管理層發言
Good day, and welcome to the Webull Corporation Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Conference Call. The operator provided instructions to participants on how to ask questions. 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 comparative 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-five 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.
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. 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? 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 the PDT change for more than a year, and it's great to see the impact now that the rule is removed. The benefit is coming from both sides. We were very active in targeting cohorts of users who demonstrated intermittent day trading activity—those who might day trade several times in a week and then not trade again for a while. Many of these active traders historically fractionated their brokerage activity across multiple brokers to avoid PDT limits. We ran targeted email campaigns and outreach to engage those customers. It's difficult to quantify precisely how many assets we brought in via transfers because active traders often have little in positions to ACAT; the ACAT process is cumbersome and can take several days to over a week. Instead, we saw a considerable amount of new deposits from these types of active trader accounts. On sustainability, when we released our July figures, options volume remained steady while equities showed some softness compared with June. June included some large retail events—SpaceX interest, for example—that drove equity activity higher. August so far is trending similar to June and looks stronger than July. I believe the removal of PDT is a permanent change and volumes will not revert to pre-PDT levels. We've also observed behavior changes: many active traders are now executing a larger number of smaller day trades and smaller scalps, which increases trade counts within the same notional volume and is healthier from a take-rate perspective. More trades at smaller P&L thresholds increase our take rates and payment-for-order-flow revenue. So it's a double positive—more volume and higher trade counts—supporting durable growth rather than a one-time bump.
Yes, that's great detail. Thanks. And then switching gears to APAC activity this quarter, with customer assets around $5 billion and the Pi Securities acquisition, plus stronger institutional trading activity across Asian markets, can you speak about retail trading activity and product usage relative to other regions? On the acquisition, how are you thinking about bringing your trading technology to an established local customer base?
We've been aggressive in growing outside the U.S.; it's one of our core pillars. We now have 35 licenses and operate trading activities in 18 markets. APAC includes our most mature markets outside the U.S.—Hong Kong and Singapore are significant. Retail trading behavior in APAC has evolved; retail investors outside the U.S. have globalized and behave similarly to U.S. retail investors in product preferences. Options adoption in non-U.S. markets has accelerated and we believe we are still early in that adoption curve. Regarding Pi Securities, it's a strategic opportunity in Thailand. We have a small but fast-growing organic business there. The acquisition is immediately accretive in AUM and provides access to high-quality active trading funded accounts at a low customer acquisition cost compared with building organically. Combining Pi's local expertise with our technology accelerates our growth in Thailand and APAC broadly. H.C., any comments on Asia?
Asia is one of our strategic regions. We view Asia collectively rather than focusing only on individual markets because there are synergies across Hong Kong, Singapore, Thailand and others. For example, our institutional business in Hong Kong serves broker-dealers from Thailand trading U.S. stocks. High-net-worth clients from one market may open accounts in another market. Being on the ground and operating across multiple markets as one platform is a key differentiator for Webull and helps us scale quickly.
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. Any clarity on when that starts to roll off for the end of the year?
Every brokerage has dormant accounts; it's part of the business. In the U.S. this touches on escheatment, a compliance requirement that varies by state regarding what qualifies as a dormant account—some states consider an account dormant after two years of inactivity; others after five. When accounts are deemed dormant, we have to liquidate positions and transfer the funds to the appropriate state treasury or comptroller's office. This is an operational lift and it costs us per account. Many of the accounts we're rolling off were opened during the GameStop era or shortly thereafter under small deposit promotions where customers deposited a small amount—on average $10 to $15—and never traded. These accounts are non-revenue-producing and cleaning them up is healthy for our business. We separated gross new accounts and net new funded accounts in disclosures specifically to show that we're growing funded accounts while removing low-quality dormant accounts, which also contributed to the rapid increase in average account size this quarter.
Great. It looks like marketing costs were down quite a bit sequentially, and I think it was well below the implied guidance as a percent of sales. Do you mind providing directional commentary on how this should shape for the rest of the year? Were there any lumpy items in prior quarters related to promotions that are normalizing now?
We discussed normalization of marketing expense. Last year we ran aggressive asset-match promotions—for example, a 3.5% match for IRA deposits. Those promotions require customers to keep AUM on the platform for about 12 months or longer, so the expense was amortized over time and continued to affect our expense lines into 2026. We reduced the level of asset-match promotions starting in Q1; for example, the 3.5% match was reduced to roughly 1% and stopped in some markets. You're seeing marketing spend normalize over the next few 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 small portion of our revenue. In Q2, crypto revenue was approximately $2.25 million, just over 1% of total revenue. Any uptick in crypto revenue would be immediately accretive. We're consolidating and building a crypto product that serves active crypto traders and semi-institutional users. We are in the process of grayscaling coin-in and coin-out, which aligns with renewed interest in the asset class. For the first time in several quarters, I'm seeing improving conditions in crypto, and that is positive for our business going forward.
The next question will come from Chris Brendler with Rosenblatt Securities.
Congratulations on a fantastic quarter. I have a question on July. Obviously things slowed and the 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 supporting July volumes in options? Can you give color on how to think about market volatility relative to Webull's growth prospects?
Comparatively, Webull is a bit more insulated than some peers because of our high concentration of active traders. In periods of volatility we often see initial spikes in volume, and while a prolonged bear market can reduce volumes over time, in the short term volatility drives engagement. In slower months customers can shift behavior toward broader index ETFs rather than single-stock trading, which can be a headwind from a revenue perspective. We are not immune, but our customer base—active traders who engage frequently—tends to produce steadier volumes through different market cycles. Over the last six years, we've retained a core active trader cohort and on June 4 we abated more than 50,000 margin calls related to the PDT rule removal and reached out to those customers. Those are the traders who get involved when volatility increases, so our platform benefits from that consistent engagement.
Following up on PDT, you've noted multiple smaller trades happening post-PDT. Was that anticipated? You had previously suggested a 20% medium-term lift—are we already in the medium term or is this a 6- to 12-month adoption curve?
When I previously indicated a ~20% lift, that reflected a cautious view. The new environment with PDT removed has changed trading dynamics across many products. We see flow begets flow—products without PDT limits, like prediction markets and crypto, have seen substantial increases in usage. We've seen sustained levels in June and July and strong trends into August. Customers are already adopting new behaviors—more frequent, smaller trades—and I expect this to be sustainable. So I view us as being in the medium term now; adoption is underway and the behavior change is durable.
The next question will come from Eli Abboud with Bank of America.
I wanted to drill down further on your new agentic AI offering. What do you view as the main differentiation between your offering and agentic trading capabilities of peers like Robinhood and IBKR? How much volume was attributable to agentic trading? Is there a disproportionate amount of flow from one asset class?
I'm more focused on what we are doing than what peers are doing. We are integrating our MCP server with leading AI agentic platforms and prioritizing education to help customers use this new technology. We are early in Phase 1, where interactions focus on portfolio building, research and trade analysis rather than algorithmic execution strategies. There are reasons to roll out in phases: retail engagement with agentic interfaces is new and we want to deploy responsibly and transparently. A real example: I used my MCP connection to query which event contract was most active in MLB games. Instead of manually evaluating spreadsheets for hours, I asked the MCP via a Claude interface and got an analysis in under 30 seconds. That illustrates how natural-language agentic tools can speed research and decision-making. Later in the year you will see product rollouts that address execution, but it takes time to normalize a safe and reliable experience. We will have additional announcements on our Vega product suite related to execution capabilities later this year.
On margin balances, they stepped down in July. Can you give color on how margin balances are trending month-to-date in August? How would you characterize clients' risk appetite right now?
Margin balances tend to fluctuate with overall AUM. July was a choppy month, and we saw some deleveraging, which affected margin balances. Over a longer horizon though, margin balances have been steadily increasing as a result of our competitive margin rates for premium customers and greater usage of margin products. We expect margin balances to grow over time as AUM grows; July was more of a one-off.
To add, August has been a healthy trading month so far, with risk-on behavior returning. Our margin debit balances are trending toward all-time highs or are at record levels in real time.
The next question will come from Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities.
Congrats on the quarter. On marketing spend, I was surprised it dropped $15 million sequentially from about $50 million to $35 million. H.C., can you quantify how much of Q1 and Q2 relates to 2025 promotions? When you say marketing is normalizing, do you mean reported marketing spend will drop in Q3 and Q4? I'm trying to understand whether there's more leverage there.
About 40% of the marketing expenses in Q1 and to a lesser extent in Q2 were related to last year. By normalizing, I mean marketing spend will more accurately reflect current promotional activity rather than lagged effects from prior-year promotions. For the remainder of the year, absent significant market changes, we expect marketing spend similar in quantum to the first half. We will continue to invest to acquire customers and AUM; we don't expect it to be lower than Q2 levels nor to be higher than Q1 levels.
What are the marketing priorities now? What are you promoting or pushing with the spend?
Marketing priorities are brand building, quality account acquisition, and international growth. The majority of spend remains in the U.S. because of scale, but proportionately we're aggressive in smaller international markets where CAC and payback look favorable. We allocate heavier spend where we see the strongest ROI.
Regarding the institutional strategy overseas, you mentioned Meritz previously. How is that progressing? Is it where you thought it would be by August 2026?
It has taken longer than I expected, but we're ready to accelerate in the near term. We expect to be firing on all cylinders by the end of August with several large Korean platform partnerships. Building an institutional pipeline outside the U.S. is easier in many ways because we can offer access to multiple markets. We operate in 18 markets and can execute trades in 16 of them, which is a significant differentiator for selling institutional execution and custody services to global platforms.
Lastly, you mentioned prediction markets earlier. Do you have a revenue number for prediction markets this quarter?
We don't break out prediction markets in our regular disclosures, but sequentially prediction markets are up 71% quarter-over-quarter. We're doing roughly $5 million to $6 million per quarter in prediction markets currently, and that number is growing month-over-month.
The next question will come from Brian Vieten with Siebert.
When the PDT rule first went into effect in the early 2000s, how broad-based are you seeing adoption among your customers now? Is this increase driven by a handful of accounts or is it broad-based across your user base? Does the ramp continue through the year? Also on competitive dynamics: is there a first-mover advantage to being ready for PDT elimination or is this a rising tide that lifts all boats?
Our average customer age is about 34; many of our newer users are younger. These customers often didn't worry about PDT previously and now can trade options and equities without restriction. Historically, lower-AUM customers often avoided certain products because of PDT. That restriction is now gone and options in particular are a primary product of interest. This behavioral change is broad-based among active traders and not driven by a narrow cohort. Regarding first-mover advantage, we did get significant exposure during the rule change—Webull was mentioned in a high share of media coverage about PDT removal. We invested heavily in customer education and readiness ahead of the change, which gave us an advantage in capturing attention and new deposits, though the overall change benefits the entire industry. I'll accept the first-mover credit, but it does lift all boats.
This concludes our question-and-answer session. Thank you all for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.