Smartbroker Holding AG publishes preliminary financials for H1 2023

Smartbroker Holding AG publishes preliminary financials for H1 2023

• Revenues of €23.4 million, EBITDA after customer acquisition costs of €1.7 million
• Adjusted guidance for 2023: revenues between €46 million and €51 million, EBITDA after customer acquisition costs between minus €1 million and plus €1 million
• SMARTBROKER+ successfully launched – transfer of existing customers to the new platform planned for end of October 2023

Berlin, 5 September 2023

Smartbroker Holding AG (ISIN: DE000A2GS609, FSE: SB1) generated preliminary revenues of €23.4 million at Group level in the first half of 2023 (H1 2022: €27.7 million) and preliminary EBITDA after Smartbroker customer acquisition costs of €1.7 million (H1 2022: €4.6 million). The decline is attributable to the persistently challenging capital markets environment combined with a difficult macroeconomic context. Declining but still high inflation rates, the continuation of Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, rapidly rising interest rates and geopolitical shifts with potentially long-term effects are generating unusual levels of uncertainty on the stock markets. These, in turn, have led to reduced interest of private investors in capital market information, and their trading activity.

In particular, the Group's advertising-driven media businesses recorded year-over-year declines. The persistently challenging macroeconomic environment is exerting a delayed effect, and the reduced number of page impressions is now increasingly impacting the Group’s media revenue, leading to a 15% decline for the media business compared to the first half of 2022. The media business continues to generate satisfying profitability and enables positive EBITDA at Group level despite the current decline in revenues. Management initiated countermeasures already in 2022 and started a careful overhaul of the media portals, starting with the relaunch of wallstreet-online.de, which has been completed in June 2023. Future investments in the other media portals, apps and communities are intended to further strengthen the Group's established market position.

The transaction business accounted for almost 40% of total group revenues and developed as planned in the first half of the year. The expected decline in revenues is due to among other things on the virtually complete cessation of marketing, and the singular operational focus was product investment and market launch of SMARTBROKER+. This investment phase has been successfully completed and SMARTBROKER+ has been launched on 30 August in its first stage of development. At the end of October, the existing Smartbroker customer base will be moved onto the new SMARTBROKER+ platform. Subsequently, marketing activities for new customer acquisition will be ramped up again to the levels seen in 2020 and 2021. 2023 will therefore be the last intermediate year before SMARTBROKER+ contributes to revenue and EBITDA on a full year basis. Over time, the brokerage unit is expected to become the Group's largest revenue and profitability contributor.

Based on developments in the first half of 2023, management are updating their forecast for the full year 2023 and now expect revenues at group level of between €46 million and €51 million and consolidated EBITDA after customer acquisition costs between minus €1 million and plus €1 million.

André Kolbinger, CEO of Smartbroker Holding AG, commented: "The market launch of SMARTBROKER+ was very successful. We have a lot of registrations for the new platform and are happy about the positive product feedback. After in-depth discussions, and as a pre-cautionary measure, we have decided to reduce our guidance due to the short-term pressures in H1 2023 to conservative levels. We do not, however, consider the first half of 2023 to be a meaningful benchmark for the Group's potential. The opposing developments also confirm our long-term strategy of becoming less dependent on the sometimes volatile media business."

The complete half-year figures will be published on 13 September 2023. On the same day, the Management Board will explain the figures to interested investors in a virtual earnings call starting at 11 a.m. and will also present the new SMARTBROKER+. The earnings call and presentation will be held in German with a simulcast translation into English. Registration for the call is available under the following link:

https://montegaconnect.de/event/3atvym52j2oeeuxuyjxjryxla8xjhc6s

About the Smartbroker Group:

Through its Transaction division, the Smartbroker Group operates SMARTBROKER+ – a next-generation broker that is the only provider in Germany to combine the extensive product range of classic brokers with the extremely favourable pricing conditions of neo brokers. The portfolio also includes the digital fund broker FondsDISCOUNT.de. At the same time, via its Media division, the Group operates four high-reach digital media assets dedicated to bringing capital markets news and information to retail investors (wallstreet-online.de, boersenNews.de, FinanzNachrichten.de and ARIVA.de). With several hundred million monthly page views, the group is by far the largest publisher-independent financial portal operator in the German-speaking world and maintains the largest financial community.