管理層發言
Good day, and welcome to the Webull Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Carlos Questell, Head of Investor Relations for Webull.
Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Webull's Second Quarter 2026 Conference Call. Earlier today, we issued a press release detailing our second quarter financial results. A copy of the release can be found on our IR website at webullcorp.com under the Investor Relations tab. Please note that this call is being recorded and will be available for replay via our IR website. This call will include forward-looking statements about the company's performance and business outlook. These statements are based on how we see things today and contain elements of uncertainty. For information concerning the factors that can cause actual results to differ materially, please refer to the cautionary statement and risk factors contained in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission and press release, both of which can be accessed via our website. Today's presentation will include a discussion on adjusted operating expenses, adjusted operating profit and adjusted net income, all non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliation of these non-GAAP financial measures to their most directly comparable GAAP measures are included in the press release that we issued today. It is important to note that although we believe that these non-GAAP measures provide useful information about our operating results, this should not be considered in isolation or construed as an alternative to their directly comparable GAAP measures. Furthermore, other companies may calculate similarly titled measures differently, limiting their usefulness as comparative measures to our data. We encourage our investors and others to review our financial information in its entirety and not rely on a single financial measure. With me today is our Group President and U.S. CEO, Anthony Denier; and our Group CFO, H.C. Wang. We will begin with prepared remarks and then take questions at the end. With that, I'd like to now turn it over to Anthony.
Thank you, Carlos, and hello, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. Before I walk through our second quarter results, I want to share an update on the SEC's elimination of the Pattern Day Trader rule, or PDT rule, that became effective on June 4. Last quarter, we highlighted our expectation that the elimination of the PDT rule would be a strong tailwind for our active traders and noted that our engineering team was busy ensuring our systems were ready for the change. Today, I am pleased to share that we successfully navigated the changes in the market resulting from the removal of the PDT rule. From the moment the rule change took effect, Webull's advanced technology platform enabled every qualified customer to place unlimited day trades with the full benefit of our zero-commission model behind them. Executing on this rule change was our defining event for the quarter and contributed to a significant increase in trading volumes and record quarterly results. Turning now to Slide 2. In Q2, we delivered record revenue of $198.8 million, up 51% year-over-year, driven by continued asset growth and strong trading activity across all our core asset classes with options and equities being particularly strong on the back of the PDT rule change. Customer assets reached $28.5 billion, representing 79% year-over-year growth. While we continue to aggressively invest in organic growth initiatives and remain committed to building this business for long-term category leadership, the Q2 results also demonstrate the operating leverage in our business model as revenue growth significantly outpaced the growth in adjusted operating expenses. As a result, we delivered record adjusted operating profit of $62.6 million, up 169% year-over-year, representing an adjusted operating margin of 31.5%. Now turning to Slide 3, which highlights key developments in Q2 towards executing on our 2026 strategic road map. Webull's focus remains centered on our three core growth pillars: first, establishing Webull as a platform of choice for active traders; second, expanding our global footprint by exporting the U.S. retail experience worldwide; and third, building our institutional business. As we have highlighted over the past year, AI remains core to everything we are building. For active traders, we continue to roll out AI-powered tools that further enhance the Webull user experience. Vega, our AI-powered intelligence system, continues to see very good traction with our active trader base. We added approximately 160,000 new Vega users in Q2, bringing the total number of active Vega users to 480,000, an increase of 12% quarter-over-quarter. Active traders remain the heaviest Vega users with engagement up approximately 23% quarter-over-quarter. During the quarter, we further enhanced our position within the agentic stack with our MCP server being connected to leading AI models, enabling users to use natural language to conduct research, build tools and execute trades through the Webull platform. This is an important step forward in agentic trading and further establishes Webull's infrastructure as a differentiator in agentic trading. We also significantly upgraded our paper trading offering, establishing parity with our live trading capabilities across asset classes and giving users an increasingly comprehensive environment to test and refine their trading strategies. We believe this is a unique offering, empowering our users to create realistic simulations and gain invaluable experience in a no-risk environment. Turning to our international expansion efforts. We now have approximately 810,000 international funded accounts. We are licensed across 35 markets globally and operate trading activities in 18 markets following the Q2 launches in Spain, Argentina and Colombia. We continue to leverage our global infrastructure, compliance expertise and product depth to scale the U.S. trading experience globally. In APAC, our customer assets have grown to over $5 billion. We recently announced the acquisition of Pi Securities in Thailand, which is expected to close at the end of August. This acquisition will increase our AUM in the region significantly and positions us for further growth in Thailand as we combine Pi's expertise in the local market with our best-in-class technology platform. In Latin America, we continue to expand our product offering, including in Argentina, where we completed our first customer-initiated tokenized equity trade, an important milestone as we continue to expand our product capabilities across the region. Finally, turning to our institutional business. We continue to make progress building out this business with institutional AUM exceeding $1.4 billion as our customer base continues to grow, accounting for approximately 5% of our total AUM. The large majority of institutional clients are located outside of the U.S. Within the U.S., having received our clearing license from FINRA in April, our team is busy building the platform of our future, even though we are not currently clearing and do not anticipate clearing trades for some time. In addition to offering execution and custody services, we also expanded our institutional product offering to include access to futures and prediction markets. We further announced our partnership with Monark Markets to provide accredited investors with access to late-stage private companies through special purpose vehicles, further broadening the investment opportunities available through the Webull ecosystem. On Slide 4, I'll discuss our continued user and funded account growth. Our targeted marketing continues to drive adoption as we added approximately 600,000 registered users during the quarter, bringing our total to 28.2 million, up 13% from 24.9 million at the end of the second quarter of 2025. As a reminder, we will have a considerable number of registered users that still take advantage of our data offerings in markets where our trading platform is not yet available. We remain committed to providing access to industry-leading market data and information to all users regardless of their ability to currently invest on the platform. On the right side of the slide, you can see funded account metrics, which showed steady growth. For context, funded accounts are defined as accounts where customers have made an initial deposit, and the balance has remained above zero for 45 consecutive calendar days as of the record date. Funded accounts reached 5.13 million in the quarter, an 8% year-over-year increase. Growth in gross funded accounts was approximately 132,000, while net new funded accounts increased by approximately 20,000 users as we continue to actively address dormant accounts. Our quarterly retention rate was 97.3%. Turning now to Slide 5. Customer assets increased 79% on a year-over-year basis to $28.5 billion. I would note that our average customer account has nearly doubled to over $5,500 over this period. As you can see on the right-hand side of the slide, net customer deposits in the quarter were $1.6 billion, up over 7% on a year-over-year basis. On Slide 6, you will find trading volumes for the quarter. As mentioned in my earlier remarks, our successful navigation of the PDT rule change drove meaningful share gains, helping us reach a top 5 position among all retail brokers in options for the first time in our history and driving record volume in both equities and options during the quarter. Equity notional volume totaled $279 billion, up 73% year-over-year and 7% sequentially, while options contract volume reached 213 million contracts, up 68% year-over-year and 34% sequentially. With that, I will pass the call over to H.C. for a closer look at our financial results for the quarter.
Thank you, Anthony, and thanks to everyone for joining the call today. The second quarter was the strongest we've delivered as a public company and showed across our financial results. Total quarterly revenue reached a record $198.8 million, up 51% year-over-year and an acceleration from the growth rate we posted in the first quarter. This strong performance was driven by continued strength across both trading and interest-related revenue streams, which I will walk through in more detail shortly. On the expense side, adjusted operating expenses were $136.2 million, up 26% year-over-year, primarily due to higher trading-related activity and investment in new products, a meaningfully slower growth rate than our revenue, which is the operating leverage story I want to spend a minute on. Turning to profitability on Slide 8. Q2 was our most profitable quarter to date. Adjusted operating profit was $62.6 million, representing a 31.5% operating profit margin. Adjusted net income was $43.2 million, representing a net profit margin of 21.7%. We remain disciplined on our marketing spend, which started to normalize as a percentage of revenue during the quarter. As a technology-driven platform, we see significant operating leverage in our business model and expect that will continue to be reflected in our operating margins as our revenue continues to scale. Turning to Slide 9. We had another quarter of record trading volumes across our core asset classes. Trading-related revenues increased 66% year-over-year to $147.7 million and were up 33% quarter-over-quarter. Our DARTs also increased 62% year-over-year to 1.64 million and were up 25% from the first quarter of 2026. These results demonstrate that our platform continues to meet the needs of our active traders, and we believe we are well positioned for continued sustainable growth in trading revenues over time. Turning to Slide 10. In the second quarter, interest-related income grew 18% year-over-year to $42.8 million, mainly driven by higher AUM as well as growth in margin loans and client cash balances. This line item has been relatively stable in the last few quarters and continues to provide a durable complement to our trading revenue. Now turning to expenses on Slide 11. Adjusted operating expenses increased 26% year-over-year to $136.2 million, primarily driven by brokerage and transaction costs associated with higher trading activity. I also want to highlight that adjusted operating expenses declined 6% sequentially from $145.1 million in the first quarter, primarily reflecting the normalization of our marketing spend. Excluding marketing, our operating profit margin has remained above 40% every quarter since the third quarter of 2024, underscoring the strength of our underlying platform economics even as we continue to invest. We remain focused on disciplined expense management as we continue to scale the business. Lastly, this quarter, we began publishing our monthly operating metrics. We believe this level of disclosure provides our investors and analysts additional transparency into the business. You can find the monthly metrics on the Investor Relations tab of our website at webullcorp.com. With that, I'll turn the call back to Anthony before we open the line for questions.
Thanks, H.C. To summarize, we are pleased to deliver another record-breaking quarter for Webull, including record revenue and operating profit. We continued executing on our three key priorities while focusing on responsibly growing our AUM. I want to personally thank our global team members for a fantastic first half of the year as your dedication continues to be evident in our solid results. We are encouraged by our progress and excited about our growth prospects going forward. We look forward to engaging with you at our forthcoming investor event this quarter. And on that note, we welcome any questions you may have, either here on the call or one-on-one. Thank you.
分析師問答
The first question will come from Devin Ryan with Citizens Bank. We remain focused on three key priorities while responsibly growing our AUM. I want to personally thank our global team members for a fantastic first half of the year; your dedication continues to be evident in our solid results. We are encouraged by our progress and excited about our growth prospects going forward. We look forward to engaging with you at our forthcoming investor event this quarter. On that note, we welcome any questions you may have, either here on the call or one-on-one. Thank you.
This is Noah Katz on for Devin. First, I want to touch on the PDT removal. It clearly contributed to a strong increase in activity this quarter. You've described Webull as benefiting from account consolidation across the industry as well. So from what you've seen so far, is the bigger opportunity customers trading more actively within their accounts or more so transferring assets and then consolidating activity from several brokers? And also, what will show you that this is a durable benefit rather than an initial bump in activity following the rule change?
Thanks for the question. We've been preparing for PDT for the past year, so it's great to see results reflecting that work. For platforms like Webull, where the average account size is well below the $25,000 PDT limit, the impact is significant. From what we observe, the opportunity comes from both sides. We were very active in targeting certain cohorts—accounts that traded actively but intermittently, for example accounts that day traded three times on a Monday and then were inactive until the next week. These active traders often had multiple accounts or fractionated brokerage accounts across the industry to work around PDT rules. We targeted many of those accounts with email campaigns and outreach. It is difficult to quantify exactly how much asset transfer came from those accounts because transfers often rely on ACAT processes and day traders frequently have no securities to transfer. The ACAT process can be cumbersome and take several days or more. However, we did see a considerable amount of deposits and new deposits from these types of accounts, meaning customers who traded on Monday then funded and traded more frequently after the rule change. Regarding durability, our July figures showed options volume remained steady. We saw a bit of softness in equities compared to June, but June had unique retail events—SpaceX drew a lot of interest. August is trending similarly to June and looks even stronger than July so far. I believe the removal of PDT is a permanent change and that volumes will not revert to pre-PDT levels. We're also seeing changes in active trader behavior: customers are making more smaller day trades and smaller scalps, often with lower P&L thresholds. From a take-rate perspective, this is healthier for our business because the number of trades has increased relative to notional volume, which boosts our take rates and payment for order flow. So it's a positive outcome on both volume and take rate.
Yes, that's great. That's very helpful. And then—so no more PDT questions. If I can switch gears and look at your APAC activity this quarter, with customer assets now around $5 billion and your recent acquisition of Pi Securities further expanding your presence in the region, we also saw stronger institutional trading activity across Asian markets this quarter. Can you speak about what you're seeing in retail trading activity and product usage relative to other regions? And on the acquisition, how are you thinking about the opportunity to bring your trading technology to an established local customer base?
We've been aggressive in growing our international business; it's a core pillar. We operate under 35 licenses and trade in 18 markets. The largest APAC markets, excluding the U.S., are the most mature—Hong Kong and Singapore are particularly meaningful. Retail investor behavior in APAC has evolved; retail investors outside the U.S. are increasingly trading similarly to U.S. traders, including heavy adoption of U.S. options trading. I believe options adoption outside the U.S. is still in early innings. Regarding the Pi Securities acquisition in Thailand, this is a strategic move. We already have a small but fast-growing organic presence in Thailand. Pi Securities will be immediately accretive and significantly increase our AUM in the region. It also brings a high-quality set of active trading funded accounts at a lower customer acquisition cost than organic growth would require, and it speeds our expansion in that market.
Yes. Asia is one of our strategic markets and we look at it collectively rather than as isolated individual markets. There are synergies between markets such as Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand. For example, our institutional business in Hong Kong can serve broker-dealers from Thailand trading U.S. stocks. High-net-worth clients may open accounts in multiple markets. Being on the ground and operating across different markets as one organization is a key differentiator for Webull and helps explain our rapid growth.
The next question will come from Ed Engel with Compass Point.
Congrats on a nice quarter here. Can you elaborate on what you mean by addressing dormant accounts? I recall something about COVID-era accounts being pruned out, but I wanted to hone in on that. And then, do you have clarity on when that starts to roll off for the end of the year?
Every platform has dormant accounts—it's part of the brokerage business. 'Escheatment' is a compliance function: each U.S. state has rules about when an account is deemed dormant—sometimes two years, sometimes five. When an account is deemed dormant, broker-dealers may need to liquidate positions and transfer funds to the state treasury or comptroller. This is an operational process and does cost us money; we pay fees to the state for each account we escheat. We separated gross new accounts and net new funded accounts to show that we're growing funded accounts while removing dormant accounts. Many of these were accounts opened around the GameStop period or shortly after when we ran many small deposit promotions—accounts that tended to have very low AUM, often $10 to $15, that did not trade. These accounts typically signed up for promotions to receive a free share and did not remain active investors. Cleaning these accounts up actually improves the quality of our account base and is healthy for the business. As we focus on quality accounts through our promotions and marketing, we are replacing non-revenue-producing accounts with higher-quality accounts, which helped raise our average account size this quarter.
Great. It looks like marketing costs were down quite a bit quarter-on-quarter, and I think it was below the implied guidance you gave as a percent of sales. Can you provide directional commentary on how this should shape out for the rest of the year? Were there any lumpy items in Q4 and Q1 related to prior-quarter incentives that are normalizing now?
We did see normalization of marketing expense. Last year we ran aggressive asset-match promotions—examples include a 3.5% match for IRA deposits. Those promotions require customers to keep AUM on the platform for about 12 months or sometimes longer, so the expense is amortized over time. In Q1 and Q2 this year, our marketing expense still included amortization from last year's promotions. We have reduced the level of asset-match promotions starting in Q1—reducing the 3.5% match to about 1% and stopping some promotions in certain markets. You'll see marketing spend normalize over the next couple of quarters as the effects of last year's promotions roll off.
Great. Lastly, on crypto with the recent rally, can you remind us where your crypto product stands today in terms of number of coins offered and anything about coin-in, coin-out?
Crypto has been a challenging business across the industry and remains a relatively small contribution for us—crypto revenue in Q2 was about $2.25 million, a bit over 1% of total Q2 revenue. Any uptick in crypto will be accretive. We're building a crypto product attractive to active crypto traders and semi-institutional users. We are in the process of grayscale coin-in, coin-out integration, which aligns well with the renewed market interest. Over the past nine months I've seen improving conditions in the crypto business; there's more clarity and optimism, which is a positive development for our strategy in this area.
The next question will come from Chris Brendler with Rosenblatt Securities.
Congratulations on a fantastic quarter. I have a question on July. Things slowed down in the market and the large AI trade took a step back in July, but your options business was fairly strong. Is your business less market-sensitive today, or is PDT helping support July volumes in options? Can you give color on how we should think about market volatility as it relates to Webull's growth prospects?
Comparatively, Webull is a bit more insulated than some peers because of our concentration in active traders and active investors. When there's volatility or a weak market, we sometimes see a spike in volume initially. Over longer bear markets, volumes can dry out, but in the short term volatility can increase activity. When markets are slow, customers may shift behavior and trade broader index ETFs rather than single stocks, which can be a headwind from a revenue perspective. That said, our active trader base tends to trade momentum and get involved when volatility rises, so our numbers are relatively steady in downturns. We've built a platform that supports that behavior and that has benefited us.
A PDT follow-up: you mentioned multiple smaller trades increasing, which makes sense. You previously forecasted at least 20% lift over the medium term—are we already in the medium term, or is this a 6- to 12-month process of users getting used to the new rules?
We anticipated a material change, and I said 20% previously. In practice, this is the new environment for trading and we are seeing broad-based changes across asset classes—prediction markets are up around 70% quarter-over-quarter for us. Flow begets flow. June showed the initial effect, July showed sustainability, and August continues to look healthy. I believe the medium-term impact is already underway and the behavioral changes we've observed—more frequent smaller trades—are sustainable and supportive of continued activity.
The next question will come from Eli Abboud with Bank of America.
I wanted to drill down on your new agentic AI offering. First, what do you view as the main point of differentiation between your offering and agentic trading capabilities at peers like Robinhood and IBKR? And how much volume was attributable to agentic trading? Is there any disproportionate flow from one asset class or another?
I focus on what we're doing rather than on precisely what peers are doing. We are working with major AI agentic platforms through our MCP relationship. We're emphasizing education and walking customers through using this new technology. We're in Phase 1: most MCP server interactions are focused on portfolio building, research and trade analysis, rather than algorithmic execution strategies. Execution-oriented agentic trading will come later as we normalize the experience for retail. A real-time example: I used my MCP connection to find the most active event contracts for MLB games. Instead of manually reviewing a spreadsheet for hours, I asked in natural language and received an analysis in under 30 seconds. That showcases how natural language interfaces can speed research and analysis. Toward the end of the year you'll see more product rollout focused on execution, and we have upcoming announcements for Vega that extend into execution capabilities.
Got it. If I can switch to Wang on margin balances: they stepped down a bit in July. Can you give color on how margin balances are trending month-to-date in August? Broadly, how would you characterize clients' risk appetite at the moment?
Margin balances typically fluctuate with overall AUM. July was a choppy month and we saw deleveraging after leverage built into July, which affected customer trading behavior. Over a longer time horizon, margin balances have been steadily increasing, driven by our competitive margin rates for premium customers. We expect margin balances to continue growing as AUM grows. July appears more like a one-off.
I'll add that August has been a very healthy trading month. Risk-on sentiment appears to have returned, and our margin debit balances are trending toward all-time highs, if they're not already there.
The next question will come from Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities.
Congrats on the quarter. First, on marketing spend: I was surprised it dropped $15 million sequentially from about $50 million to about $35 million. H.C., can you quantify how much of Q1 and Q2 related to 2025 promotions? When you say marketing is normalizing, do you mean reported marketing will drop in Q3 and Q4? I'm trying to understand whether there's more leverage left there.
About 40% of marketing expenses in Q1 and to a lesser extent in Q2 were related to last year's promotions. By 'normalizing' we mean marketing spend will more closely reflect current promotions rather than being heavily influenced by amortization from prior promotions. For the remainder of the year, absent significant market changes, we expect marketing spend to be similar in quantum to the first half—so we will continue to invest to acquire customers and AUM. We do not expect it to be lower than Q2 levels, but also not higher than Q1 levels.
Understood. What are your marketing priorities? What are you promoting or pushing today with that spend?
Our priorities are brand building, quality account acquisition and international growth. The majority of spend is still in the U.S. because of market scale, but proportionally we are investing aggressively in smaller markets outside the U.S. We evaluate CAC and payback rates globally and accelerate investment in markets where we see the best return on investment.
On your institutional strategy overseas: a couple of quarters ago you talked about Meritz. How is that going? Is it where you expected it to be by August 2026?
It has taken longer than I expected, but we are ready to accelerate, hopefully by the end of August. Several large Korean platforms are in partnership and onboarding will enable us to build an institutional pipeline. The onboarding process tends to be easier outside the U.S. because of our differentiation—operating in many markets and offering execution across 16 of the 18 markets where we operate is a strong selling point for platforms outside the U.S. that want global trading access.
Lastly, you mentioned prediction markets earlier. Can you quantify revenue this quarter tied to prediction markets?
We don't break that out specifically on the face of the release, but sequentially prediction markets are up 71% quarter-over-quarter. We are likely doing between $5 million and $6 million per quarter in prediction markets today, and the number is growing month-over-month.
The next question will come from Brian Vieten with Siebert.
When PDT first went into effect in the early 2000s, can you speak to how broad-based the impact is across your customers now? Is a small group of traders driving most of the increase, or is it widespread? Does this ramp throughout the year? Also, on competitive dynamics: you were one of the first to implement changes and prepare. Is there a first-mover advantage, or is it largely a rising-tide dynamic where everyone benefits?
On breadth: our average customer age is about 34 and many newer users are younger. Removing PDT changes the dynamic for low-AUM clients who previously avoided certain products like options. Those customers now have access without restrictions, so adoption has broadened across our customer base. We are seeing increased engagement and activity across many customers rather than a tiny group driving the change. Regarding first-mover advantage: our preparation and outreach around the PDT change resulted in significant exposure. We received a large share of mention in the press around the change, and our proactive customer education helped position us favorably. While the change lifts all platforms to some extent, being early and well-prepared has given us an advantage in capturing attention and activity.
This will conclude our question-and-answer session as well as the conference call. Thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.