Warsaw Stock Exchange Aktie

Okay. Good afternoon, and welcome to the Warsaw Stock Exchange Group conference call covering the results of the second quarter and first half of 2026. Thank you for joining us today. Let me introduce today's speakers. We are joined by Tomasz Bardzilowski, Chief Executive Officer of the Warsaw Stock Exchange; Marcin Rulnicki, Chief Financial Officer of Warsaw Stock Exchange; and [indiscernible], Deputy Chief Executive Officer of Polish Power Exchange or TGE.

We will begin with a presentation of the group's financial results and key business developments followed by a question-and-answer session.

Without further ado, let me hand the floor to Tomasz.

Yes. Hello, everybody, and welcome our earnings call. Our results in the second quarter and also in the first half were obviously driven by the very strong cash equity market. Our main indices are up around 30% year-to-date and this has been reflected in the strong activity. Turnover in cash equities was up 15% year-on-year in the second quarter and 27% in the first half.

On the other hand, we have observed falling volumes and turnover in our energy trading in second quarter. In electricity, it was down 4%. And in gas, down 28%, followed a very strong first quarter. We will talk a bit more about the users behind [ Special & Gas ] segment in the presentation. Overall, our consolidated revenue went up by 8% in the second quarter driven by 13% growth in financial market and a 7% decline in commodity market. Year-to-date, in the first half, the growth in revenues is 17% year-on-year. CapEx -- sorry, OpEx growth was 10%, a slight decline versus first quarter. Adjusted operating profit up almost 4% in the second quarter and adjusted net profit up 1% in the second quarter to PLN 58 million. After the first half, the net profit is up 18% to PLN 128 million.

Here you see the performance of our main indices. Warsaw has been one of the global leaders in terms of performance in the first half with around 30% growth in main indices, as I said. And heroically, we've celebrating the record high level of WIG20 after almost 20 years as its highest historical highest level. However, this is an index, which is excluding dividends on a total return basis, it's up over 100% over the last 2 years. So strong performance in large caps and also mid-caps in Poland. Equities turnover, as I said, up 15% in the second quarter, slight, but almost slight deceleration in the -- from the first quarter. However, when you look at -- and this is what we show in the lower chart when you see the performance and the volume growth in July and August, you see around 44% growth, which, of course, makes us a bit more optimistic in terms of our revenues in the third quarter.

When we -- we are also quite happy to see that our trading velocity ratio remains above 50%, placing also as one of the most liquid exchanges in Europe, obviously, on market capitalize basis. We are very happy to see increased IPO activity, 10 new debuts on the main market in the year-to-date versus just 3 in the whole 2025. And in particularly, the value of ECM transactions quite high, almost PLN 20 billion year-to-date. These are the SPO so capital increases and ABB. And this is almost -- this is almost 80% growth versus last year. Overall, 35 transactions concluded on the market year-to-date. And also, we are happy to see that we've reversed a declining trend in terms of number of listed companies. So the number of new debts was higher than that of the listings, and we have right now, 403 companies listed on the main market. Also happy to see a increase in free float driven by especially BP transactions in large capital stocks. The free float is now around 54%, and this compares with less than 50% a few years ago.

Good activity also on the corporate board market on our catalyst market, the value of nontreasury bond issues close to PLN 30 billion year-to-date, 160 new issues [indiscernible] to trading year-to-date. And overall, the value of bonds listed at PLN 175 million, which is a 23% increase versus the same period of last year. We continue to make efforts to realize our bond -- corporate board market and our activity aim at a simplified issuance process, increased liquidity including also an obligation to have a market maker for corporate bonds above a certain threshold and also lower regulatory barriers. And of course, our strategic -- one of the strategic priorities is to attract retail investors to the exchange and we do it also through widening of our ETF offer. We've been very successful on this point, especially in the first half in January, there was just 17 ETFs listed on the market. Now we have 45 and hoping to cross 50 ETFs over the next few months, 25 new listings just year-to-date.

And also here, we show on the chart to the right that overall, the inflows and investments of Polish investors into equities in the year-to-date are around PLN 5 billion. However, only 70% of those investments are on ETF listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. So we believe that we have still allows to do in terms of increasing our share and overall volumes in ETFs on the market. And this is also why we are expanding our offer of our indices over the last few weeks, we had 3 new indices in that market. Next week, we will publish a new index in our alternative marketing [indiscernible]. And also, we are working on a new index for innovative companies, companies with high R&D spending.

So that's on the main issues on our corporate developments. Right now, I'll pass to Marcin to guide you through our details of our results.

T

Hank you. Hello, everyone. Let me walk you through details of our financial results in the next few slides, starting with the summary of P&L, as usual. So [indiscernible], looking at the revenue, it was PLN 155.4 million in Q2 '26 after almost 8% growth year-on-year. The drivers of this growth were in the financial market, that's pretty much the same drivers as usually. So cash equity trading, very good performance in Armenia and also higher sales of market data. At the same time, in the commodity market, we observed a small decline in Q2 and mainly because of low activity of investors in the natural gas trading and subsequently, the clearing of transactions on gas also went down compared to the previous year.

We can see a growth in other revenue, and this is like a market, including a number of different activities, but it's just accumulation of a few smaller sources of revenue, and I do not expect that this growth is something to remain for the following quarters. Usually, in this line, we present, for example, revenue from our subsidiary logistics from renting rooms in the Warsaw Stock Exchange building and other activities, which are noncorrected just like a coincidence that we had accumulation of these in Q2 we will be back at the regular levels in the following quarters.

In the operating costs, the growth was 10.2%, almost PLN 100 million in Q2. We have dedicated slides where we explain details. But this growth in revenue and a bit higher growth in operating expenses resulted in a small increase in our cost income ratio. It went up to 64.2%. And it's 130 basis points higher than the year before. We had small adjustments because of nonrecurring transactions with impact both on our operating income and net profit line. They were the result of recalculating the provisions for a potential return of grants received for noncore projects, but their impact on both lines, it's not significant. Therefore, adjusted operating profit was almost PLN 55 million after 4%, 3.8% growth, and EBITDA was almost PLN 63 million, 0.6% growth, speaking about adjusted numbers here.

What happened below the operating profit line, we had a slightly higher share in profits of associates, which is, of course, the depository activity and lower result on financial activities, and this is due to lower interest rates, we can use to invest our excess cash. Maybe 1 more thing to mention here is that our return on equity, ratio went up to 20.1% I think this is -- it hasn't been above 20% level for 7 years. So this reflects our improving results over time.

Speaking about the revenue structure, nothing surprising here compared to the previous slide. Maybe one thing to comment is the share of revenue, which is not related to trading activity. This nontrading revenue went up to 35.6% in Q2 '26 compared to 31.3% the year before. Now speaking about the trading-related revenue, so the biggest part of revenue within the financial market segment. As we mentioned before, the driver for growth in this line of business was activity on cash equities. The revenue from this class of assets went up to PLN 58.4 million, 11.2% higher year-on-year. And this was following the higher activity of investors on cash equities on the market. So the turnover in on the market was PLN 151 billion, 15% up compared to the previous year. We had higher share of high-volume providers and market makers or liquidity providers. Their share in total turnover was close to 36%, 310 basis points higher than in Q2 '25. And this translated also to lower average fee per transaction. It went down by 3.7% and was at the level of 1.89 bps.

We had much higher turnover on ETFs, and this is good news. So ETFs in Q2 -- the turnover on ETFs in Q2 went up almost 90% year-on-year. And in the first half of the year, it was almost 140% higher than in the first 6 months of 2025. Of course, this turnover does not translate to significant revenue in the group yet, but we like the trend. In other business lines within financial markets we had growth in Information Services. We are used to, let's say, solid single-digit growth in this line of business and this is another quarter of good performance here. Maybe the growth rate looking at Q2 seems a bit lower, but please have a look at the first half of the year compared to 6 months of 2025 because in comparable data in '25, we had an adjustment in revenue recognition despite this growth rate looks lower.

In Armenia, we have still very good performance. The revenue from Armenia depository and the stock exchange goes up consistently. In Q2 '26, the revenue from depository activity was at 130% higher than the year before. And this is, let me say it again, due to revised higher fees for depository services that were implemented in July 2025. I'm mentioning this date, not without the reason because it means that Q2 '26 was the last quarter when we had this effect of lower base because of lower rates for services. From Q3 '26, we will be comparing to the same fees, the same rates on the organic reasons we'll be making the potential growth. Therefore, the growth rate will certainly go down.

At the same time, we are happy about the exchange activities, which are also generating more and more revenue. Of course, the numbers here are not significant yet, but we see higher activity of market participants especially in the corporate bond market in Armenia. Listing fees, stable single-digit growth and [indiscernible] prices here.

Now a few slides about the commodity market. I will ask Marius for comments to this.

Thank you, Marcin. Hello, everybody. Let me start with the electricity market. In Q2, electricity trading volumes reached 29 terawatt hours, down 4% year-on-year. The decline was mainly driven by the forward market forward volume for to 15 terawatt hours. The good news is that in Q3, we are already seeing recovery. But on the stock market, volumes continue to grow, increasing 15% year-on-year and the growth was supported by stronger activity on the international intraday and the head market. And also it is worth to mention that it was also supported by introduction of 15 minutes products on the first fixed thing.

Going to the gas trading. The gas trading volume reached 44 terawatt per hours in Q2. It went down 28% year-on-year. The decrease came mainly from the forward market which was 34% down, higher gas price reduced demand, especially for longer-term contracts. Additionally, we must remember at this point that there was a high base from the last year. At the same time, the gas spot market performed very well and volumes increased 18% year-on-year to 8.4 terawatt hours.

Let's go to the year. And this slide is -- it is a good illustration confirming the negative correlation between the prices and turnover on the gas market. The gas market is highly sensitive to the geopolitical developments, and it is often driven by them. And these events always have a significant impact on the commodity markets. But this year, has been particular dynamic, and it shows it has a very strong impact on our turnover on the gas market. And going to the next slide.

Yes. In Q2, revenue declined by 7%. However, for the first half year, it increased by nearly 5%. And passing to the main revenue lines, the trading stables revenue was down 80% year-on-year. Clearing revenue was down 12% year-on-year, and it's mainly due to the lower trading volumes in the gas forward market and a renewable certificates market. Other participants fee revenue increased by 23%. The growth was driven by higher [indiscernible] clearinghouse collateral system fees and a growing number of influencing customers. And finally, the register services revenue declined slightly by 1.4 million year-on-year. And it's key updates from the commodity market. Thank you.

Thank you, [ Marius ]. Let me take it from here and tell you a few comments about the operating expenses. So consolidated operating expenses level was PLN 99.8 million. The growth was 10.2% year-on-year. The personnel expenses were growing slightly slower than in previous quarters. The growth presented reported here was less than 6%. However, we still have some sources of this growth. We see increase in salaries and also in the number of employees in Armenia. That was a part of this project of expanding the business, part of the agreement with the Central Bank was that we will also strengthen the teams and investing in the infrastructure. So this is happening.

But this is also followed by a very dynamic growth in revenues as we observed in one of the previous slides. And also in the Warsaw Stock Exchange, we have growth in salaries and new employees, especially in IT teams. These costs were growing slightly slower in the previous quarters also because of very intensive works on awards development. And part of these personnel expenses were capitalized because of that. and we will see it when we go to CapEx market. The other source of growth was were external services. And here, we have 2, 3 major reasons. The first one are higher cost of IT-related services. Some of them are recurring and related to services that we buy in Software as a Service model to strengthen our IT infrastructure and security. Some of them are related to projects which are run right now at the Warsaw Stock Exchange and subsidiaries including the implementation of new solutions and this part will disappear with time.

In other external services, we have increased cost of advisory expenses and this is related mainly to Armenia and expansion of the business there. I mean, depository business, first of all. And also, the expenses related to market promotion and development, these costs grew as well in the second quarter of '26, also because of anniversaries that we had both in Armenia and in Warsaw in the same quarter. but these costs are nonrecurring, and they will not be repeated in the following quarters. Depreciation and amortization goes down. This is another quarter in a row when we observed this trend, and this is due to finalized amortization of UTP licenses and also no amortization of solutions, which were transferred to noncore companies, which were written off at the end of the year.

Anyway, the growth rate of our operating expenses at the level of 10.2% was unfortunately slightly higher than the growth rate of our revenue year-on-year, and this is the first quarter after, I think, 8 in a row that when we couldn't make this revenue change higher than the OpEx change. That's why also our cost income ratio went up to 64.2%. However, we are still within our strategic target of 65%.

In this slide, we are trying to understand the, let's say, underlying base operating expenses increase just to be able to refer to also our expected long-term business growth rate. And we identify costs which are associated with the growth, which is, let's say, extra or over the expectations. And the important elements here are additional costs in Armenia. PLN 3.4 million in Q2, and this is associated with this growth in revenues that we called a few slides back and also increase in transportation service costs. This is one of our subsidiaries where we offer logistics services and the growth in business there linearly translating into higher operating expenses.

Excluding these elements, the underlying OpEx increase was PLN 5.1 million in Q2. And this translates to 5.6% growth rate year-on-year. So this is to say, much closer to our long-term ambition. I mentioned CapEx. And when you look at capital expenditures in Q2 '26, there were PLN 17.3 million, 7.1% up year-on-year. And the increase comes from wards development expenses, yes. So our proprietary trading system which we are finalizing right now, PLN 10.5 million capitalized, and this is including a portion of personnel expenses contributing to this lower growth in this line in P&L. In other classes of assets, we see a small decline in Q2. In Q3, we still expect intensive work on the WATS. So there will be a high number in this position as well. And in Q4, this should go down, but at the same time, this is like a quarter we naturally have significant investments in equipment and other intangible assets. So I'm trying to make a point that in the second half of the year, we expect that our capital expenditures should be higher than in the first half of the year.

Speaking about WATS, as you know, the go-live date was postponed until the 5th of October. And because of that, we had to revise our budget for this project. The current expectation is that by the go-live date, we will spend PLN 173 million on the project, PLN 21 million out of this amount is already expensed in P&L or will be expensed in P&L by the date of go-live and the remaining PLN 152 million is capitalized and will be capitalized, and we will start amortization of this after the go-live date in October. And the slide about cash flow and liquidity, we modified the presentation here a little bit, so we refer to shorter periods and make the numbers small, let's say, comparable to what we present in the financial statements. So on the first 6 months of '26 compared to the first half of '25 on this slide, cash flow from operating activities went down a little bit year-over-year. And this is despite the growth in the profit line. So this, of course, requires an explanation. And the explanation is that basically, we have higher levels of trade and other receivables year-on-year.

And we also had significant payments in the first half of '26 related to very good results, yes, and these payments referred to variable salaries for the team and also corporate income tax. Both these were, let's say, accrued for in 2025, but the payments were made in the first half of '26. Therefore, the cash flow compared to the previous year was slightly worse because of these outflows. Free cash flow, slightly up year-on-year because of lower CapEx, the conversion of operating profit to cash flow is still good. However, if you compare these shorter periods, it went down year-on-year. And we had like PLN 470 million of net cash on our balance sheet at the end of June. This is, of course, before the payment of the dividend, which took place on 6th of August. We paid out PLN 143 million from 2025 profit to our shareholders.

So this was PLN 3.4 per share, 8% higher than the year before. I think this is pretty much it for details of the financial statements. And now we'll have a few comments about the outlook for the coming quarters.

Yes, sure. Thank you, Martin. Obviously, over the next few weeks for us, the most important project is the -- our proprietary trading system loss, which is scheduled to go live on 5th of October. Following dress rehearsals, the first rehearsal starts tomorrow. We are quite, I would say, positive following intensive testing in summer months also conducted by external companies. I, of course, we will make the final go line decision only after the confirmation that all the market is ready and on our side that everything works well. So that's what.

And in terms of the guidance for the following quarter-on-quarters, looking at trading as we already showed you in our presentation, we've had very strong months in terms of cash equity turnover growth in July and August, around 44% increase year-on-year. And as Marcin said, on the energy front, pickup recovery and electricity volumes, on the other hand, still quite sub due to performance in gas segment due to geopolitical situation. In terms of OpEx, we see OpEx growth in the third quarter at a level not lower than in overall first half with further acceleration in growth in the fourth quarter on the back of increase in depreciation once we will launch WATS. And also, we will recognize this partial for some time, some of the costs [indiscernible] mainly the work of IT developers in the P&L rather than in CapEx.

On other hand, we believe that some -- at least, some of those costs at least partially will be offset by lower costs elsewhere, including noncore companies. CapEx, Marcin also mentioned that we expect high CapEx in second half. But overall, I would say that here in Warsaw, we are quite ambit about the outlook in longer term especially related to the launch of the personal investment accounts, which has been already confirmed. The OKI accounts, they went through the whole legislative path and they will enter into force and then launch in the 1st of January. Also, we are very happy to see that another major index providers, [indiscernible] Poland as a developed market will be upgraded by S&P a few weeks ago to develop market status. This upgrade will be effective in September next year.

Two words about OKI accounts, personal investment account, once again, for those who haven't heard about this account yet, it's more or less copy pace of a very successful account in Sweden, ISK with a tax fee amount of assets, investments up to PLN 100,000, so roughly $25,000. And however, there's no upper limit on how much investments you can keep in this account, but above 100,000, there will be a tax but on assets, not on capital gains in the first year, it will be around 0.85% of assets. And in the following years, it will be 19% times the reference rate of the Central Bank which today would be around 0.7%. We believe that definitely such a tax incentive will attract with the investors to the market. We already see that the number of brokerage accounts is sharply rising. And we believe that this growth will accelerate next year.

Overall, the [indiscernible] finance is estimating the inflow of new capital to the Warsaw Stock Exchange at PLN 70-plus billion over the next 15 years, around PLN 5 billion a year. We definitely believe that these are something which is achievable. And to capture this potential, we will also launch an educational and promotional campaign. So OKI, definitely a breakthrough for Polish capital market and for attracting retail investors to the market. However, as you see on this slide, the potential is still big, and we will -- should continue to mobilize domestic capital. Currently, the -- at the end of last year, the market cap of Polish companies listed in Warsaw was just 27% of GDP, one of the lowest levels in European Union, the average European Union, 70%, and we estimate that to get us to 50% over the next 5 years to require around RMB 250 billion in new domestic capital around PLN 50 billion annually. So there's a lot still to be done and the potential is still very significant. Thank you.

[Operator Instructions] I can say we already have the first question coming from Miguel. Miguel, I'm muting you right now.

Just for a brief introduction on the analysts covering Warsaw [indiscernible]. So for my first question, on average equity fee. Should we think as the first half average as a new run rate or the new run rate is closer to the implied average fee for the second quarter? Like how to think about this moving forward? Can you please just comment how the high-frequency traders share evolved in July and August. And also, it would be interesting to hear if you can disclose the prospects of adding more of these algorithmic clients in the future. And if you think that the share that they represent of total volume will increase in the future and by how much?

Let me perhaps answer the second part of the question, but for the first, I will ask Marcin to comment.

Okay. So actually, I believe this is related because we have no, let's say, changes in our list here is just a result of the changing structure of the turnover. So if we assume that there will be more liquidity providers in the overall turnover. They, of course, benefit from preferential fees and the average fee will go down However, as long as this is about the additional turnover and our revenue goes up, I think it's not such a bad thing at the end, yes? And if we should expect additional algorithmic traders, I'll pass to Tomasz to comment about this.

Yes, exactly. First, what you've seen in the first half also is that we've added one major player in the space to our client and liquidity provider list. And WATS launched the new trading system, and we will have higher capacity that we could offer. Definitely, we will have more efforts to attract new members to the exchange, new brokers, but also new liquidity providers. And the share -- if we are successful, the share of the liquidity providers in our turnover will increase. And as a result, also the average fee. But that said, obviously, we expect the total turnover to increase as well. So the net result on our revenues, obviously, will be positive -- or should be positive.

Sure, sure. That's understood. But is there any like number that you had in your head, but like what would you see as the medium-term target? Like what would you expect the share of these liquidity providers to be in the total turnover? Right now, it's 36% as second quarter [indiscernible] expectations to maybe like towards 40% or..

As -- let me say that I would say the major liquidity providers already present and active on the Warsaw Stock Exchange. So no, we would not expect here a very significant increase outside that your gas around 40, say, good gas in the medium term.

Okay. Okay. Understood. On other revenues, could you just provide some color here? Like how much of the increase is recurring versus nonrecurring? And what would you see as sort of like the new run rate? And also is logistics and tech, which are noncore business, are these businesses like likely to grow in the future?

Yes, let me take this one. So yes, logistics and tech are presented in this line. In Logistics, we had an increase in the business scale in Q2. However, in the longer run, we have a strategy to focus on higher profit contracts here in this compound. So we are not really chasing the revenue and cost we will be focusing on increasing the profitability. Therefore, I would expect in the coming quarters, the revenue logistics can go down compared to what we saw in Q2.

With tech, we have a small recurring growth in revenue because of selling the licenses for our store system, but this is not significant in terms of values. Other events, which you can find here different revenues from noncore activities like, for example, settling partnerships and different events or as I said, renting space in the Warsaw Stock Exchange building. So I would say there is no reason for a recurring growth in this line, at least nothing significant to happen there. I would say Q2 was exceptional.

Yes. Got it. Great. Understood. Now on costs, if I may. Maybe like the most [indiscernible], you guide for at least 11% OpEx growth in the third quarter and faster growth in the fourth quarter. So probably OpEx growth for the year and between 11% and 12% for the full year, right? So this is like double the upper bound of the range you've committed to during that '25, '26 strategy, right? So given that also the increase in previous year, it was about like 10%. It means that you will likely end up 2026 already above the upper range of the implied target of the strategy.

So the question is like how to think about 2027 cost growth, like you left 3 additional quarters of comparatively higher depreciation and amortization, probably staff costs are also going to increase as some of these costs were being capitalized until now. So is there anything like offsetting these increases in 2027. And do you still stand by the guidance that OpEx is expected to grow 4% to 6% annually?

Yes. Okay. This is correct that working on our key strategic directions in autumn 2024, we expected 4% to 6% annual growth in the operating expenses. But please remember that at the same time, we're also assuming a 6% to 8% growth in revenues and 8% to 12% growth in EBITDA. So actually, we are beating all these measures.

And on EBITDA, to say, last year, we were almost 38% up. So I would say this set of the KPIs should be treated combined, yes. So if we see extraordinary growth in our revenues, we also expect that certain costs may follow. And that's why we are preparing this slide that Lukasz presented or reminded to us right now. So we are indicating these elements of business growth, which exceeded our expectations. and costs related to them, yes. And once we exclude this, you can see that the underlying OpEx increase would be certainly lower. This is how we look at it, okay? So we are not really going to let's say, revised the strategic, let's say, KPIs at the moment because we believe that combined, we are still exceeding the expectations. However, we'll be working on the new strategy in 2027, and we will also come up with new KPIs, new targets together with the strategy next year.

But to add on this that we also guided in our strategy for the cost-income ratio of 65% year-to-date in the first half, it was 60%. In the fourth -- in the second quarter, slightly higher, 64%. So this is something that we will try to keep. It will be not easy in the second half of the year, mainly to the dose intensification of works and costs related to the WATS and then depreciation of the WATS. But definitely, we will look for cost savings already towards the end of this year and for next year.

One of the obvious cost saving is basically reducing the scope of activity by logistics. Here in this presentation appendix and the presentation that we show on our website, you can find let us move perhaps cash to the slide on noncore that we've been searching for investor politics, but we didn't find any. So now we will focus on increasing profitability of this company, which means some reducing loan profit on revenues. And most of those revenues have margin. First margin of around 5%. We will eliminate those revenues and also at the same time, cost base likely to those revenues. And this will help us to at least optically to offset some of those costs in the -- related towards launch. So this is to show that we have some tools to address this increase in depreciation from Warsaw.

Obviously, higher depreciation and the start of Warsaw, also means lower CapEx. So in terms of free cash flow, we should generate higher -- same or higher free cash flow compared to when we worked on the system.

Yes. So thank you, Tomasz. This is a very good addition to this. We will be looking for savings in noncore businesses. But the other, let's say, potential source of savings are cost of the infrastructure associated with UTP. And so the old system will be residing from. And then here, we also expect the cost savings from already in 2027, we should see the difference in maintenance costs, which are -- which we still incur in 2026. And also, we will be slowly resulting from the infrastructure for data transfer and data maintenance, there will be certain, let's say, elements which we'll be able to use to offset the growth in amortization and other costs related to Warsaw.

Yes. And once again, something that what will enable us to increase our revenues, to increase the turnover of the market. Some of you may remember last year in April, we had to stop trading for a few hours in the afternoon because we reached our full capacity or where are the risks to reach our full capacity. The new system will have -- at least we'll have higher capacity than the old system. And in terms of performance and latency significantly, significantly more efficient than the current system.

Okay. Okay. Just a quick question on commodities. Regarding gas, like I'm cautious to assume that we can end of the year catch up here, but I would assume at least some rebound even though probably will still end up below fourth quarter '25 volumes. Just I'm curious to know how you're thinking about this.

Okay. It's a question to me. So I can confirm in general, your assumption, but it will be very difficult for 2026 to be better than 2025 in the gas markets.

And we should remember that when we compare the results, additionally, we must remember the base in the last year was very high. But the unstable global political situation continues to create challenges for this market, negative correlation between the prices and volume and turnover is still present. But for Polish, for Polish economy for Poland gas plays a crucial role, especially for energy sector, and we still see the shift from the core fire plants and gas fired generation is moving forward. It remains still the key pillars of the energy transition. And [indiscernible] perspective, growing as consumption in Poland, launch and new gas-fired power plants should continue the support of activity in coming months. So looking at it and remain positive about the gas market.

Got it. That was super helpful thing. On [indiscernible], if I may. I don't know if we have time, but how are you thinking about the eventual flow through into Polish equities? You had this slide that you might expect -- I don't remember, you're saying like PLN 60 billion that you would need to reach 50% GDP. But what proportion do you ultimately think it's funneled through ETFs, how much is retail client just trading spot equities. And also, how are you thinking about like second order effects? Like where is your head at like thinking about -- specifically about derivatives and information services revenue. Maybe there's something else that I'm consuming like it would be pretty helpful to understand how you're thinking about this?

Yes. Basically, obviously, we believe that OKI will have to track the investors and retail investors, it's liquidity. This is what we can build on those estimates, which are presented by the Finance Ministry such estimates also were consulted with us, and we believe that a PLN 5 billion a year to equities, this also what we see right now in some of the forecasts from local brokers. Also, we believe that important effect of OKI will be that the mutual funds will invest more in local equities.

Overall, the share of mutual funds in local equities is one of the lowest in Europe at only 10%. So definitely, we expect more vibrant market going forward. And OKI, you cannot invest in the rebook or CFDs, only noncomplex instruments. So we don't really expect much of the impact on our derivatives just from OKI. But definitely, we will work on other derivative segments. We are working right now on launching for example, many futures on some of our indices, i.e., futures with lower deposit margin.

No, it's clear that you not invest in derivatives through the gout like increased activity and liquidity. It's also something that draws attention of big funds in the U.S. and abroad, right?

So we definitely see a scope for a higher activity of liquidity providers in derivatives.

We have another question coming from Emmanuel. Emmanuel, the line is yours.

Emmanuel from LBV Asset Management. I'm an analyst [indiscernible] and been a shareholder for some time by the funds. Just 2 questions for me. The first one is on the reclassification to developed market from September 2027, I believe, what color can you give in terms of likely flow of funds? And is it going to be a beneficial impact or a negative impact? If you can just put any color on that? And the second question, which is, I suppose, more short term is what is the IPO prospect for the next few months?

Yes. In terms of the classification, of course, we are quite happy and satisfied with this news. But we point out that there are not really that much assets which invest in our region and in Poland related to S&P Dow Jones. So overall, we would not expect any major effects. This is -- on the other hand, this is something which definitely raises our profile among global investors.

As you may know, the highest share of assets which invest now originally in Poland are following MSCI and we do not expect to be included in the watch for the upgrade by MSCI over the next few years. So overall, we do not expect any major effect next year other than a better reputational market for its quality and performance.

Your next question was about IPOs. We had 10 IPOs so far this year or transfer some of those were transferred from our alternative market. There will be some small not major transactions by year-end, as we hear from our blockers but nothing really significant. On the other hand, we continue to put lots of efforts to attract new issuers. A third addition of our IPO Academy starts over the next few weeks. And we hear that all the places are already filled. And we had the first IPO of the company, which was a member of the first cohort of our IPO academy done. So -- but definitely, we -- overall, we see a, I would say, more noise, positive noise about the Warsaw Stock Exchange in Poland, much more requests much more questions. So definitely, we would expect that going forward, there will be more transactions, more IPOs also from a fast-growing private equity and venture capital market, which, as I said, is developing quite fast in Poland.

Okay. And can I maybe just ask a follow-up on your first answer. I believe Poland has a bit of a darling status with emerging markets. So will the emerging markets for sellers of Polish equities with this reclassification.

We can provide you with our estimates about how much assets are right now following the S&P Dow Jones, but we are not talking about billions of dollars rather couple of hundred millions in active money. It's nothing really very significant for us. As a result of this great. Well, our share in S&P emerged markets was 1.27. And in S&P developed markets will be 0.15. So a significant decline in terms of share but a larger pool of assets, especially passive assets would expect a net passive inflow and net active outflow as a result of this particular upgrade.

But as I said, for us, by far, MSCI is the most important. You may recall that in [indiscernible], we've been upgraded by FTSE, [ Russell ], to develop it didn't really have a major flow -- immediate flow impact on our market. Fiber MSCI and the upgrade by MCA would have a massive impact. And for now, we say that we need a few more years to think about that and to get ready for that. It's nothing over the next few years.

So are there any further questions? I don't see any. So as there no further ones, we would like to thank you for joining us today. And maybe before we conclude, let me show you the higher kind of ours over the coming months, we'll be participating in a number of investor events, including ones in Munich, Stockholm in Sweden, New York and Prague. So if you're planning to attend any of these conferences, please let us know. Should you have any follow-up questions, of course, please contact us at Investor Relations team at Warsaw Stock Exchange. Thank you once again for joining us today. We look forward to speaking with you again during the next results conference call in November. Thank you, and goodbye.

Thank you.

Thank you, Bye-bye.

Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. Welcome to Warsaw Stock Exchange Q1 2026 Results Call. Thank you for joining us today. Let me introduce our today's speakers. We have with us the CEO of Warsaw Stock Exchange, Mr. Tomasz Bardzilowski; the CFO; Mr. Marcin Rulnicki; and the CEO of the subsidiary, the Polish Power Exchange, Mr. Piotr Listwon. We have planned a 20, 30-minute presentation for you followed by a Q&A session.

Now without further ado, let me pass the floor to Tomasz.

Thank you, Lukasz. Welcome, everybody on our first quarter earnings call. First of all, it was a record quarter for the Exchange. We recorded a record high revenues of PLN 169 million, which is up 27.5% year-on-year on the back of a very strong turnover growth. The turnover in cash equities rose by 42% year-on-year in the first quarter, and this was driving our revenues from financial markets, which grew 34% on a year-on-year basis. We also noted and recorded very strong revenue growth in Commodity segment, 7% year-on-year to over PLN 50 million in revenues.

In terms of operating costs, our operating costs rose almost 12% year-on-year. However, our cost income fell to the lowest levels in 4 years, below 58%, over 800 basis points lower than a year ago. As a result of operating leverage, our earnings went up significantly on EBITDA level, up 42% and on net profit level, 38% up on a year-on-year basis to almost PLN 70 million. In April, we have, as a Board, recommended to our shareholders a record high dividend of PLN 3.40 per share, which represents almost 8% growth over the previously paid dividend.

Key developments in the first quarter. First of all, we are very happy to see an active market in terms of transactions. Even despite high volatility, we had 6 [ debits ] on the main market and the total value of the primary follow-on deals year-to-date was over PLN 4 billion. We also had 4 new listings on the NewConnect market with a total deal value of PLN 130 million, a quite active bond market. The number of new listings on the Catalyst market was 126 nontreasury bonds and total value of new listings of almost PLN 12 billion. Also, we had 13 new ETFs year-to-date and the turnover of ETFs more than -- went up by almost 200%.

In terms of strategic initiatives, we're focused on activities and at attracting both new issuers like GPW IPO Academy and also investors, more focus still much -- lots of focus on the NewConnect market, and we had a NewConnect Focus Day Con for us, but also we expelled 20 companies from the NewConnect market for not being compliant with our reporting obligations.

In terms of regulatory works, we cooperated with several other exchanges in the CEE region and presented a joint position paper on investment union. However, one of the biggest events on the -- so far this year was our 35th anniversary. We had an event on the 16th of April this year, and this was under the -- the main statement was from Transformation to Innovation. The Stock Exchange 35 years ago was a symbol in Poland of switching from a communist to a free market economy. Now we want the Warsaw Stock Exchange to be a symbol of innovative economy of financing of innovative companies. We also point out that last 3 years were one of the best periods in the history of the Exchange. In this period, the market cap of domestic companies went up 2x to PLN 1.2 trillion and average daily turnover went up by more than 2x to PLN 2.6 billion.

Going back to the statistics of the past quarter. As I said, very impressive revenue growth, internal growth of 42%. And in terms of turnover growth, we've been one of the most active Exchange in Europe. In terms of turnover velocity, we are still one of the top Exchanges in Europe just after Deutsche Börse and Athens Stock Exchange.

A very period in terms of ECM transactions, 6 new companies on the main market with an IPO of Rex Concepts, it's a restaurant company, which raised almost PLN 500 million on the Exchange in new capital. Also the 2 other compounds, which made its IPO and debut in the first quarter, they already conducted and executed successfully follow-on offerings. Here, I'm speaking about Niewiadow, a defense company; and Quantum Creotech, which is the first company in Europe listed on the European Exchanges from Quantum computing sector. Also quite strong SPO market and ABB market, as I said, in total over PLN 4 billion in the transaction values when we hope to see this activity to stay at similar level or even be stronger in following quarters once the volatility will slightly decline in the market. Strong activity also in the nontreasury bond market Catalyst with the new listings and the total value of listings on the [indiscernible] market went up by almost 20% year-on-year to over PLN 160 billion.

On the ETF market, because ETFs, we continue to say that to broadening ETF of our income is one of our key priorities for this year. We have the assets of ETFs listed on Exchange increased by 30% in the first quarter to PLN 2.8 billion. We have now 3 new ETFs, and we hope to have around 50 ETFs by end of this year.

And let me now pass to Marcin to guide you through our financials.

Thank you, Tomasz. Hello, everyone. In the next few slides, I'll try to explain details of our financial performance in Q1 at '26, starting with the summary of our P&L. So as Tomasz already mentioned, we had a record high revenue with PLN 169 million in sales in the first quarter. And it was driven by both the financial market and the commodity market. In the financial market, it was obviously due to high revenue in cash equities, but also a very good quarter for Armenian Stock Exchange, and also in sales of market data, we made a big progress year-on-year. But also in the commodity market, we had a very solid quarter, more than 17% up year-on-year. And this is basically in all business lines like trading on energy and gas as well as transaction settlements, all these activities went up compared to the first 3 quarters of 2025.

Yes, in the operating cost, we had almost 12% increase. That's explained in a few separate slides in a second. So let me not go into details here. But our cost income ratio was below 58%. So it was at a super low level, the lowest since 4 years as far as I can remember. Very good operating performance, operating profit over PLN 70 million, EBITDA almost PLN 78 million, and net profit at the level of almost PLN 70 million. So it was a very, very good quarter for the Warsaw Stock Exchange Group.

In the structure of our revenues, as small increase in the financial market-related revenues. It went up to almost 68% in the overall revenues of the group. Of course, thanks to -- mainly thanks to very high turnover in the cash equities and related revenue. Commodity markets stands for 30% in the first quarter, so slightly down compared to Q4 '25.

Looking at the slide, we usually also comment revenue, which is not related to trading. And in Q1 '26, the share of this revenue was slightly lower than in the previous, it went down from 34.2% to 31.8%. It was obviously not because of declining revenue, but because of the revenue growing slower, yes? So the revenue related to trading went up almost 29% year-on-year, whereas the revenue nonrelated or related -- non-trading-related revenue went up almost 25%. So I would say slower, but not small.

Looking at the trading-related revenue and per class of assets, we can see that cash equity still dominate here, and they represent like PLN 63 million out of PLN 76 million total trading-related revenue after the growth of 40%. And this is obviously following the record high turnover on cash equities in the -- on Warsaw Stock Exchange, it was almost PLN 158 billion in Q1. But also on other classes of assets, we see increases. We see higher revenue from derivatives. We see higher revenue from that. And here, both treasury bonds, both Poland and Catalyst markets noticed much higher revenue than the year before.

Let's move on. Looking at other business lines within Financial Markets segment, we see a very solid, very good growth in the information services, selling data, more than 15% up year-on-year, more than PLN 18 million in revenues in Q1 only. And this is a very fundamental growth, thanks to new clients for both real-time data and processed data. We have seen this growth for a few quarters now.

Stable revenues from listing but a very, very good growth in Armenia Stock Exchange. As you can see, both in deposit-related activities, this is like the dark blue part of the bar as well as exchange activities. In the deposit-related activities, the growth comes mainly from revision of fees for services that took place in July last year. So Q1 and Q2 will still benefit from lower base. And in exchange activities, the growth comes from high activity of market participants. This is mainly related to new issues of corporate bonds. We had like 30 of them during Q1.

Maybe one more thing to mention here about depository activity in Armenia. In Q1, in January and February, we've had a number of quite significant nonrecurring transactions. And they elevated this revenue to the level of PLN 11.3 million. I would say that recurring revenue from Armenia depository after the revision of rates should be between PLN 9 million and PLN 9.5 million per quarter. So Q1 is, I would say, higher than this, let's say, recurring revenue level we should be expecting in the coming quarters.

Let's move on. Piotr, if you could comment on commodity market revenue, please?

Sure. Let me present the revenues from the commodity markets. We have a very good first quarter behind us in which the revenues from trading on the commodity markets amounted to over PLN 28 million, which is over 19% increase year-on-year. The gas market continue in first quarter, it's good streak from 2025. And the record total turnover year-on-year increased by almost 55% and the revenues by almost 58%. It is worth mentioning that January and February were the months with the highest turnover on the spot gas market in the history of Polish Power Exchange.

We also achieved good revenues on the electricity market, which grew by almost 28% year-on-year, mainly due to the foreign market whose volumes increased by over 59%. Higher contracting on the forward market can be seen from the lower prices of emission allowances during this period.

The third place in the volume goes to the fees from the market participants. We've increased over 22% year-on-year and a level of PLN 9 million, mainly resulting from the -- our commodity clearing house fees for the management of collaterals contributed to the settlement guarantee system. The property rights market fell below our expectation with a 25% decrease in revenue year-on-year. On the one hand, this may be related to the smaller number of certificates issued and imported into the -- our registry and change in the strategy of entities obliged to purchase and redeem certificates as a result of the level of the redemption obligation that was established for 3 years now. And on the other hand, so far, unrealized turnover may be appear later in this year, we hope.

Next slide, please. Similarly to trading, the clearing and segment in first quarter recorded mainly due to increased volumes on the natural gas market, an increase in revenues by 27%, reaching the level of PLN 16.7 million. In registers, we recorded an increase in revenues in the service of guarantees of origin by 12% year-on-year, while similarly to trading in property rights revenues in registers fell by more than 23% year-on-year.

Okay. Thank you very much, Piotr. And now coming back to consolidated numbers, let's have a look at the operating expenses. In Q1 '26, we had like PLN 97 million of OpEx, and it grew almost 12% compared to the previous year. The drivers were mainly the same as in previous quarters. So the main component of our operating expenses are personnel costs, and they grew 14.2% for the reasons we already explained in the previous conferences. So we have a high number of full-time employees. This is related mainly to Warsaw Stock Exchange and the IT teams, which we had to strengthen during last year. But also in the Armenian Stock Exchange or mainly the Armenia Depository, we have a number of new employees, and this is related to new services and new fees that were approved by the Central Bank of Armenia, also under condition that the company will invest part of the additional revenues into strengthening the team and IT infrastructure. So this translated to higher costs, obviously.

And one more component of personnel costs, which contributed to this difference were provisions for variable remuneration because of record high results of Q1, we have higher provision for variable remuneration basically in all companies of Warsaw Stock Exchange Group, which additionally contributed to higher personnel expenses.

The other significant component of our costs are external services. And in here, we see significant growth mainly in those costs related to IT. And this is a mixture of 2 different kinds of costs. So one group are costs related to our significant projects that are in progress, and of course, we cannot capitalize part of them, but part of them land in OpEx. And here, I mean both WATS, but also the new accounting system, new building system, a number of initiatives that we have in our IT area. And also a number of the new licenses or new elements of our IT infrastructure, which is sold in the model of software as a service. And this is, as you know, replacing the traditional CapEx and amortization model of sales and many providers of new services in this software as a service model.

What is also worth commenting here is lower depreciation and amortization costs. It went down more than 13%, like PLN 1.1 million. And this is due to the write-offs we had in the noncore components at the end of the year. We wrote off intangible assets in these components, they are not amortized and more. And also, our UTP license was fully amortized in Q4 last year. So this cost also disappeared from our P&L.

Let's move on. Okay. In this slide, we are trying to analyze the underlying operating expenses increase. And I'm not trying to make a point here that those costs, which we are excluding from the analysis are kind of nonrecurring or unusual. I'm rather saying here that they are related to a very dynamic growth of business, which was not included in our original plans. Yes, as you know, in our strategic KPIs, we assume the growth of revenue between 6% and 8% annually, and the accompanying growth of operating expenses at the level of 4% to 6%. So we are saying, okay, we are much higher than 4% to 6%, but it is also related to a very dynamic growth in business.

And we identified 2 components of this, of course, which are related to this growth. One is variable compensation. This is what I mentioned. We have record high results in the whole group, and our provisions are relatively higher for variable remuneration of our employees. And also in Armenia Stock Exchange, we had like over 130% growth in revenues, and we have additional operating expenses that are associated with this external revenue that exceeds our long-term expectations.

Working the other way our savings we are making in noncore companies. They are operating expenses declined by PLN 800,000 in Q1 year-on-year. So excluding these 3, we see the growth on operating expenses of less than PLN 5 million. It's approximately 5.7%, and it's much closer to our long-term target.

Speaking about noncore projects, we are still in the process of minimizing their negative impact on our results. So we are either looking for investors or liquidating the companies or reducing their operating costs. So without, let's say, going into details here, I would like to emphasize that this is still our priority. And we hope that we will see gradual result of our efforts here. And I think that from Q3 this year, it will be more visible in our P&L.

A few words about capital expenditures. When you look at Q1 '26, we ended up with PLN 14.3 million investment. It looks really low compared to previous quarters and especially compared to Q1 of 2025. But please keep in mind that in 2025, we had a shift of almost or around PLN 10 million from Q4 to Q1. So we made a number of orders and even received deliveries in Q4 '24, but we paid for these deliveries only in the first 3 months of 2025, which, let's say, elevated the value of investments in -- especially in those, let's say, tangible equipment pieces in Q1 '25, and that's why this data is not quite comparable to what we see for Q1 '26.

But anyway, this is also a result of postponing, delaying certain planned investments. So I would say that overall CapEx plan for 2026 will be also on a quite high level comparable to 2025, I think, and we will be catching up in the coming quarters.

Speaking about CapEx, maybe there is one more thing worth mentioning here. We revised the budget of our WATS system. The original budget that was assumed by the management in September 2024 was PLN 152.9 million because we delayed the go-live date and prolonged the period of working on the system, and now the go-live date is 6th of July. We revised the budget and we assume that total investments and expenses related to this project at the go-live date will be PLN 164.5 million accumulated.

In liquidity, maybe one thing to comment here is that we are used to seeing our operating flows to EBITDA ratio at around 90%. You can see that for 12 months ending in March, it's closer to 82%. So it seems low especially looking at the growth rate of the operating profit. And we were investigating what happened here. And the explanation is quite easy and technical. I mean because of the change of the accounting system in Warsaw Stock Exchange and 3 subsidiaries, we had some technical issues with monitoring overdue receivables. And we lost some automatic procedures that we had in our previous system for, let's say, collecting these receivables. So at the end of March, we had an unusually high value of overdue receivables, but we are catching up with it, and we are adjusting the system to be more, let's say, operational. And right now, we are at the levels comparable to last year. So I would say it was temporary and technical, but translated to a slightly worse cash flow from operating activities, and you would expect looking at the operating profit dynamics.

Anyway, we are very safe in terms of liquidity. Our net cash at the end of March was PLN 453 million. So it gives us a very good starting point for discussing the dividend. And let's move to the next slide where we summarize our proposal of the dividend payment. So in April, the management of Warsaw Stock Exchange recommend the payment of PLN 142.7 million from 2025 net profit. It translates to PLN 3.4 per share, 8% higher than last year. The payout ratio is 72% of consolidated net profit for 2025, and the dividend yield is 4.4%. The management proposed the dividend date, 23rd July and the payment date on August the 6th. Of course, this is a proposal. It was reviewed by the Supervisory Board and approved, but the final word is with the shareholders' meeting, which will take place end of June. Okay, thank you.

Thank you, Marcin. Let me now share with you our guidance. But before that, a few words about our most strategic project, which is the rollout of the proprietary trading system, WATS. At the end of April, the Board together with the Exchange members, we have confirmed the new timetable for the rollout of the system, including the 3 dress rehearsals and then subject to successful dress rehearsals, and also the full readiness of GPW and also all trading members. We have set up the migration date, which is 4th to 5th July, and then go-live date was set at 6th July.

We have already conducted the first dress rehearsals. We are quite satisfied with the result. Almost all brokers took part in the era. Some of those who didn't take part, they requested for them to have a special tests the coming week. And we tested the capacity of the system. We tested the transfer to the system and overall are quite happy with the results. As I said, there's still a few areas for further improvements, especially in the applications around the WATS, which we need to integrate with WATS, but we will be working on them and fixing them before the next dress rehearsal, which will take place on the 6th and the 7th of June. And just to really underline that in terms of WATS, the key priority for us is the safe rollout, safe migration. If we will not be 100% ready, sure that we can have a safe rollout, we will reconsider the timetable.

In term guidance for the coming months and quarters. In terms of cash equity trading, we've seen some lower volume growth in April, May compared to the first quarter, but still at solid double-digit levels, 15% in April and 7% in May, and this is mainly due to the high base effect, not to the fact that the volumes are lower right now.

In terms of commodity market, let me perhaps ask Piotr to just give some update about the trends here, especially as we see some declines in the turnover, both in gas and electricity.

Yes, sure. I would just explain in brief the reason of the little smaller volumes that we expected to be bigger. So currently, volumes on the gas and electricity markets are lower than those recorded last year as I mentioned before, we had a record high volumes in April and May last year, especially on the gas market. In relation -- related to the gas, we are dealing with the very high fluctuation of the gas prices in the European gas hubs, including Poland, resulting from the situation in the Middle East and the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz. In the recent weeks, we have observed a trend of increasing gas indexes, which translates into a lower level of activity of our participants on demand on the demand side that are not willing to pay too much for the gas mostly used for the electricity production and industry processes.

And on the electricity market, we observed a decrease in trading volume year-on-year, mainly due to the rising CO2 emission allowances prices that have direct impact on the duration of the energy sales on the forward market. But we expect the volumes to recover in both markets in the near future. The first symptoms of the recovery can be seen in the last sessions of the gas market. So we are expecting that in the near future the volumes shouldn't be coming back to the Exchange.

Thank you, Piotr. On operating costs in the following quarters, we continue to anticipate a high OpEx level mainly due to the expected sharp increase in depreciation after the launch of WATS and the recognition of previously capitalized costs in the P&L. Also, we would, following the increase, sharp increase in revenues in AMX, there will be some still increase in operating costs going forward in our Armenia subsidiary.

On the other hand, we hope that some of these increases will be offset by further cost reduction we see at the level of noncore subsidiaries. In terms of CapEx, we expect to see increasing CapEx in the second -- especially in the second quarter, mainly due to the intensification of works on implementation and all of WATS, and also further investments in cyber security and development of digital tools also looking also related to AI.

It was worth mentioning that there are some significant initiatives here in Poland related to capital market development, one that we are really waiting for R&D introduction of special investment accounts, OKI, tax efficient without a capital gain tax and [indiscernible] law on OKI has been adopted by the government on 5th of May, and the launch is planned on 1st of January next year. We continue to believe that the new investment account which will enable retail investors to invest up to PLN 100,000 free of capital gain tax in shares and capital market instruments, this could be a real game changer in terms of retail flows on the Exchange.

Also, there is a bill on -- new bill ETFs uses regime. The draft law has been passed on 20th of April. And we believe that this law will come into force by the end of this year, enabling local Polish ETF providers to issue at least the ETFs on the foreign markets, usage regime also in Poland on usage regime, which will enable also an easier distribution, especially in the banking networks.

Okay. And overall, what we want to say is something that we continue to repeat on many occasions is that we continue to see a huge upside, long-term upside in the development of Polish Capital Market, the size of the market compared to economy, up 27% in new count domestic market cap to the GP is significantly lower than other European markets and same thing, you can't be lower than the needs of Polish economy. So we believe that the market will continue to grow, and we will remain a key beneficiary of this growth going forward.

Okay. Thank you very much for the presentation, and let us move to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

I see a raised hand from the -- Miguel Dias from Wood & Company.

Okay, okay. I guess you've introduced me already. But my name is Miguel, and I'm with Wood & Co. So I have a couple of questions for you. First of all, congratulations for, again, a strong set of results, impressive. In terms of the quarter, like for information services came in higher than I was expecting. Like is this broadly the new run rate for the rest of the year, would you say? And also what drove the increase?

Miguel, I think that in this business, basically the growth comes from gaining new customers for the data. So it's very organic, I would say. And I think that we don't have so many cases of customers resigning from the service. So I think the growth is pretty, let's say -- or the level that we reached is pretty sustainable. We cannot guarantee that the growth rate will remain the same, but we have observed a solid growth for many quarters now.

But I believe that we don't see declines on selling data-related revenue. So I would say I believe that staying there and adding a bit to this number is a safe, a pretty safe assumption. I'm not sure if there was any one-off in Q1 '26, not to my knowledge.

Okay. So if I understood correctly, we could expect a small quarter-on-quarter increase moving forward, yes?

This is what we have observed for quite a long time now, and I hope we can maintain it. But of course, the rate of this growth is hard to predict.

And maybe if you could just [indiscernible]. If you could just give some color on the new customers, like who is buying the data or who is interested in the data, if you could disclose?

I don't have these details off the top of my head, okay? So let me check if we can disclose anything specific here and we can get back to you.

Appreciate it. On other fees paid by market participants in the commodities, this is also particularly strong. So if you could please provide more color on these, like what drove the good print? And also, if we can view this level as the new run rate for 2026?

Yes, sure. There are 2 main drivers. Of course, there are other fees that are like the customer annual fees that we onboard some new clients. So they paid the annual fees. So it's also paid in the first quarter. But additionally, as I mentioned, this is the increase caused by the -- our commodity clearing house fees. Last year, we changed the way how we collect collaterals from our clients, our participants. And we thought that this change may cause the situation that our customers will withdraw some of the collaterals because we made it more efficient for the clients. But they did not. So even more, they put more quadrants more than even we expect them to put from the spot market.

So this is the fees, the channel fees that came from the -- managing the security system. And also, the third driver is our daughter company InfoEngine, which collects more clients and volumes coming from the operation between the traders and the physical delivery in TSO, so I mean the transmission system operator we are gaining more clients and also revenues from this area.

Okay. Got it. And you would consider this level to be sustainable moving forward, yes? So I can extrapolate these as a run rate for the rest of 2026.

Of course, it depends. The contrast comes with the spot and the forward market. So depending what are the differences in the segment prices. So it's hard to predict those numbers. However, because I mentioned that fluctuation of the gas market is pretty high. So it is hard to predict. But in case of the InfoEngine customers, our production are just the solid ones that the volumes should be staying at a similar level.

All right. All right. Understood. Okay. Now on costs, probably a bit more detail is needed here. Like can you please provide a quarterly cost bridge for the rest of 2026, specifically like quantifying the WATS depreciation and amortization, like what's related to OpEx, the Armenia Exchange costs. And also, how much of these cost increase that you are expecting can be offset by the gains or the efficiency gains or cost savings in noncore parts of the business?

Okay. Let me take this one. Let's start with the amortization, depreciation of WATS. I would say that the accumulated investments, also the value of the asset when we go-live should be around PLN 140 million, PLN 145 million. Yes, because out of this PLN 165 million budget, a part was operating expenses, I think from PLN 20 million, roughly calculating. And I think that the amortization period should be between 10 and 15 years, okay? We are still analyzing what the useful -- or the expected useful life should be, but we have many cases showing that exceeding 10 years in the core system of the stock exchange is nothing unusual and also our adventure with UTP confirms this approach. So I would say PLN 140 million, PLN 145 million accumulated investment depreciated over 10 to 15 years, probably more than 10, I'm not sure if 15, maybe something in between.

In terms of operating expenses, when we go live, we avoid giving specific guidelines -- guidance here, but let's say that our, let's say, quarterly investments are around PLN 9 million, yes? So it's like PLN 3 million per month. I would say it will consist of, let's say, 3 parts, yes. So what we see in the investment right now will be split into 3 parts. So one part will remain in CapEx, and it will be the effort of the team to develop new versions of WATS and expand the system to other markets and other companies in the group. The other third part will land in OpEx, and it will be related with maintaining the system, fixing the box basically like and let's say, maintenance needed by the system, but already operational, so not to be capitalized. And then the third part is probably something we will be able to resign from. And here, we have a number of also contracts with the subcontractors and companies supporting us in this project. So I believe at least part of them we will be able to depart.

In terms of Armenia and the cost there, I think they still will need a little bit more investments in the team and IT infrastructure. But I would say that meeting this 65% cost/income ratio on new services that they introduced from July last year shouldn't be a problem for that, okay? So I hope it explains more or less the profitability level on additional services that you would like to know.

And last but not least, you're asking about the offset from noncore companies. Quarterly cost of DAI and 2 smaller components are around PLN 1 million. And I think this, we can reduce basically to 0 from Q3. And for the logistics company, their costs are significantly higher, but we are in the process of looking for an investor, okay? So it's hard to say if we can find one and how long it will take. But here, the possibilities are, let's say, bigger but the time can be locked.

All right. Got it. Understand. So based on the first quarter '26 OpEx run rate and we expected WATS and the administration cost step-up, I mean it looks rather challenging to stay within the previously 4% to 6% OpEx growth guidance that you had during the strategic updates, right? So is this still a realistic range for 2026? Or should we assume a higher full year OpEx growth rate for 2026? And if so, how much would the step up be?

Yes. I think it will be a challenging year in terms of operating expenses. But 4% to 6% is something that we would like to achieve in the long run and also to achieve with assumed 6% to 8% growth in revenues, okay? So I believe that, yes, in 2026, it will be challenging, considering all this, what you mentioned. But I think in the long run, it is possible. And also, we are looking for possibilities to offset the growth, which will come from WATS. However, 2026 will be challenging also because of one more reason that we still need to maintain the infrastructure to run 2 systems in parallel, yes. And these costs will stay at least until the end of 2026, maybe a bit longer. But I hope that focusing on one system and resigning from one, let's say, infrastructure, data centers and all the related infrastructure will also result in some savings, but probably in 2027 at the earliest.

But out here that, obviously, there will be some cost capitalization. On the other hand, we will try to offset this with some reduction in other areas. But what's most important for us, WATS will enable us to attract new clients, to attract new members, to develop new products and to increase our revenue base. As we have finished on many occasion right now, we're operating at full capacity with the current system. We cannot really attract new clients. And we cannot really implement new products.

So that's really an additional opportunity and a huge opportunity for us in terms of organic revenue growth, which I believe, and I'm convinced that will, in longer term, offset higher costs, which we will see in the P&L from launching the system.

Sure, sure. We appreciate it. But when you talked to the strategy, I mean, costs are the one thing that you can control, right? But okay. Just finally on 2027, is this range 4% to 6% still in play? Or you also are seeing maybe a possibility to overshoot this range?

Yes. Well, we don't really comment right now on the level of 2027 costs are apart from what we have in our strategy published last year. But as Marcin said, that we are clearly able to -- and will be seeking to offset and compensate for any related cost increase with -- in other areas, including noncore. And also, as also we said right now, we are double paying for various costs related to IT. We are paying for 2 data centers, and there's a number of such costs that we may eliminate going forward.

Okay, okay. Great. I mean I'll just ask one more question and then I'll leave space for other participants to ask questions. I had some more on what, but we can take it off-line. So the last question would be, if you are clearly beating the guidance on the top line, but you are missing on OpEx. Why don't you update the guidance? Because I mean, I would say that relying on the guidance at this point, it's a rather poor way of forecasting the business, right? So what is keeping you from updating the guidance?

So basically, this is where our -- what you said, Miguel, that what you refer to our long-term strategy aspirations that we have presented in our strategy update 2025, 2027. Next year, we will work on the new strategy, and we will announce that towards end of the next year. And then I believe right now, what we see is the second tailwind from higher revenues. So we will continue to compare ourselves versus the strategic KPIs, especially related to costs for this 3-year strategy. And for the new strategy, we'll work on that next year.

We have another hand raised, which is the one-off [ Ronald Conran. ] It's great to see you with us.

Thank you very much. My name is [ Ron, ] I work for a private hedge fund. First of all, congratulations on a spectacular quarter. Starting with that, how do you explain such a sharp increase in equity trading? Does it come from institutional, private investor or banks? Where did it come from?

First of all, part of it is basically a higher level of indices. Year-to-date, we are up 70%. Last year, the market was up 40%. So when you take the last 12 months, probably you will end in the, I think, high 30s. And we see some more activity in terms of some foreign vessels also in terms of retail investors. There's a bit more activity there. We also were able to gain one [ algo ] client in the first quarter, which added a bit of probably 2 percentage points to the overall growth.

Okay. Same question. There's no conference call without AI. So you mentioned increase in expenses, but in a lot of companies that are talking about they see how AI will reduce their expenses in the next few years. Do you also see it as something viable for you?

I think that what we want to achieve to be more efficient because we are starting with projects aimed at higher efficiency. The first area -- second area is to -- we are a factory of data, and these are our proprietary data, the prices and the market prices and all related to the Exchange. Right now, we are working on putting those data into format, which can be used by external entities, AI ready. And this is our big project with many people involved. So 2 main areas: one is efficiency; and second, being capable to capitalize from the data that we produce.

To be more precise, do you see any current goals in order to save money with AI? Or it's something you're still looking at and you do not have specific goals?

No, for the time being, we don't have any cost reduction goals related to AI.

Okay. And last question, if I may. Regarding increasing dividend, after such result in profits and the fact that you are highly cash positive, do you consider increasing the dividend?

In terms of the dividend policy, our dividend policy is between 60% to 80% of consolidated net profit. And what's important for us with the stated ambition to grow dividend year-by-year. So we want to keep dividend going up in the period when the earnings growth will be a bit less spectacular as what we have last year when we paid a dividend at the top end of this range, maybe even higher than the range as we did last year. But the overall principle is a dividend to gradually increase.

Yes, we have high cash position on our balance sheet. It's over PLN 450 million, and there's even a bit more in the receivables. But we want to be also ready with any new investments, any new investment opportunities. So until those investment operated, these are not materialized. We most likely will continue to have some cash on our balance sheet.

Are there any further questions? This might be the last call. So take advantage of it. If there are no -- I don't see any further questions. So thank you once again for joining us, and I hope to see you all on our Q2 results conference in September. Just to mention, if you would like to contact us, reach out to the IR team. We Will be in London in mid-July, and I'm looking at all of the London-based shareholders and investors, [ Emmanuel, ] I see you on the guest list on the chat. So let us know if you would like to meet.

And yes, that sums up what we had to say and goodbye, and see you, hopefully, in September.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Thank you, bye.

Thank you.

Good afternoon and good morning, everyone. Welcome to our Warsaw Stock Exchange Q4 2025 and Full Year Results Call. Thank you for joining us.

Let me introduce today's speakers. We have with us CEO of Warsaw Stock Exchange, Mr. Tomasz Bardzilowski; the CFO Marcin Rulnicki; and additionally with us, we have the CEO of our subsidiary, the Commodity Exchange, Mr. Piotr Listwon. So we have planned around 20, 25-minute presentation followed by a Q&A session for you. And now without further ado, let me pass the floor to our CEO, Tomasz.

Good afternoon. Welcome on our earnings call. 2025 was a record year for Polish Capital Market and for the Warsaw Stock Exchange. When you look at the cash equity turnover, it was up 42% year-on-year and also the record high performance of our indices, the main index VIX was up 47% and MSCI Poland up 68%. This helped our revenues for cash equities business. And as a result of that, our consolidated top line went down by 19% year-on-year to a record high, PLN 552 million, driven by financial market revenues, up 23% and also helped by a quite solid and strong revenues from commodity markets, up 12.5% last year.

Now in terms of operating costs, they grew by a single-digit number, which was achievement, 9.9%. Cost/income ratio fell by 5 percentage points to 66%. helped by a strong operating leverage. Our adjusted EBITDA went down by 38% and adjusted net profit by 30% to almost PLN 205 million. CapEx increased 35% year-on-year to PLN 75 million. However, thanks to strong cash flow, the net cash at the end of the day went down by 4% to PLN 384 million. We have debt, this is our net cash levels. And also, we are happy to say that and the performance of our stock has been quite strong last year, and it was up 61% and including dividends, the total return was 68.5%. Our market cap increased by more than PLN 1 billion last year. You see here the turnover last year went down by 42%. And we are very happy to say that compared to our peer exchanges, the liquidity on the Warsaw Exchange remains relatively solid. In terms of velocity ratio, i.e., turnover to market cap, we are a second highest second most liquid exchange after Deutsche Borse in Europe.

When you look at the beginning of this year, first 2 months were also very strong in terms of turnover. The sum of turnover in January and February was up over 50% and year-on-year basis. Obviously, this is also due to the higher volatility on global markets. We are very happy to see a very strong growth in the most important products for us in terms of our strategy, especially attracting retail investors. These are ETFs. The ETFs turnover doubled last year, and then we have a very strong beginning of this year when the turnover went down by over 200%. We have added 13 new ETFs last year and very happy to have one of the largest Polish financial institutions, the insurer PZU, launching the first ETF on Polish Stocks on Big 20 and Big 40 index. This was just a week ago, and we hope for PZU and for more Polish financial institutions to issue ETFs on our market this year. Also very happy to see a strong ECM market. While we have set only 3 IPOs, the ECM market has been very active last year with ABBs and SPOs and the total number of transactions exceeded PLN 20 billion, so more than $5 billion. And also this year, we have a good start with some large ABBs and also quite active market in terms of SPOs. So capital raising by some mid-cap and small companies. Quite active corporate bond market last year in terms of -- it was a total value of issuance of corporate bonds PLN 33 billion compared to PLN 31 million in 2024 and very strong beginning of the year with PLN 5 billion issuance already.

We point out also to a strong mortgage covered bond market. And here, we are very happy to have a first benchmark retail issue of mortgage bonds done by PKO Bank Polski. And here, we are comparing our results for 2025, the first year of our 3-year strategy with our financial ambitions. In terms of revenues, we were able to exceed significantly our targets. This also led to a slightly higher OpEx as some of the costs are variable in nature. So we had 9.9% increase versus a target range of 4.6% and in terms of EBITDA, 38% growth compared to -- between 8.12% target range. Very happy to see cost/income ratio at 66%. This compares to our 2027 target of 65%, so quite close. And we may say that we have already achieved the target in terms of ROE at 18%. Let me now pass to Marcin to guide you through our 4Q results and also more details about 2025 full year.

Thank you. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. In the next few slides, we'll share details of our financial performance, starting with the summary of P&L for Q4 and the whole year. As Tomasz already mentioned, a very strong quarter in terms of revenues. You can see that in Q4 only, they went up 23%, reaching more than PLN 140 million. And the bigger component to this growth was the financial market where we still had a very high turnover trading on equities. But still a solid 19% growth on the commodity market where investors were also very active trading natural gas mainly.

In terms of operating expenses, they reached PLN 96 million in Q4, up by 14.2%. We have dedicated slides where we present details. We had also a number of nonrecurring one-off events transactions. We will explain them later as well in the following slide. But excluding those nonrecurring transactions, the adjusted EBIT was PLN 45.5 million in Q4, 37% up, and EBITDA was PLN 54.5 million, 31% up. So very, very strong, very good operating results. What happened below the operating profit line, shared in our associated companies, PLN 10 million. This is coming mainly from the depository and net financial income of PLN 4 million. Pretty good level, and it looks nominal net financial income looks low compared to previous year, but we had one-offs in comparable data. Hence, this level is more, let's say, usual for us. At the end, the adjusted net profit went up 9% in Q4 and reached PLN 47.3 million. Again, very strong results. We are very happy about this quarter. I mentioned nonrecurring transactions, one-offs. And here is a short summary of what we did at the end of 2025. So we had still 2 projects which were not related with our core business. And at the end of last year, when we did this review of assets, including noncore assets, these projects were pretty advanced in terms of developing software platforms, which were the core of them. And we decided to write them off only partially and give ourselves a chance to commercialize them during 2025.

Unfortunately, these efforts to commercialize these 2 were not successful. They were not able to bring expected results. Eventually, we decided to write them off entirely at the end of 2025. Together with this write-off, we recognized revenue from grants, which would normally be recognized over time, corresponding with amortization since we write them off entirely, then we recognize the full revenue as well. Therefore, the net impact of these nonrecurring transactions was around PLN 9 million negative on operating level and almost PLN 10 million on net profit. Looking at the structure of our revenues. No surprises here. Q4 was basically the continuation of what we saw in previous quarters. So very strong financial market, mainly due to trading, related to revenue, trading on equities, first of all. And also very strong, very strong commodity market where trading on gas was main driver of growth. Maybe one thing to mention here is that our structure of revenues in terms of trading and nontrading related, improved towards non-trading even though the trading-related revenues were growing very fast. This was due to very high revenue from depository activities in Armenia. We will also show it on a separate slide.

Anyway, it was 34.3%. This is the revenue that is not related to trading and the overall revenue sales of Warsaw Stock Exchange consolidated. Looking at the trading revenue. So the biggest part of our financial market income. As I mentioned before, a very high turnover on equities. As you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, in Q4, it was PLN 140 billion, 41% up year-over-year. And in the whole year, we had over PLN 470 billion, 42% higher than the year before. The record high revenues on Warsaw Stock Exchange. The higher turnover was not only due to higher market cap, but also a growing number of transactions. So this is also, I think, which we consider a very positive one. In other classes of assets, we see the same trends as in previous quarters. Considering other components of our revenue in the Financial Markets segment, we have solid growth in Information Services. It's been similar to what we saw in previous quarters. So 7.5% up compared to Q4 '24. In the whole year, we have 9% solid growth rate in the information services. listing-related revenue is stable and the Armenia Stock Exchange. So this is the right-hand side of the slide. It shows a very high growth both in Q4 and also annually.

The reason for this is new rates for services related to deposit activities in Armenia that have been implemented since July 2025. So the whole second half of the year, we already benefited from higher rates and extended scope of services that our company in Armenia can provide. Let's move on. Now I'll pass to Piotr to comment on revenue and commodity market.

Sure. Thank you very much. The commodity market, both in Q4 and throughout the whole 2025, with a small exception to electricity market experienced volume, I would call renaissance. During this period, we recorded both year-on-year and quarter-on-quarter volume increase in every segment of our business lines, achieving quarter-on-quarter revenue increase over 18% and a slightly lower year-on-year increase over 15%. The total revenues from commodity market trading amounted to PLN 24.7 million in Q4 and nearly PLN 98 million in the entire year. The big star of this period was the gas market, of course, whose trading volume in Q4 reached almost 60-watt hours, increasing by 33% year-on-year and over 14% quarter-on-quarter.

The entire year 2025 was gas trading volumes amounted to almost 209 terawatt hours and accounted for PLN 24.5 million revenues. We also recorded good results in the trading of renewable energy property rights in Q4, recording nearly 3% year-on-year increase in the volumes and 1.6% increase in 2024 totally, achieving total revenues of PLN 17.7 million. The electricity trading segments disappointed a little bit with us and our market participants through 2025, when we achieved a total trading volume of less than 120 terawatt hours. Unfortunately, that was the lowest level since 2017 and over 9% lower than the already weak forward market in 2024. But hopefully, Q4, we noticed a quarter-on-quarter increase over 18% compared to Q3 last year, which was the result of the situation of the forward market which saw the standard seasonal increase in trading and particularly liquidity of the quarterly products.

When we move to 2 other segments, revenues from the commodity markets, as you may see, they are strongly correlated with their turnovers. So we may simplify that increased volumes especially in gas markets had significant input on the clearing revenues, which increased year-on-year in Q4 over 20% and almost 60% year-on-year in the whole 2025, reaching almost PLN 22 million. Revenues from operations of registers in Q4 were pretty nice, increasing year-on-year, almost 80% in total. It's due to the better performance of operations in certificates of Region registry, reaching almost 30% increase of revenues. Comparing '25 to '24, we noted slightly 7% drop in revenues due to lower volumes of certificates issue by the Energy Regulatory Office and lower volumes reported for cancellation by registered participants.

Now back to consolidated numbers. Let's have a look at the operating expenses. In Q4, they were PLN 96 million, 14% up. In the whole year, we had almost 10% growth of operating expenses, and it is mainly driven by personnel costs. And within personnel cost, the main reason for higher cost is the increase in average employment. We hired a number of new FTEs, mainly in teams responsible for the IT area. We had to strengthen this area in the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Also a number of -- a certain part of this number comes from a variable salaries. I will show details in a second. And then in Q4, we also observed growth in external services. again, mainly in the IT area. This is related to seasonal settlement of projects. Year-end is usually, let's say, a time when we summarize several projects in IT.

And we also have a slightly high advisory services. This is also related to implementation of the new accounting system that went live in the financial market companies 1st January 2026 that therefore, Q4 was a very intensive time, we worked on it. Anyway, despite this slightly higher growth in operating expenses, we keep our trend of the growth rate of expenses below the growth rate of our revenues, and this is the seventh quarter in a row that we managed to keep it this way. Similarly to Q3, we presented a bridge in which we are trying to explain what part of our operating expenses growth comes from, let's say, underlying organic growth and how much comes from, let's say, unexpected events or those that exceeded our expectations. And the first main component of those unusual is the variable compensation part. So accrual for the variable compensation in 2025 is almost PLN 9 million higher than the year before. And this is straight, let's say, consequence of very good results in Warsaw Stock Exchange and also subsidiaries because variable compensation of our team is very much related to financial performance. The second component is our operating cost in Armenia. They increased because of this extension of services provided by the depository. It is a part of the deal with the Central Bank in Armenia that they allowed the revaluation of rates and extension of services, but also at the condition that our company will invest in the team and infrastructure used to provide these services.

Working the other way is our savings on operating expenses in noncore companies. We managed to save PLN 3.8 million in 2025. So when we net it and deducted overall cost growth, the remaining part is PLN 25.2 million, so 7.6% up. And this is what we consider the organic underlying operating expenses increase in 2025. CapEx, in Q4, it was comparable to Q4 '24. However, the structure was slightly different. We invested more in our trading platform development, as you can see in the dark blue part of the bar and slightly less in other elements, other components. When you look at the whole year, the investments were almost PLN 75 million, 35% up. It's not surprising because we communicated during the year that we have certain investments we should catch up with. And as you can see, the technical equipment went up very much in 2025, but also intangible assets and especially the trading platform development costs, which we capitalize on our balance sheet.

In terms of cash flow and liquidity, again, no surprises here. We had a very, very strong cash flow from operating activities and more than PLN 200 million. Even though our capital expenditures were higher than the year before, our free cash flow is still growing, so it reached PLN 127 million compared to PLN 93 million the year before. Our conversion of results into cash is still very high. Cash flow to EBITDA is almost 90%, and it's comparable as last year. And we end the year with over PLN 380 million net cash on our balance sheet. So very, very safe liquidity position. Now I will ask Tomasz to take over and discuss the outlook.

Thank you, Marcin. Let me now give you some guidance about the trends that shape our revenues and OpEx in terms of cash equity trading. As we said, we had a very strong January and February, in March until the end of last week, we saw trading, which is up around 20% on a year-on-year basis. However, we point out that we should expect all other things being equal, lower year-on-year growth due to a high base effect, starting from the second quarter of next year. So in the first quarter of this year, the average debt turnover so far is PLN 2.6 billion versus PLN 1.8 billion a year ago and PLN 2.2 billion in the second quarter. In terms of commodity market, we saw a strong volume growth in gas segment, January and February. However, in terms of there is some deceleration in terms of growth in March and also as a result of the situation in the Middle East.

Electricity, a flat January and then somewhat better volumes in February and March. In terms of OpEx, this year will be another year, I would elevate that level of OpEx, especially related to the WATS system. So first, we have -- we run 2 parallel infrastructures for 2 systems at the same time. Then following the planned launch of WATS, which is planned for the mid of this year, we will have a sharp increase in depreciation expense. And then also, we will recognize in our P&L a portion of costs previously capitalized. So then this will increase our cost base. On the other hand, after the launch of WATS, our free cash flow generation should improve because there will be less CapEx. On the other hand, we expect that some of this increase in costs will be offset by a reduction in the cost of noncore subsidiaries as we are finishing the review of strategic options for noncore companies and we would expect that, especially in the first -- second half of this year, those costs will be significantly lower while last year, it was roughly around PLN 10 million negative impact on our bottom line.

In terms of CapEx will still be quite high i.e., at the level compared to revenues similar to what you seen last year. Of course, works on the WATS trading platform and further investments in cyber security and development of digital tools, some small investments in related to AI and to our data segments. However, starting from 2027, especially and after the launch of WATS, you should expect CapEx to normalize at levels related to revenues seen in the previous years. We are and will be a company with attractive dividend policy. Our policy assumes a payment of between 60% to 80% of constant net profit in dividends with an ambition to increase dividend per share. We will publish our recommendation in terms of dividend over next few weeks.

Let me also make a comment here that, as you know, in our strategy, we focus on 2 pillars in terms of market development and creating value for our shareholders. I think that still in terms of market development, there's a lot to do, and we are here quite optimistic that there's a huge potential ahead of the Polish market. I'm sure that with many of you, I've discussed it already, and we'll be happy to discuss it in our one-on-one meetings.

Yes. So thank you very much, guys, for the presentation. Let's move on to the Q&A session.

[Operator Instructions]

I see we have a ready hand from Miguel Dias, the analyst from Wood.

Thanks for taking time to present the results and take my questions. I would like to ask you first on the key accounts. I understand this has been pushed to 2027. So do you have an estimate that you can share with us regarding the inflows that you expect in domestic listed products in 2027, 2028 from these accounts? The second question would be regarding Armini Stock Exchange. If we should consider delivery in the fourth quarter as the run rate for 2026? Also on TG, how should we think about the recent developments on the energy markets? Are these a net positive or negative for the commodity exchange?

And then finally, on costs. 2025 came in materially ahead of the guidance that you've provided, 10% year-on-year. Guidance is at 46%, if I'm not mistaken. So do you still maintain that there has been no front loading in 2025 vis-a-vis the strategy? And also how much can AI help you contain or reduce these costs? And if I understand correctly that by the second half of 2026, the noncore subsidiary questions will be given a definite answer.

I can take the first question about the OKI accounts. So for those who don't know what OKI account will be, it's a account for retail investors with a free tax allowance of around PLN 100,000, or EUR 25,000 and this is modeled after the very successful ISK account in Sweden. So yes, the launch of this accounts original plan for mid of this year has been postponed, but I can share with you that this was rather as a request of the market participants for them to be ready with the IT segment, and that's why there was a postponement until the January of next year. And we are very much very excited about OKI accounts. We believe it will be a breakroom also for the Warsaw Stock Exchange. As, although you could invest in OKI accounts in securities, international securities and shares and bonds with preferrential, very small tax on the asset base this on tax allowance is only for domestic investments and i.e., investments on the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

So we have -- we feel that this could be a strong driver our business as well. And we don't have -- we haven't really shared and published our own forecast, but we can share the forecast from the Finance Ministry and Finance Ministry will assume that on an annual basis, the inflow to equities and to -- on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, it should be around PLN 5 billion. So these are the estimates from the Finance Ministry. We believe they are -- no we don't have a reason not to argue with those forecasts.

Sorry, I mean if you want me to repeat the other questions. I'll be happy to.

No it's okay. We got it. So the next one was about the run rate of the IMX revenues, maybe...

Let me perhaps ask Marcin to give you some..

Yes. Absolutely. So yes, what we have seen in Armenia in the second half of the year, I think it's a run rate in terms of revenues. I think this is something that is pretty, let's say, recurring. In terms of cost, I think they will be catching up a bit, okay? So the commitment that Armenian Stock Exchange or depository did towards the Central Bank was that they will be building up resources and infrastructure, and that's not happening overnight. So it takes a bit of time. So I think they will be catching up with cost, but still these new activities, these new services will be provided with reasonable margin.

Sure. Marcin, as we have you already -- the other question from Miguel was about the OpEx line, it was ahead of the guidance. So was there any front-loading in 2025 vis-a-vis the strategy and how much the related savings on noncore companies related so you can help with that going forward?

Yes. I think in terms of costs, there are maybe 2 things that we should mention here, yes. One thing is what we mentioned about variable salaries, okay? So this is like a pure consequence of high results. And that's a part that is, let's say, kind of automatic. So the better we perform the high these costs will be. So of course, the performance was above expectations. Therefore, this part of cost was consequently above expectations as well. I think we can also say that towards the end of the year, especially in the second half of the year, we also expected that the results will be much better than we originally planned.

Therefore, we also, let's say, invested additionally in certain areas, which were not planned original, yes. For example, we spend a bit more on promoting the capital market in Poland or different activities that are related to, let's say, recognition of Warsaw Stock Exchange. And we could do this because of good results, but we were not planning them when we were creating our strategy, yes. So they were not maybe necessary expenses, but we used the opportunity to boost a little bit these areas because of the good performance of the company.

Just perhaps, just to share with you, in terms of variable compensation. Here, we -- it's not really the discretionary expense, like majority of this or majority almost in fully is basically a formula which links the payments to employees to financial results. We entered into the highest brackets in this formula and that's the way. So once -- if this variable, fully variable expense item. Also in terms of what Marcin just said, for example, we had a campaign in social media, promoting ETFs, and we spent some considerable amounts on this campaign towards year-end.

This is a traditional season when [ Polish ] invest in pension schemes to account for some tax reliefs. So we -- that's why this decision to spend a bit more for ETFs. And as a result, we had this nice volume pickup in ETFs in the first months. We believe also this played a role here.

By the way, we had last year, we had a promotion of ETFs, 0 fee for brokers. This promotion has been ended with year-end.

Yes. So additional tailwind for the small tailwind for the revenue, sure. So Piotr, maybe if you could tell us a little bit about the recent geopolitical events and the impact on the TGE business.

Sure. I understand that the question relates to the situation in the Middle East. So of course, the situation in respect to LNG supply is, I believe, rather negative on the Polish gas market because of the higher price of the gas customers are rather waiting for the price drop which caused the lower activity on the forward market. We need to have in mind that the products offered by TGE for Polish commodity markets is always connected with physical delivery.

So fluctuation of the commodity price not always generate additional volumes, just in a position to capital markets and especially financial futures for -- so in this respect, on our markets, such fluctuation of the prices and higher price of the gas, which is very important to produce energy in the Polish energy mix is important. So we see in March, that's our customers, our members just a little bit of withhold with the bigger volumes, and they are less active than they were in the first months and last year.

Just one point here in the -- sorry, in the English version of the presentation, we had a mistake that we that our IR team has just spotted, and ask me to share with you in them. So gas, you see here, plus 23%. It should be minus 22%. Apologies for that in the Polish version, which we presented in the morning with minus somehow we had plus here. So this is exactly what Piotr referred to. We had a decline, double-digit decline in gas trading in March which may be offset with the pickup in electricity in trading.

Yes. Sorry, again, for the mistake.

[Operator Instructions]

I don't see any new questions in coming. So maybe a last chance to ask anything to the management Board.

And if there are no further questions, so thank you guys for joining us and hope to see you all again in May when we will be presenting the Q1 2026 results. We are to publish 27th of May. And if you would like to meet with us earlier than that in either in Warsaw or London, we will be in New York also. So just let us know at [email protected] so goodbye, and I guess see you in May. Thank you.

[Audio Gap] you today in the morning with the U.S. of Poland, and my name is Tomasz Bardzilowski. I'm the CEO of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. And we have for you a presentation which talks about the Polish capital market, about the stock exchange, our results, our plans. And after the presentation, which will take probably around 25, 30 minutes, we are open for your questions. So let me go to the first slide.

About a few words about Polish economy, which has been performing extremely well over the past years, has been one of the strongest economy in the European Union for many years. Right now, it's sixth largest economy in the EU and 20th largest economy in the world. What's important is a steady growth of GDP. This year, growth GDP is forecast to be at 3.4%. Inflation, which is falling, at the moment, it's already below 3%. The average for the year is expected around 3.7%. Our main macroeconomic risk is high fiscal deficit, which is exceeding 6% of GDP. However, the government level is still well below some of the other European countries at 60% of GDP. And what's important is that the economy is relatively balanced in terms of current account. We don't have any major current account deficit.

So overall, the growth in the economy has been extremely strong. And as you can see here also in this chart in the upper right corner, Polish economy has reached 8% of EU average in terms of GDP per capita, which is a remarkable achievement starting many years ago in the '90s at well below 50%. So the strong economy growth is something that we can be, of course, proud of. Let's go to next slide. However, what we also can point out that the development of capital market has been lagging the economic growth, especially in the last decade. And now the market capitalization of the Warsaw Stock Exchange to GDP is just 22%, and this is well below the EU average, which is over 60%.

And you can see here also on this chart that in Germany, the same ratio is at 47%. So twice over 2x bigger compared to Poland. And you see that in the past, this ratio has been higher. It was 35% of GDP in 2014, and we have this decline to 22%, meaning that really the development of the Warsaw Exchange has been lagging the development of the Polish economy. And of course, this is something that we want to change. This is something also that we view as a big opportunity. One of the problems is a limited pool of domestic institutional capital in Poland.

The size of pension fund assets to GDP is just 8%. The size of investment fund assets to GDP is 10%, so well below some other countries in Germany, the size of mutual fund assets -- investment fund assets to GDP as well over -- is closer to 80%. We have pension funds, and they still represent over 40% of the free float of the stock exchange. Good news is that there's a new pension fund scheme called PPK, employee investment plans, and it has been set up a few years ago, and it's growing quite fast, although it's still quite small in terms of assets. It's only 30% of GDP. The older pension funds of -- which really were the main driver behind the development of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and they are not really growing because they have to now transfer part of the asset to the social security system to the Pillar 1 scheme.

And mutual funds, which in Poland are called TFI. They are bigger, over PLN 400 billion, so close to EUR 100 billion. However, the problem is here that they invest on a small proportion of the assets into local equities. There are many reasons for that, but I believe that once interest rates will be lower, they will reduce or start to reduce the bond portfolio and debt exposure and to increase the equity exposure. However, the big opportunity is related to retail investors. When you look at the household financial assets, Poland stands out as a country in which the households have one of the highest share of savings invested in the -- in cash and bank deposits. It's at 50% of the financial savings, and this compares to EU average of just 31%.

And in some of the countries, this ratio is as low at 12% or 15% in those countries when the capital markets is most developed. And just by reducing this ratio from where it is right now, 52% in Poland to the EU average of 31%, we could free up capital of well over EUR 150 billion, so much bigger than the current size of the free float on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and almost 6x more than the current share -- the current investments of direct investments of retail investors in listed shares, which is just PLN 100 billion or EUR 25 billion.

So how to develop the market, in my opinion, and this is a chart that we've shown -- have showed in our strategy presentation last year in November. The biggest is really to create and to revive domestic institutional investors both -- domestic investors, both institutional and retail, i.e., further development of pension funds, investment funds but also private market, i.e., private equity and VC capital. In terms of growth, how to attract more investors, it's mainly through better and more attractive product offering, financial education, but also tax incentives.

Once we have this strong domestic pool of capital, we will attract more IPOs with the strong ecosystem of investment firms and with good corporate governance, high standards and also ESG and balanced regulation. I think when we have it all, definitely, we will be more interested -- interesting for foreign investors, including retail investors from Europe and from Germany, hopefully. Now let me tell you a few highlights about the Warsaw Stock Exchange, and then I will talk also about our results. We are, I would say, not the first leak -- not a major exchange in Europe, #6 after the biggest ones, including Deutsche Börse, Euronext, SIX, NASDAQ and BME. Our market cap is EUR 250 billion. What -- however, we are by far the largest in the Central Europe, over 50% bigger than Vienna Stock Exchange and also the smaller exchanges.

What's important is that we are a relatively liquid exchange. Our cash equity turnover, you will see on the next slide, the significant increase that we've seen this year is over 3x bigger than on the next exchange in the Central Europe and so-called volatility ratio, i.e., the share of turnover and turnover to our market cap is one of the highest in Europe at 45%. Actually, only one exchange is better than Warsaw in this respect, and this is Deutsche Börse. You see it in this column on the right, Deutsche Börse is at 48.6% and Athens as well, I see. And in terms of cash equity turnover, we've seen a significant increase year-to-date of 45% year-on-year basis. Hopefully, this higher liquidity will stay with us and will also help to boost the revenues of the Warsaw Stock Exchange.

What we are really proud of and very happy is a very strong performance of our main indices year-to-date. The main indices are all above 30% up and in dollar terms, close even to 50% increase. And although despite this fantastic performance, the market doesn't really look so expensive, especially relative to other global markets. On the chart on the right, you see the P/E ratio of MSCI Poland compared to MSCI World and MSCI Emerging Markets. So compared to MSCI Emerging Markets, it's still almost 30% discount -- 27% discount on forward-looking P/E ratio.

In terms of our valuation, Warsaw Exchange, we are -- we look inexpensive when you look at the P/E ratio of just 30%, 13x PE also at a discount in the valuation when you look at the EBITDA ratio, although we are paying one of the highest dividend within the group of global exchanges. You can also see here that when we look at the ROE versus price to book value metrics, we are also below the median and one of the most attractively valued exchange in the world. And hopefully, our ROE will continue to improve, which will justify a higher valuation.

A few words about our strategic directions, which have been published in November last year. So in the plan for 3 years, we have -- want to focus on 2 pillars. First pillar is capital market development and, of course, building shareholder value. However, we think that whatever is good for the capital market also should be good for Warsaw Stock Exchange. So it's many growth initiatives talking to our stakeholders, to the Ministry of Finance, to the regulator. Our main area of growth that we see is attracting retail investors but also supporting new issues and supporting current issuers.

What we want to offer is more value for the issuers from being a listed company. Financial education is also quite very high on our agenda. And we believe that we should also engage in activities aiming at increasing the -- or enhancing capital markets in the whole Central European region. In terms of building shareholder value, we want to expand the portfolio of new products and indices. Products, which are very high on our agenda, are exchange-traded funds, also new derivatives and bonds. Improving -- strengthening sustainable development is something which also is quite important for us.

We still see a lot of room to improve efficiency also by enhancing synergies within the group. You will see later on our cost-income ratio, which is relatively high. And we want to accelerate our growth through partnership, and we see a value -- we see potential for M&As, for boosting growth from M&As, especially given our strong cash position. But what's important, we will remain a company with attractive dividend policy with the aim of increasing dividend per share. Here, you see our financial ambitions. Just let me -- and in terms of what we really focus on is the -- what we control, i.e., the cost growth.

We don't want the cost growth to increase more than 4% to 6% on an annualized basis in the period between 2004 and 2027. And as a result of the revenue growth that we see at -- below -- at around 6% to 8%, we hope that this will result into double-digit EBITDA growth. Of course, this year, revenue growth, you will see it is much higher. So we also have some more room to accelerate with some investments, given a strong performance. We want to reduce our cost/income ratio. It has been at 72% in 2023. We think it's too high, and we are aiming at 65% in 2007.

Also, our ROE, we want to increase it to 18% from 15% in 2024. Speaking of financial results, our -- when you look at this pie chart, our revenues are comprising from financial market revenues, mainly cash equities. Cash equities are 1/3 of total revenues. And then we also own power exchange and power exchange in the first -- last 12 months represented 32% of total revenues. We -- so you will see that we are very much dependent on trading. Over -- well over 60% of our revenues are dependent on trading and our strategy game is to lower the share of trading revenues. So we are less volatile and have a more stable revenue base.

In terms of our year-to-date results, we are very happy to see very strong growth in revenues. In the first half, it was almost 16% in the second quarter, 19%, driven by financial segment revenues, mainly increasing turnover in cash equities. However, we are also very happy to see a recovery in commodity market revenues in our power exchange. This was one of the biggest positive surprises for us this year. At the beginning of the year, we guided for flat revenues in this segment. And in the first half, we have almost 11% growth. In terms of other revenues, we have a decline here. These are some of the noncore investments that we will -- that we -- and the share and in absolute value, we -- in our strategy, we want to focus on core business rather than develop some noncore initiatives.

Operating expenses in the first half, the growth was 6.7%; in the second quarter, 8%. So slightly above the range that we see for 3 years in our strategy. However, this is, in our view, justified by high revenue growth, also some of the initiatives that we will talk on next slides. Our cost-income ratio, you will see that has been reduced to 64% in the first half. So we've already, you may say, achieved our 3-year plan. And the -- as a positive result of operating -- high operating leverage, we've increased our EBITDA in the first half by well over 40% on an adjusted basis, 34%. In terms of net profit growth, it was similar growth, 40% on a reported basis and 35% on an adjusted basis.

You will see that we have a relatively high income from associates. This is a 32% in the depository -- national depository company. In terms of operating expenses, our -- they grew, as I said, by 6.7% in the first half and the key part of our expenses are personnel costs. Here, we saw over 10% growth in the first half, and it accelerated in the second quarter. It was mainly related to employment growth, mainly in the IT segment, and this is related to the fact that we are right now working on the launch of the new trading platform.

Also, the increase in personnel cost is a result of the increase in employee remuneration by average of 6%, which took place in October last year. And also, we increased the revenues for annual bonuses. On the other hand, you see that we are quite -- we have a good cost control in terms of external services, which were reduced by 2% in the first half. And what you can see on this line chart that over last year, we managed to reduce or to -- in each quarter, we have to -- we managed to have a higher revenue growth than cost growth.

Myself, I was appointed to the -- as a new CEO in the second quarter of last year. So -- and this was, for us, a key objective basically to improve profitability and make sure that we have a good cost control and the cost growth is not higher than revenue growth. As a result, we managed to increase our margins. The EBITDA margin went up within last year from 36% to 43% and reduce our cost/income ratio to closer or even below the targeted 65%. You can see here our history of our net profit growth and especially the history of our dividend payment. Over the -- since the IPO, we have never missed a dividend payment. Last year, dividend was PLN 3.15 per share, which was 89% of earnings, even higher than our official policy of paying between 60% to 80% of consolidated earnings as dividends.

It was a 5% growth on a year-on-year basis. And as I said, for us, the steady growth in dividend per share is extremely important part of our strategy. The -- when you look at our CapEx, our CapEx grew significantly over the last years, mainly as the work on the new trading platform accelerated. I believe that the CapEx should be peaking this year. And then once we will launch the new trading platform in October -- in November this year, the CapEx going forward will -- should decline. On the other hand, the depreciation next year will grow as we will start to depreciate the new trading platform was.

In terms of our outlook for the -- in terms of -- for the coming 2 quarters in the second half of the year, we saw still very strong increases in equity turnover in July and in August -- in the first half of August also the same in commodity market when we had -- especially the gas segment is impressive with the growth of over 80% in the segment. On the other hand, we have a declines in electricity trading in the second quarter, and this is similar to what we saw in the previous quarters, in the first and second quarter. What we want -- also it's worth here that in the past, there was an obligation to trade electricity on the -- on our power exchange.

This obligation has been removed 2 years ago, but now we hear from the Energy Ministry that the obligation at least to trade a part of the output is likely to be reintroduced, which will help our revenues from the power exchange going forward. In terms of operating cost growth, we are guiding for a higher rate of growth in the second half of this year compared to the second quarter. And this is mainly due to the intensification of the works of implementation of the new trading platform, WATS, and also other IT systems that we will be launching as well as higher investments in expenses for market -- for capital market promotion.

CapEx should stay at similar level as we saw in the first half. And I think it's worth to mention a major initiative, which is -- which may help to develop the capital market, especially attracting new retail investors. This initiative has been presented by Ministry of Finance. I'm talking about the new investment account -- personal investment account. It's in Polish [indiscernible] and we believe it may be an important driver for growth of the capital market in Poland. Let me tell you a few words what this initiative is all about. So it was presented a month ago by the Finance Ministry. It's basically a voluntary savings scheme and investment account in which when you invest, there are no tax on investments of up to PLN 100,000, roughly EUR 22,000.

And above that amount, there will be a low tax on assets. Above that limit, it will be calculated as 19%, which is a current level of the capital gain tax on risk-free assets, which will be -- so when we take the current data, will be around 0.8% on the assets above PLN 100,000. You will be -- you have higher flexibility in terms of investments. So there will be no limits and ability to withdraw funds at that time. You also will be able to invest in any assets submitted to trading investment funds and up to PLN 25,000 in deposits or -- bank deposits or treasury bonds. And according to Ministry of Finance, within 3 years, the value of assets on the new personal investment account may reach PLN 100 billion. And importantly -- important to say that this account has been modeled based on the Swedish account ISK.

And here on the chart, you see the development of those Swedish accounts right now. It's extremely popular in Sweden. Over 40% of other population owns and ISK and total value of assets is close to EUR 180 billion so really impressive amount. And Sweden is by far the most developed capital market in Europe. So we hope that with the new account, similar to Swedish account, Poland also may increase and develop the capital market and the current share of the Warsaw Stock Exchange capitalization to GDP at only 20% will be increasing. And that's really our presentation. As I said, we managed to do it within 30 minutes. So we have time right now for Q&A. And I will be happy to answer any of the questions.

Yes. Thank you so much, Tomasz, for the insightful presentation. [Operator Instructions] we received already some questions from the chat. First question would be, what do you consider the main reason for the high discount at which the Warsaw Stock Exchange is trading versus Western peers, like, for example, Deutsche Börse.

Yes. Well, thank you for this question. Yes, there's a discount as we saw in the chart. I think that you can explain there are many possible explanations. This is a discount related to just higher interest rates in Poland. Our Main rate is 5%, much lower than the Eurozone. Second, when you look at the Main index, it's comprised of a banking sector and also of utilities companies, which tend to trade at lower multiples. Speaking about Warsaw Stock Exchange, we -- one of the reasons for the discount here maybe related to the fact that a big share of our revenues are trading oriented.

So we are more volatile, for example, than Deutsche Börse, which has only 7% share of equity trading revenues. And -- but that said, I also think that this is an opportunity, which means that we can continue to outperform other markets so that to reduce this valuation gap.

Thank you so much. We received another question, and I think we already touched upon it -- regarding OKI. Maybe you can say that again to the audience. Could you elaborate on the planned OKI investment account? There have been articles in German media about it. When is it supposed to be introduced, as I understood it will only be available for Polish nationals.

Yes. So yes, we discussed the OKI account. The plan is for the OKI account to be introduced by mid next year. And I believe that because, well, we didn't have such account in Poland, there were schemes with some tax allowance, but they were mainly retirement saving schemes. And there were -- for many years, there was a debate in Poland that the taxation of capital gains is less attractive than the taxation of real estate investments. You pay 90% capital gains tax and 90% tax on your dividends when you invest and you have to pay it regardless of the duration of your investments.

When you invest in real estate after 5 years -- when you sell after 5 years, there is no tax and the rental income is taxed at between 8% to 12% dependent on the income. So now we have an account which looks as a simple solution and I think it -- and I'm really convinced that it will attract a lot of investors. Also, as we understand from what was already presented by the Finance Ministry that each person could have as many OKI accounts as they want. So you can have OKI account at your bank and then have a bank deposit there. You can have OKI account at a mutual fund. And we believe that the most accounts will be held by the brokerage houses -- by the brokers.

[Operator Instructions] We received another question from the chat as the Warsaw Stock Exchange are considering the introduction of semiannual or quarterly dividends. Are you considering that?

Sorry, can you repeat the question?

Are you considering the introduction of semiannual or quarterly dividends?

Yes. That's a very good question. And actually, a year ago, we said that we'll be thinking about that. However, due to some issues related to the Polish corporate code, it's not that simple. However, what -- that's why we wanted to have a product which will -- listed on the exchange, which will pay a quarterly dividend, and we are very happy that it was a few weeks ago. We will have a first ETF, which is paying a quarterly dividend, quarterly payment. And this ETF that you can buy on the Warsaw Exchange is investing in over 50 highest dividend paying companies, including Warsaw Stock Exchange.

And the plan is that it will gather dividends in Poland. Almost all companies pay dividends on an annual basis, but then it will pay those dividends on a quarterly basis starting from next year. So you can check the ticker and check with your broker, the ticker of this and have -- and check for some information. And as I said, it is listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange and actually had its first listing 2 weeks ago and already gathered a remarkable asset under management just in a few days.

Thank you. What measures is the stock exchange taking to improve transparency and corporate governance at among listed companies?

Thank you for this question. Yes, it's important that we have high corporate governance standards and good transparency in terms of -- especially in mid and small cap segments. What we have and on a regular basis, we update is the code of best corporate governance standards. There are a couple of dozens of various principles there and the companies, they have to, as we say, comply or explain. So if you don't comply with all those standards listed there, you have to explain why and your investor shareholders, including independent Board members that as a listed company, you have to have in your Board, should make sure that you are complying or in a reasonable way, explaining why you don't comply with the best standards.

In terms of transparency, I think that we also -- one of the principles is that, for example, you should have your financial statements also in English. They should be available to foreign investors. You should organize meetings with investors on a regular basis. And as a part of our support to the mid and small caps segment, for example, we are paying for writing analytical reports for brokers and those supports are about small and medium size companies. Right now in this program, we have 65 companies. So -- and those reports are freely available and they are in English as well. So you can check them and -- on a regular basis. So we have a professional coverage of many of small cap stocks.

Great. What initiatives are in place to bring small and medium-sized enterprises closer to the capital markets?

Yes. So this -- for us, it's very important, of course, that we have a steady flow of IPOs, both of large and small companies. We have an alternative market NewConnect, on which we list well over 300 companies, and there's at least every year, 10 or more companies listed. What we -- due to attract IPOs, this year, for example, we have introduced a new program, GPW IPO Academy, in which we organize special sessions for companies which consider IPO listing sessions with industry experts. It's a 6-month program, in which they can learn about how to prepare for an IPO, how to organize Investor Relations and all what you need to know before you become a public company.

And we are very happy because just within a few weeks after announcement of the new program, we have all the seats filled. So there are no more free spaces for the first edition. And other programs are -- we have a program in which we organized meetings between private equity companies and local brokers and institutional investors. So also, we present companies which consider IPO at very early stage to local brokers. In terms of IPOs, we were very happy with this year, companies which had IPO this year. In January, we had IPO of a health care company -- health care diagnostic company, Diagnostyka. It was medium-sized IPO, for us quite big, over EUR 400 million. And what's more important, the company's share price doubled since the IPO.

So all the investors should be very, very happy. In June, we had an IPO of a clothing manufacturer, but a specific clothing manufacturer, a company which is producing clothing and for the Army. It was around EUR 70 million in the IPO, also very successful and the share price also has a quite positive performance. So we are very happy because investors who invest in Polish IPOs, they should feel satisfied with the investments, especially this year.

What strategies is the stock exchange pursuing to attract international investors? How do you intend to further increase foreign investments in the Polish capital markets?

Yes. Thank you for this question, of course. Today's event is one of the examples of what we do on a regular basis. We meet in conferences, on road shows with investors, having a roadshow in London this month. And next month, we are going to New York and many Polish companies are having such conferences on a regular basis. Right now, we see that participation of international investors is quite high in the Warsaw Stock Exchange in trading. It's -- 70% of trading is done by international investors. So it's also very important for us to attract more retail Polish investors, especially retail.

But one of the initiatives that we are working on and here consulting with the regulator is to make Polish ETFs available on other exchanges. And for this, there's a proposal to change the regulation. So Polish ETFs are UCITS because for the time being, they are not -- they don't fill the criteria of being a UCITS compliance. So a retail investor from Germany, it's not easy to invest in such products.

Thank you so much, Tomasz. I think that was the last question. So we're coming now to an end of today's roundtable. Thanks again to our media partners, both Street Online and [indiscernible]. And on behalf of Airtime, I wish you a beautiful day. I hope to see you in another roundtable. And I hand over to you now, Tomasz, for some final remarks, and I hope to see you in 2 years.

Yes. Thank you much. It was a pleasure. Thank you once again for the invitation. Let me know when there will be a next opportunity. I'll be very much willing to help you. So thank you very much [Foreign Language].

Good morning, and warm welcome from Airtime to today's conference. It's the Poland on Air Conference, and my name is Franziska, and I'm super excited to be here with you. We're going to have many interesting roundtables of top companies here from Poland, and we're going to start with a very interesting panel.

And we thought, why don't we ask the expert himself, Tomasz Bardzilowski. I'm super excited. You are the CEO of the Warsaw Stock Exchange. Warm welcome to this panel discussion.

Yes. Thank you very much. I am really pleased to be here with you today in the morning. Well, it's great to be able to present to the viewers of Poland on our -- a bit more details about the Polish capital market.

Before we dive into all the questions, I wanted to ask what's currently on top of your mind when you think about the Warsaw Stock Exchange?

Well, I must say that when I speak with investors and we are proud with our recent achievements with this year's performance of the market. Until recently, Polish stock market has been the best-performing market in the world. We have right now a small correction, which might be a buying opportunity for those who are not yet there. But the market has been performing extremely well, up over 30% year-to-date in zloty terms, well over 40% in dollar terms and with extremely increased in the turnover, which increased over 50%.

So it seems there's a big increase in interest from international investors in Poland. And I think it has a strong backing with very strong macro data. GDP in Poland has been very strong last year, over 3%. This year, we are heading towards 3.5%, a stable economy. And also -- and this, relatively, I would say, not yet an expensive stock market. So we are very much excited that Poland is on radar screen, and this is something that it's for me, a pleasure to talk about.

Yes, it is. It's amazing. How do you see the Warsaw Stock Exchange evolving in the broader European capital markets landscape?

Yes. Well, Warsaw Stock Exchange is like a second tier, I would say, as exchange. It's not, of course, not as big as the main players like Deutsche Börse, Euronext, NASDAQ or SIX, but we -- our market capitalization is EUR 200 billion.

And it's -- but what we are saying is, we are relatively a liquid exchange. Our velocity ratio, i.e., the annual turnover to market cap is close to that of Deutsche Börse. We list over 700 companies on the -- 2 of our markets: Main Market, Alternative Market.

And the -- well, in this -- and then this -- we have IPOs and the equity capital market in terms of companies raising capital is quite vivid and active in Poland. So I think we could be an example of a well-prospering midsized or small exchange in Europe, which is in a proper way, addressing the needs of the local market.

How do you assess the current liquidity on the Warsaw Stock Exchange, especially in comparison to other European markets? And what measures are being taken to enhance market depth and trading volume?

Yes. That's, of course, the very important issue for also the management of the stock exchange to make sure the liquidity is there. And as I said, our liquidity is quite high comparable on relative terms, of course, not in absolute terms comparable to that of Deutsche Börse. I think what is important here is a good balance between domestic and international investors.

Although we have in our trading almost 70% of turnover is -- consists of international flow. We have relatively strong retail investor base, which represents around between 15% to 20% of the daily turnover. And in some of the segments of the market, especially medium and small cap stocks is much bigger. But also, what was important for us is that we provide special incentives for market makers for also other traders who add the liquidity to the market and to the main stocks.

And also, we do a lot to increase the liquidity in the smaller segment of the market. One of such -- there are a few examples of what we've done. For example, we introduced a promotion for trading in ETFs. ETFs, exchange traded funds, are very important for us, especially those who are based on local indices. So introduced zero trading fee for brokers for trading ETFs.

Another initiative that I think is interesting is that we sponsor research coverage of smaller stocks. So basically, we pay for brokers who are in the program to write research on smaller stocks. And there is right now 65 companies in this program. And also, we pay for quarterly reports on our bond market and our alternative market.

Yes. And I also remember that you launched several initiatives around technology, ESG and regional positioning. Which of these areas do you think holds the most transformative potential over the next, let's say, 2 years?

Yes. Well, yes, we are undergoing a very important project for the stock exchange and the whole capital market. We are right now in the process of introducing a new trading system, our own proprietary trading system. Right now we are using a system which belongs to Euronext. And this will -- the system is planned to be introduced this year in November. And it will really open new opportunities for us.

First, it will be much -- we'll have much bigger capacity. So the capacity will be 4 to 5x bigger. We'll be able to cater for more and more new investors and will enable us to connect our bond trading platform with the equity trading platform.

So right now many investors who trade only equities, they don't really have much access or easy access to our bond trading market and also will enable us to accelerate development of new derivative products. So this will be a big milestone in the history of Warsaw Stock Exchange, but also Polish capital market. And I think right now, this is by far our most important project.

Great. In general, I would say we are seeing IPO activity slowing down across all Europe, where private markets attract capital. What role do public markets need to play to stay competitive for growth?

Yes. That's a very important question, the question, which is asked many times recently. And the answer that you hear is that the public markets are not competitive enough, especially because of the cost of entering the market and cost of being a public company, which is relatively high, much higher than it was in the past.

But what I think is also key is that we should have in mind that a public market is for more mature companies, for those who are able to -- well, that we need also a much more vibrant private markets, including venture capital and private equity markets.

And for that, we need more capital to enter those markets, so for scale up -- capital for scale up for the start-ups and capital for -- and also capital on the stock exchange for public market. What we say here in Poland, that to develop our market first, we need more local institutional investors. And this is the key, both on the private market, we see in private equity, but also on the public market like pension funds and mutual funds.

And when it comes to international issuers and investors, as you know, that Airtime is this platform that investors and issuers can meet. So interesting for me would be what do you think -- what's the greatest potential that they could see in the Polish stock exchange, Warsaw Stock Exchange?

In terms of the key potential, I believe it's the -- still, the market is not well developed. It's just 20% of GDP. Just to compare, the German capital market is over 50% of GDP. So you may say that Germany capital markets is not as developed as in some Anglo-Saxon countries. But we have a big gap to fill.

And this potential is something that we work on to realize, and this can be done through addressing some issues, including that many retail investors -- or that we have a huge base of retail investors who don't really -- potential investors who are so far have not really much exposure to capital markets.

The size of -- and the number of capital and savings that Polish households held on bank deposits is one of the highest in Europe. So we do a lot to propose initiatives for retail investors to think about the stock market, that they can actually, when investing in long term, make more money in capital markets compared to bank deposits.

And one such initiative has been also proposed by Polish Finance Ministry. It is a new investment account, a personal investment account. In Polish, it is also [indiscernible] account investors in the OKI. So the word is OKI.

[indiscernible] heard a lot about OKI. And OKI account provides significant tax incentives, so up to PLN 100,000, which is roughly EUR 22,000, so you can invest without tax. And so we believe that once this new account is introduced, it will definitely result into bigger interest and bigger inflows of retail investors to Polish capital market.

We have two 2 more questions, and one is a little bit out of the box. What would you think -- from the top of your mind, what is the biggest misconception people have about the Polish stock exchange?

Yes. So that's a good question. I think that here, at least in Poland for some years, because the market was not really performing that well, so the misconception was that you can make more money in real estate and investing by buying apartment, buying flats than investing in the stock market.

I think that in long term, you can also diversify better by having a good stock portfolio. So this is something where the education plays a big role to explain to investors, especially retail, that it makes sense to be diversified and to have a -- to think about exposure to stock market as a way to increase your wealth. So education will play a big part in this role to achieve this objective.

Last question before we dive into the Q&A session. If we would meet in 2 years, what would you think what the Warsaw Stock Exchange have achieved by then?

Yes. Well, recently, we have celebrated a fact that our main index, WIG index, Warsaw Exchange Index, reached a symbolic level of 100,000. 35 years ago, it started at 1,000. So it's a huge increase over the time. And recently, I read a few days ago an article of one of the analysts, and he said that he thinks that the main index will reach 200,000 in 2 years. So maybe this could be something to dream of.

But definitely, I would -- I hope that the market will be more mature with a steadying of IPOs, with big participation of retail investors and the market that -- and I would also like to hear about that Polish families, when they talk about money, they don't only talk about buying a new apartment, but they also talk about a dividend, the index level and also a stock market.

Thank you so much, Tomasz. So great to have your expertise here with us. I will now open the stage to the Q&A session. [Operator Instructions]

And let me see if we received some questions. We haven't received a question yet. Everyone is so impressed.

I mean we're moving forward today. And for all of you who are also listening, we're moving forward with many roundtables. And actually, you're going to do the first roundtable as well.

Yes.

So we're also super excited for that. And then we have a big Q&A session. So if you would like to know more afterwards, you can always reach out to us, to Airtime. You can also reach out to the Warsaw Stock Exchange, of course.

And I think there's no question. So I'm very happy to end this wonderful panel discussion now. Thank you so much for being here, Tomasz. See you at another roundtable with a different setting, but the same. And thank you also to our media partners [indiscernible]. Keep an eye on that. There are going to be many articles. And see you soon. Thank you so much for being here, Tomasz.

Thank you. Thanks, Franziska. Thank you.