Marcus Lindberg: Good morning, and welcome to the presentation of Nordnet's Q3 2026. My name is Marcus Lindberg, and I am the Head of Investor Relations at Nordnet. Joining me today is our CEO, Rasmus Järborg, and our CFO, Lennart Krän. Rasmus and Lennart will start by presenting the results, and then we will have a Q&A session. If you want to ask a question, just click the raise hand button in Zoom, or you can submit a question in writing via Zoom, or just send me an email. With that, I will turn the call over to our CEO, Rasmus Järborg.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you, Marcus. Good morning, everybody, and thanks for joining us today. Looking across Q3, our operating performance reflected both expected seasonal patterns and the underlying strength of secular wealth accumulation across the Nordic region. Historically, the summer quarter exhibits a natural moderation in trading velocity across European retail markets.
Rasmus Järborg: However, Q3 2026 proved to be our second strongest quarter in Nordnet's history, demonstrating the compounding power of our platform. While headline equity markets remain elevated and central banks continue to recalibrate interest rate policy, market volatility remains selective.
Rasmus Järborg: Against this backdrop, our customers remained highly engaged, actively rebalancing their asset allocations and deploying capital for the long term. As we celebrate Nordnet's 30th anniversary this year, our franchise has never been stronger or more diversified.
Rasmus Järborg: Whether our customers are participating in primary equity offerings, accessing institutional-grade equity research, or building recurring ETF and mutual fund savings plans, Nordnet serves as their primary operating system for savings and investments. That multi-product durability is evident throughout our Q3 delivery.
Rasmus Järborg: Turning to the highlights on slide two now. We have summarized the core operational and strategic milestones of the quarter. As you can see, top-line performance remains strong, delivering growth across all primary revenue streams in what was our second strongest quarter ever.
Rasmus Järborg: Operating profit before tax reached SEK 1.1 billion, marking our third consecutive quarter above the SEK 1 billion crown threshold. Execution across the strategic initiatives was equally pronounced. Trading held firm through the summer lull with robust traded value and a consistent cross-border mix supporting our unit economics.
Rasmus Järborg: Net savings rose 23% year-on-year to SEK 26 billion, bringing our nine-month net savings to SEK 80 billion and maintaining a record pace year to date. As you will have seen, we entered into a strategic partnership with ABG Sundal Collier this quarter to co-create a modern private wealth offering for advised and managed capital across the Nordics.
Rasmus Järborg: In partnership with Citi, we launched a dedicated research portal in our Nordnet app and web, giving our private banking customers integrated access to institutional-grade equity research covering approximately 1,500 international companies.
Rasmus Järborg: Back in Sweden, we appointed Britta Rosenqvist as our new Country Manager for Sweden to accelerate our domestic commercial agenda. Britta joins us on 1 December. Our German rollout plan remains on schedule for commercial launch in November, positioning us ahead of the structural pension reforms taking place in Germany on 1 January.
Rasmus Järborg: In September, we initiated a SEK 250 million share buyback program, reaffirming our commitment to disciplined shareholder remuneration. As you will have seen, we also announced that we are calling our SEK 600 million AT1 bond in November. Moving to slide 3, our financial results continue to illustrate the structural operating leverage of our digital model. Total revenue reached SEK 1.6 billion, up 18% compared to Q3 of last year. Operating expenses stood at SEK 450 million, reflecting underlying cost growth in the core Nordic business of 10% year over year, or 12% including the investments in Germany. Over the last 12 months, OpEx, excluding Germany, has risen by 6%, putting us on track to achieve our guidance of 8% cost growth, excluding Germany, for the full year. The net result is a profit before tax of SEK 1.1 billion, an increase of 21% year over year.
Rasmus Järborg: We processed 15.8 million trades in the quarter, essentially flat compared to last year's high volume, while our customer franchise expanded by 12% to close to 2.6 million active customers. On slide 4, you can see more on the sustained velocity of this customer franchise. In the quarter, we welcomed nearly 64,000 net new customers, bringing our total active customer base to 2.6 million, an absolute increase of 274,000 customers year over year. Total savings capital closed at nearly SEK 1.5 trillion, representing an absolute growth of SEK 317 billion or 28% year over year. Our annualized savings ratio held firm at 9%, supported by consistent customer growth. Turning to slide 5, product velocity and democratizing professional-grade capabilities remain the cornerstone of our product agenda. We rolled out institutional-grade equity research across 1,500 global companies directly into our mobile and desktop environments.
Rasmus Järborg: By partnering with Citi, we are equipping our PB customers with the same fundamental analysis, valuation models, and catalyst tracking used by global institutions. We scaled our growth experimentation engine, shipping continuous A/B tests in our activation workflows across all four Nordic markets to streamline onboarding, optimize account funding, and accelerate time to first trade. We also introduced social benchmarking capabilities that allow users to check their portfolio performance against peer cohorts, friends, and family, set automated corporate action and stock alerts, and gain clearer thematic visibility across their holdings. In sum, our talented engineering teams shipped 24 production app releases this quarter, and this consistent release cadence ensures rapid feedback loops, robust security, and immediate feature adoption by our evolved customer base. Turning to slide 6, here we detail how this customer engagement translated across our three primary income streams.
Rasmus Järborg: Adjusted revenues reached SEK 1.6 billion, up 18% year over year. Transaction related income remained resilient at SEK 655 million. Despite the typical August seasonal lull and lower systemic volatility, revenue was supported by record average trade sizes and a high mix of cross-border trading. Fund related income rose 31% year over year to SEK 250 million, reflecting asset appreciation, stable platform margins, and strong net buying. Net interest income continued its upward trajectory, increasing nearly 20% year over year to SEK 687 million, driven by deposit stability, disciplined yield management following the rate hikes in the quarter. Turning to slide seven on our trading franchise. Daily average trades stood at 239,000, mirroring normal summer seasonality across retail investing. However, our revenue per trade expanded 13% year over year to SEK 41.4, virtually flat compared to Q2. This margin stability was powered directly by cross-border engagement.
Rasmus Järborg: Cross-border equity trades accounted for 42% of total traded value and 39% of trades in the quarter as our customers leveraged extended market hours and continued to invest in the AI super cycle. Slide eight highlights our asset management and fund distribution franchise, which continues to provide stable recurring revenue streams to our business. Total fund capital reached SEK 387 billion, up 37% year over year. Net fund buying during the quarter was SEK 12 billion. Crucially, nearly SEK 6 billion or 49% of all net fund flows were directed straight into our own Nordnet branded fund family. These Nordnet funds now represent SEK 120 billion in AUM or 31% of total fund assets on the platform, growing 50% year over year. Platform fund penetration reached a new high with 54% of all customers now holding a fund product. Moving to slide nine. Let me outline our customer deposit dynamics.
Rasmus Järborg: Customer deposits closed the quarter at over SEK 96 billion. Looking at the capital walk from Q2, we saw gross cash inflows of SEK 20.8 billion from net savings and SEK 3.1 billion from seasonal dividend receipts. Our customers actively deployed SEK 24 billion of that cash back into earning assets, SEK 12 billion of which into brokerage transactions and another SEK 12 billion into mutual funds. Total customer deposits now represent 6.6% of savings capital as our customers are still risk on despite the noisy market environment. To wrap up this section on slide 10, our NII delivery remains strong and disciplined. Net interest income rose nearly 20% year over year to SEK 687 million with our firm-wide NII yield steady at 275 basis points. Income from the liquidity portfolio stood at SEK 494 million across a conservative portfolio of SEK 70.5 billion.
Rasmus Järborg: Income from the credit portfolio expanded to SEK 296 million, up 12% year over year, supported by balanced demand across our SEK 33 billion loan book, comprising nearly SEK 20 billion in margin lending and SEK 13 billion in high-quality Swedish and Norwegian residential mortgages. Customer interest expense was SEK 104 million. Based on current forward IBOR rates, we continue to anticipate full year 2026 NII of approximately SEK 2.7 billion, and we continue the strength in NII to continue in 2027. Let me now hand the call over to my CFO, Lennart Krän, to walk through our expense discipline, operating leverage, and capital position.
Lennart Krän: Thank you very much, Rasmus, and good morning, everyone. Yes, as you can see, we continue with very good cost control and adjusted operating expenses for Q3 were SEK 450 million. Excluding our planned investments in Germany, core Nordic operation expenses grew by about 10% year-over-year. For the full year 2026, we are reiterating our expense guidance of SEK 1.8 billion. Well, SEK 1,790 million actually. This encompasses the approximately 8% underlying Nordic cost growth, which is alongside our financial targets, except for the German expansion, which we exclude from those 8%. So good cost control during this quarter as well. We can continue to the next slide, showing the operating leverage of this business with a very high growth in adjusted revenue and a moderate cost control. We end up with SEK 4.3 billion for the last 12 months in PBT. Sorry.
Lennart Krän: It is too early for me. As you can see here, over the last four years, Nordnet has delivered a 21% CAGR in adjusted profit before tax against 10% CAGR in operating expenses, and just 8.8% excluding our German investments. Over the last 12 months, our profit before taxes reached almost SEK 4.3 billion. So it is a very good year to date and a very good quarter as well. We can continue to slide 13 with the capital situation, and still also here, a very strong balance sheet, a very comforting liquidity position. Nordnet closed Q3 with a common equity tier 1 of 18.1%, with a leverage ratio at 4.7%. Those are well above our targeting operating band of 4.0% to 4.5%, and our regulatory floor on 3.5%.
Lennart Krän: This would be in spite of that we started the buyback program SEK 250 million at the end of September. In addition to this, we also gave notice Monday that we are going to redeem the SEK 681 million that is first call date in November. As an effect of leverage ratio, that would have, as of end of September, been a leverage ratio 4.2%, which is still within our range of 4.0% to 4.5%, and gives us still a capacity of taking in SEK 21 billion in further deposit before even getting close to jeopardizing any legal requirement. So we are in a very, very good position. To conclude this, given our substantial capital surplus and organic capital generation, we have no intention of issuing replacement of 81 instrument at this time, just to be clear. I just conclude a very good, stable liquidity and capital situation.
Lennart Krän: With that, I hand over to you again to sum up the quarter, Rasmus.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you, Lennart. Moving to the next slide then. Sorry, I do not know if it is frozen. We are still on the. There we go. Medium financial targets. Thank you. On slide 4, we are reiterating our medium-term targets across all metrics with annual customer growth targets of 13% to 15% tracking at 12% in Q3. When it comes to the average savings capital per customer, we are approaching SEK 500,000 in target, but of course, we are now at an LTM figure of SEK 525,000 surpassing this target. In terms of the margin on AUM, the target is 45 basis points over the cycle and currently tracking at 48 basis points. As Lennart said on the underlying cost growth, the target is approximately 8% annually excluding Germany. Turning to slide 15 for an operational update on Germany, our most significant geographic expansion initiative.
Rasmus Järborg: We have achieved several key milestones in the quarter heading into our planned phase launch in November. As we have announced, Arno Walter officially assumed leadership as Country Manager on 1 August, bringing with him his deep retail brokerage expertise in the domestic German banking market. On 8 October, a brand new localized version of nordnet.de went live with our core positioning, smarter investments. Earlier this month, we strengthened our German team, welcoming Dr. Jasmin Gröschl as Chief Economist and Leo Göttle as Investment Coach to spearhead our financial education and market inspiration content initiatives. Everything is tracking towards our phased commercial rollout in November and finalizing our offering ahead of the 1 January introduction of the new German pension account, Altersvorsorgedepot. We are positioning Nordnet to be a premier digital savings destination for German retail investors who demand a little more.
Rasmus Järborg: Moving to slide 16, I want to take a moment to frame our long-term strategic horizon or our moonshot. Nordnet will earn the right to serve 100% of our customers' wealth. By building a single seamless experience across self-directed, advised, and managed solutions, Nordnet will become European customers' number one choice. This moonshot rests on three principles. It is earned, not assumed. Customers choose us first when our product interface, service responsiveness, and pricing architecture are indisputably superior to competitors. We aspire to serve 100% of wealth, and this is not a share of wallet ambition. It is earning the right to serve the customer through the completeness of our offering. Make no mistake, this puts massive demands on our product platform, catering from everyday self-directed stocks and funds that we have today to include advised capital, discretionary portfolio management, digital assets, private markets, and beyond. Finally, the European ambition.
Rasmus Järborg: In expanding beyond our Nordic stronghold into Germany, we are now taking our first footsteps on continental Europe, significantly increasing our addressable market. During our recent 30th anniversary summit, I framed this moonshot for all of Nordnet staff to set our long-term direction and anchor our strategic execution. On slide 17, our organization is now executing against four must-win battles to turn that moonshot into reality. European expansion. As I said, we will successfully execute the German launch to build a repeatable, scalable playbook for continental Europe. Next gen trading. We will continuously upgrade our trading technology stack, data feeds, and market offering to maintain our moat among engaged on-market investors. Democratizing wealth management. We will broaden access to guidance, DPM, and other tools for private banking, as exemplified by our partnership with ABG Sundal Collier and our Citi Equity Research rollout. Finally, winning in AI.
Rasmus Järborg: We will now shift from exploratory learning to operational scale, embedding generative AI across our core products and back office pipelines to drive product development speed and operational productivity. To wrap up on slide 18, as we reflect on our 30th anniversary, our leadership team remains focused on five operational priorities for the remainder of the year. We will execute our phased German launch in November and prepare for the January pension reform. We will continue to invest in trading infrastructure, cross-border market access, and platform capabilities. Like I said, we will accelerate the deployment of AI-driven tools into routine customer workflows and internal processes. We will advance our new wealth management unit, including the work to launch the ABG Nordnet Private Wealth JV and grow our managed assets and own label funds and ETFs. We will protect our operating leverage even as we invest selectively for the future.
Rasmus Järborg: In summary, Nordnet is executing with clarity and conviction. We generated our second strongest quarter ever, delivered our third consecutive quarter above SEK 1 billion in profit before tax, and expanded our savings capital to nearly SEK 1.5 trillion. We are well on track to building Europe's leading digital savings platform. Thank you. With that, we are now ready to take questions. Marcus, back to you.
Marcus Lindberg: Thank you, Rasmus and Lennart. Once again, if you want to ask a question, just click the raise hand button here in Zoom. I will call your name and unmute you, or submit a question in writing via Zoom, or just send me an email. The first question comes from Patrik Brattelius at ABG. Please go ahead.
Patrik Brattelius: Thank you. Can you hear me?
Rasmus Järborg: Yes.
Patrik Brattelius: Perfect. The deposit relative to savings capital is at an all-time low. What do you think about this ratio going forward and how it should develop?
Rasmus Järborg: The deposit to savings capital ratio, I think, is around 6.6%, which is low. I am not sure if it is an all-time low. It is a function, of course, of how risk on our customers are and how much they are invested into the markets. We see rates coming up and come up in 3 out of our 4 countries, and we will see what the Swedish Riksbank does now going forward. With that, it is natural that a higher proportion of customer assets is kept in cash. Let us remember that we were almost at SEK 100 billion in deposits this quarter, but even so, just around a fifth of that is sitting in remunerated accounts. The important thing for us is to onboard the customers and to activate those customers, whether they invest in stocks, funds, or keep the money in cash is of secondary importance.
Rasmus Järborg: We like to see, of course, that our customers have a well-diversified positioning across the markets. I think we will see what the market development holds and where rates will go, but it is nothing that we are worried about today.
Patrik Brattelius: Okay. Thank you. In terms of your customer growth target of 13% to 15%, you have been below it for quite a few quarters despite that many indexes are at all-time high. We see good trading activity. Do you feel that you are dependent on geographical expansion in order to reach this target, or which actions are you actively taking now in order to see an acceleration in customer growth to be within your target level?
Rasmus Järborg: I think volatility may have had an effect currently, and of course, marketing will help. In terms of top funnel marketing, we are seeing all the metrics move in the right way when it comes to brand awareness, brand preference. It is yet to translate into higher customer growth numbers, to your point. At the same time, we are also working, like I commented on with our activation teams, to also activate a higher proportion of those customers our marketing brings in, and I think that is on us to help customers to activate and to get to fund their accounts and become invested in the market. We have new campaigns now running in Sweden and Denmark celebrating our 30th anniversary. We also have reactivation campaigns running in all markets, which initially are giving good results.
Rasmus Järborg: We are also going live next week with new refer-a-friend programs, which are built natively into the app for our German launch. That will help. Of course, Germany, and in time other European markets will prolong the growth runway over the long term. There is lots of growth in the Nordics, especially outside of Sweden. Of course, in Sweden, we see digital platforms have a higher proportion or penetration of the population. In Norway, Finland, and Denmark, that penetration is around half of Swedish levels. So we have plenty of runway for growth. It is up to us to deliver that growth rate that we are targeting.
Patrik Brattelius: Okay. Thank you so much.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you.
Marcus Lindberg: Thank you, Patrik. The next question comes from Ermin Keric at DNB Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Ermin Keric: Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Maybe starting on Germany, could you give us any KPIs on what to evaluate you on into 2027 to get a sense of your expectations so we can kind of track if you are running according to your own plan?
Rasmus Järborg: Hey, Ermin. That is a very reasonable request. The answer is we will come back with the Q4 results and give you both some guidance and some metrics that you can follow. Of course, initially, what we will try to do is get that product market fit right, tweak the product and the vertical marketing mechanics in order to have them firing on all cylinders. Once we have the right target customer group in the platform, then we need to get them to understand and use the product. Then we will start reporting on both the number of customers and the AUM and the net savings and everything else that we do. But that predicates both the launch, of course, the product market fit, the acquisition marketing mechanics, and finding out which channels work and give us a good return. Then we can follow up on that.
Rasmus Järborg: It is going to be, of course, very small in the beginning, and it is not going to move the needle on a group basis. We are discussing a little bit internally on how best to report and follow that. But I understand the question.
Ermin Keric: Okay, fair enough. Then I think your moonshot is very interesting. Could you talk a bit more about how concrete roadmap do you have for these things you mentioned, for instance, digital assets going beyond Germany and so on? Or should we still see it more as a just long-term vision where you have more concrete plans for some certain parts, but not all of it?
Rasmus Järborg: That is exactly how to see it. I think a moonshot is, and the definition of a moonshot is sort of a radically ambitious long-term vision, which does not even necessarily have a timeline. Even so, the reason we are putting so much focus on the moonshot is because it raises the ambition level, and it helps us lead the organizations that we are all running in the same direction. The literal reading of the moonshot would create massive demands on the product platform, which is why we formulated that way. But whether each one of those product families or geographies will be added, they need to stand on their own. They need to have their own business case and to be prioritized by the board and the executive committee. But it is more to give both us, but also you, a sense of where we are headed and where the ambition lies.
Rasmus Järborg: As we build out the platform, we will come back to the market and of course talk about each of these initiatives in turn.
Ermin Keric: Great. Then maybe the last one would be very helpful with the NII snapshot as always. If you would extend that into 2027, where do you get to then? Also, if you can get any additional kind of more flavor on how you actually think things will play out, given that it is of course mechanic exercise on the snapshot.
Rasmus Järborg: Yeah. I will self-censor not give you that guidance at this point. We will happily do so in Q4, at which point we will sort of refresh the snapshot for full year 2027 like we have done the last two years. Having said that, you do not require a doctorate in financial economics in order to, like you say, mechanically apply the forward rate curves on our deposit level and deposits being a function of AUM being a function of market appreciation and customer onboarding. So I think, or I know that you are smart enough to work that out on your own until we give you the next snapshot.
Ermin Keric: Fair enough. Thank you very much.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, Ermin.
Marcus Lindberg: Thanks, Ermin. Okay, next question comes from Martin Ekstedt at Handelsbanken.
Martin Ekstedt: Thank you. Can you hear me?
Rasmus Järborg: We can now. Hi, Martin.
Martin Ekstedt: Excellent. I managed to unmute. I wanted to ask about your new-ish customer tierings. A while back, you implemented new customer tierings, right?
Rasmus Järborg: Yes
Martin Ekstedt: Part of the aim being to limit the number of individually negotiated discounts on fees for brokerage, et cetera. But then with the knowledge that more customers would also initially be eligible for discounts. A few questions now, when a couple of quarters down the line, could you give us an update on how this has impacted revenues? As, for example, new inflows as customers have gathered more assets on your platform to reach the next tier, et cetera. Has this compensated for that initial drop, potentially in margins that you spoke of initially when you implemented this?
Rasmus Järborg: Good question. First of all, just to be clear, we didn't introduce a lower band that sort of gave more discounts to more people. We kept the lowest band, which we call PB Gold, at SEK 2.5 million and equivalent to the other markets. There was no sort of expansion of PB customers that received those discounts. Summarizing and sort of tiering the discounts, as you put it, was only part of the goal. The real goal was to be able to provide a ladder and a tiering in order to speak to customer ambitions of tiering up, and it's sort of a model we borrowed wholesale from SAS EuroBonus. Thanks, Anko and team, for that inspiration. In fact, speaking to my chief wealth management officer last night on this exact question, it has more than compensated. It's been a very strong performance within the PB segment.
Rasmus Järborg: We don't disclose those numbers, but in terms of both customers and AUM sitting within PB-type accounts, that has exceeded the expectations, and we'll see whether we can add more color on that in the full-year results and whether we will have any disclosure going forward. Of course, as you can imagine, this is a highly competitive space. We don't want to give too much to our competitors what we do and how well it's going, but it is going very well.
Martin Ekstedt: Okay, thank you. Then a quick follow-up on that one. How does the new joint venture with ABG fit into this tiering system then?
Rasmus Järborg: There's a level there, and again, we're in agreement with ABG, but we haven't disclosed it yet, but there's a pretty clear level where customers will be introduced to the ABG Nordnet Private Wealth JV depending on it's an asset level. It's also on demand, so customers who want or need advice or discussion, portfolio management will be introduced to the JV, and customers above the level will be actively marketed towards, saying, "You have enough money to qualify. Is this something that you need in order to move in more of your capital on the platform?" We will be public with that sort of target segment when we launch the JV, which should be in the spring of 2027.
Martin Ekstedt: Okay. Thank you very much. That's it from me for today.
Rasmus Järborg: And maybe just clarify that for everybody on the call, because there was some confusion when we launched. Because the JV will be a so-called partner customer of Nordnet, everything will be running off of our partner web infrastructure, meaning that the customer and the customer assets stay on Nordnet, but they will be serviced by the JV in terms of advice and DPM, and that's an important distinction. So it's a sort of revenue plus event for us as customers will layer these services on top of existing or new AUM, and then as a 50/50 owner of the business, we will get 50% of those profits back into Nordnet.
Martin Ekstedt: Excellent. Thanks.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks.
Marcus Lindberg: Thanks, Martin. Next question comes from Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Enrico Bolzoni: Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question and for the presentation. Can I follow up with one more question on ABG JV, please? I was just keen to understand a bit better in your thinking. Do you expect that as a result of this, for example, your existing private banking clients will top up their existing assets on Nordnet, or they will just do things differently with the same amount of capital? I am just trying to understand what is the selling point here, and also how do you see this product relative to the competition that you currently face in the various markets? Then I had another question on customer acquisition in Sweden. I noticed that it slowed down quite a bit, and I appreciate it is a seasonally lower quarter, and clearly volatility might have not helped.
Enrico Bolzoni: But when I just look at some of your competitors, they are still onboarding a multiple of the number of customers you are onboarding with the services actually very similar. I am just curious to hear from you some thoughts on how can you close that gap, perhaps. Then very finally, if I may, we keep seeing and hearing these news about AI finding issues with technology. The very latest one I think just as out of yesterday. Can you please just remind us on how confident you are in your systems on whether you think that you will have to spend a bit more to increase security or anything else that might be relevant, because I think it is a theme that is emerging as potentially concerning. Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, and welcome back. It is great to have you with us again, Enrico. Starting with the question on ABG JV, I think it is a win-win either way, right? So either our existing clients will top up their assets, which is the base case, the main case. We know we address maybe 20%, 30% of PB class customers' AUM, where they are holding advised or managed capital elsewhere because we do not today provide that service. So getting more AUM in is the base case.
Rasmus Järborg: But to the second part of your question, it could equally be that they have an amount of money with us, and they will divert a portion of that into being advised or managed through the JV, in which case it is a margin expansion for us, as that will of course be a premium service. In terms of how it stands, I think one of the reasons we were attracted to form this partnership with ABG is that we are very impressed with the offering that they have built in Sweden so far. It is early days, so we will now, of course, build and scale that business together. But it is built entirely upon their market-leading equity research in the Nordic region. So the portfolio management is based on the analyst recommendations and has outperformed all benchmarks, both in the Nordic portfolio and in their global portfolio. But it is no frills.
Rasmus Järborg: This is not a PB service where you go to sample wine or drive supercars. The events that they hold are with analysts explaining why they are risk on or risk off in certain segments, and why they are allocating capital in a certain way, which I think is what serious investors are interested in, and that is also what attracted Nordnet, because it is very true to who we are as a firm. Moving to the second question on customer growth. No, we are not happy with the customer growth in Sweden. It is obviously tracking below our target and below our other countries. But the marketing campaign is still to have its full effect. The product is market leading, but our brand recognition is not there. We are now trialing different campaigns like the ones we are running now, the 30th anniversary campaign, the new customer campaign, the reactivation campaign.
Rasmus Järborg: The focus is also on creating higher customer value, which is our strength, and to explain that better to the market. When it comes to AI and how confident we are with our systems and whether we need to spend more on security, we have top talent and a top tech platform. We are running, of course, on Google Cloud platform in most every instance. That means we also benefit from Google's market-leading defenses. We want to be in the forefront of AI and integrate it into both product and tech and customer facing. We have really good prerequisites, like I was saying. But being in the cloud already helps us with our data, it helps us with our capabilities so we can layer on top, but also with security. But make no mistake, cybersecurity is an issue for the entire industry and the entire world.
Rasmus Järborg: We are very focused together with the security committee and the board of directors to make sure that we are not just adequately, but that we are well protected when it comes to the risks of penetration.
Enrico Bolzoni: Thank you very much.
Marcus Lindberg: Thanks, Enrico. Next question comes from Grace Dargan at Barclays.
Grace Dargan: Hi. Good morning. Thank you very much for taking my questions. One on Germany and then maybe a broader one on competition. In Germany, I appreciate you do not want to give details, and that will come, but maybe just a sense of, as other competitors in the German market have been announcing their various pension offerings, has anything changed your view on how you should be approaching the expansion? Secondly, the broader question, I guess, is, are you seeing more competition generally in your different geographies or any change in the kind of peers, competitors who are being most aggressive? Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks. Starting with Germany then. It is true that since we announced that we are moving into Germany both some domestic startups but also international interlopers have announced that they are going to be launching in Germany as well. It is going to be a crowded market. It is a very competitive market already. To a degree, if I want to put a silver lining on that, it validates our business case that Germany is the place to be. We are at this fantastic inflection point with more and more Germans starting to save in stocks and ETFs, and of course now the government throwing its weight behind that with a new pension reform. Yes, we have followed competitors and their pension offerings. No, it has not changed the product that we are building, which I think will be very strong in its own right.
Rasmus Järborg: We believe that there is a Nordnet shaped hole in the German market. Of course, there are good mobile-only sort of fast platforms, and there are very good advanced active trader platforms. But there is not yet a broad platform that has an easy learning curve, fantastic UI, UX, but still a very broad and relevant product set. When we do consumer testing in Germany, I think the main feedback has been that they have been very impressed by the rich data sets that we provide in order to provide better decision support. Everything ranging from static and dynamic market data, analyst consensus estimates, price targets, charting, but also, of course, Nordnet Social, our social community of over 600,000 users who are commenting on stocks.
Rasmus Järborg: I think that positions us in a little segment of our own, but it will be up to us now to communicate that and to reach the customers to whom this appeals. Zooming out on the full Nordic market, we are both benefited and we are what is it? Steel sharpening steel, right? So we are coming from maybe the most competitive market in the world when it comes to savings and investment. It has been a different nature of competition. Sometimes it is homegrown, and sometimes it is international, but it has always been very competitive. What we are seeing is some of the US firms starting to make more of an impact in Europe. Interactive Brokers, Robinhood, now JPMorgan Chase is live in the UK and Germany.
Rasmus Järborg: We have also seen some European hyperscalers in terms of Revolut moving into the savings and investment space, and I think Trade Republic sharpening their offering, and that is a little bit different. Then some of the incumbent banks are not quite getting their act together, but doing a better job of that. So it is an interesting market. It has always been competitive, and we do not mind competition. It keeps us sharp.
Grace Dargan: Understood. Thank you very much.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks.
Marcus Lindberg: Thank you, Grace. Next question comes from Emre Prinzell from Nordea.
Emre Prinzell: Hi. Thank you. We already spoke a little bit about the ABG partnership, but just some more flavor. After the Swedish launch in 2027, how fast could you potentially roll this out in your other markets? How large is the potential share of wallet that is up for grabs from incumbent banks here? Please, any color really on the overall big picture ambitions, goals, and milestones here would be very helpful. Thanks.
Rasmus Järborg: Yeah, no. The ambition, of course, is to roll this out in all of our markets, including at that point in Germany. The business exists in Sweden today, so that's where the focus is, and we need to make this a success. We're both now together with ABG forming and formulating what the offering will look like, but also building the tech platform on which it will run. We have said that the next market will be Norway. We've been very clear with that. We haven't put any timing on it. We need to get first a lot of the licenses, and then we need to launch, which should be in the spring of 2027. The business needs to run and prove itself in this market before we launch in another market.
Rasmus Järborg: Because of the fabulous strength of the ABG brand in Norway and also the target-rich environment that we have there, obviously Norway is the next market. ABG also has a strong presence in Denmark and Germany. We will see what the third country is after Norway. But for now, the focus is on Sweden and then the next country will be Norway.
Emre Prinzell: All right. Thanks. That's clear. That's it for me. Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you.
Marcus Lindberg: Thank you, Emre. Next question comes from Hannah Leivdal from Citi.
Hannah Leivdal: Hi, guys. Good morning and thank you for the presentation. I just had one question with regards to activity levels and customer mix. Avanza reported that they saw a bit slower retail trading compared to the affluent segments. I am just wondering, did you guys experience something similar? What else explains the lower commission income? Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Yeah. Thanks, Hannah. We saw a similar pattern actually play out across our four markets. There are some indications in the data set we reported today. You will see that the average trade size was up and the income per trade was up, but the brokerage margin was down slightly. So that is indicative of precisely the dynamic that you described. Private banking and active trade customers who generally make larger trades, but of course pay a premium or have a very preferential rate on that means that the margin was down even though the trade size was up and the income per trade was up. But for us, I think it was less pronounced as we still had a very strong net commission income in the quarter.
Hannah Leivdal: That is very clear. Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, Hannah.
Marcus Lindberg: Thanks so much. Next question comes from Jacob Hesslevik at SEB.
Rasmus Järborg: Wow, Jacob, low down on the stack today on the questions.
Jacob Hesslevik: Yeah. A lot of conference calls this morning. Please excuse me if you have already answered them. You will launch your own ETFs early next year. How central are they to the German launch and the Altersvorsorgedepot offering? With the fund margin already down to 23.2 basis points, how much Nordic fund income could they cannibalize?
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, Jacob. It is a good question. It is not essential for Germany, but obviously Germany, as you allude to, is an ETF first market. There is actually much more AUM sitting in mutual funds in Germany, but they tend still to be distributed through branch offices and sitting with an older but richer population. We are not just doing ETFs for Germany. We see a trend of our customers across the Nordics moving into ETFs and allocating more to ETFs, and that is a trend that we want to be a part of. I think we will surprise the market with some very interesting products when we bring the Nordnet branded ETFs to market in the beginning of next year. How they will cannibalize is actually interesting because looking at average holding periods, they are actually similar.
Rasmus Järborg: You are trading commission income on the way in and on the way out versus of course typically a higher management fee during the duration of the ownership period. We have not announced prices yet or indeed finalized them. That is something that we are discussing internally now, and we will come back to the market with pricing. In our models, it is actually neutral on income.
Jacob Hesslevik: Okay. That is very clear. Thank you. Then finally on capital, in July you said you would come back on capital returns after Q3 once you had a view on deposit and AT1 pricing. Your leverage ratio is above the target, you are 6 percentage points above the risk-weighted requirement. Why only SEK 250 million in buybacks? Where does the leverage ratio land after you call the AT1 in November? Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: I think the AT1 is part of the answer, but Lennart, take it away.
Lennart Krän: Yes. Absolutely. The AT1 is part of the answer. We will not replace that with the new AT1, and that is why we wanted to be a little bit cautious. But the leverage ratio of that one would at end of September be 4.2%, and the capacity for further deposits would be SEK 21 billion down to the 3.5% regulatory requirement. We might come back later on with further buybacks, but as I said, this is within our range of 4.0% to 4.5% in leverage ratio. So now we are in the bound, and that has been our plan for a long time. We see how it develops both with deposits and the capital generation.
Jacob Hesslevik: Sounds good. Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you.
Marcus Lindberg: Thanks, Jacob. Next question comes from Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs.
Oliver Carruthers: Morning, both. Thanks for taking my question. I just have one question on commission-free trading. I noticed that to celebrate your 30th anniversary, you are launching, I guess, these two parallel campaigns on commission-free trading, one in particular for your Swedish customers who join basically within a four-month window are getting commission-free trading for the first six months of next year. I wanted to pick your brains on what are you hoping to learn from this, and more broadly, what do you think about this potential industry push towards lower and potentially zero commission-free trading, particularly in light of some of your non-Nordic European peers now that we are post-PFOF ban coming in Germany? We are seeing a move towards more principles-based models, so building out of systematic internalisers and away from, I guess, potentially agency-based models.
Oliver Carruthers: Just keen to get your thoughts on this, particularly in the context of this what smells a little bit like a trial in terms of your campaign. Thank you.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, Oli. Good question. Let me see if I can pick it apart. I would not read across too much from the campaign in Sweden to the future of commission or commission-free trading in Europe. It was a way to accelerate our customer onboarding in Sweden. It is early days, so we have not yet been able to see if it is giving the effect that we want. Depending on when you join in this four-month window, as you put it, you will actually get commission-free trading until 30 June. So it is sort of if you are quicker, you get it for longer. In parallel, we are actually running a campaign in all countries whereby 30 stocks per venue for one week a month will be commission-free.
Rasmus Järborg: We started off with top 30 stocks on OMX Stockholm in September, and that moves on to Denmark in October, and then we will do another market per month just to keep celebrating our 30th anniversary for existing customers. When it comes to the post-PFOF ban Europe, we welcome that ban. We think that if you are not paying for the product, you are the product, and I think that we like to be transparent with our customers on what they are paying for and why. I think we have a very good product, and we do not mind charging for that, and our customers do not seem to mind paying for it. At the same time, we need to make sure we have a competitive price level across our products.
Rasmus Järborg: We do not have to be the cheapest in every single price point, but we do need, of course, to have the customers feel that we are delivering value, they are getting value for the prices they are paying. Price is demonstratively not the main factor. We have seen that historically, incumbent banks have lowered the commissions below us, and absolutely nothing happened. I think also in Germany, and in particular, looking at some of the competitors we will face, some have very low pricing or ex PFOF players. Others have what we would consider to be higher pricing and yet have fantastic volumes. I think overall, it is the product set and the usability and delivering an overall good value is key. We have the scale, so we are not really worried about price. This is a low-margin business, and lower prices only make it harder for new entrants into the markets.
Rasmus Järborg: I think the world that we operate in is looking more and more at flows, and we ourselves, we have been offering customers the ability to place algorithmic orders across some 30 odd dark pools, including periodic auction markets. Looking at our own stock and where we trade, only 30% of the Nordnet stock volume is on Nasdaq OMX Stockholm. I think we are very cognizant of that, and we are discussing internally whether we should be working with one of our partners or potentially be developing a systematic internaliser of our own. That is also a market sort of construct discussion that needs to be had within the various industry bodies as well.
Rasmus Järborg: Because if everybody is executing off exchange but relying on the exchange to set reference prices, then on a long enough timeline, you will have an issue where the reference prices will not be set from the majority of the liquidity. That is a longer discussion.
Oliver Carruthers: Thanks. That is very clear. Thanks. Thanks for having us.
Rasmus Järborg: Thanks, Oli.
Marcus Lindberg: Thank you, Oli. That was the last question for today. Thank you all for tuning in, and take care and have a good day. Bye.
Rasmus Järborg: Thank you guys. Bye.
Jacob Hesslevik: Goodbye
