep pushing and delivering. Thank you all. That's great, David. Ilad, thank you once again from the Thank very much, guys. Thank you so much. Could I please ask investors not to close this session as we'll now automatically redirect you for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order the company can better understand your views and expectations? I'm sure this will be greatly valued and welcomed by the company. On behalf of the management team of PLUS500, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation.

1:01:22 That now concludes today's session. So good morning to you all.