Futu Holdings Limited (FUTU) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Futu Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:FUTU) Q4 2022 Earnings Conference Call March 28, 2023 7:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Daniel Yuan - Investor Relations

Leaf Li - Chairman and Chief Executive Officer

Arthur Chen - Chief Financial Officer

Robin Xu - Senior Vice President

Conference Call Participants

Han Pu - CICC

Chiyao Huang - Morgan Stanley

Cindy Wang - China Renaissance

Frank Zheng - Credit Suisse

Leon Qi - Daiwa

Peter Zhang - JPMorgan

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Futu Holdings Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2022 Earnings Conference Call. [Operator Instructions] Today’s conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I’d now like to turn the conference over to your host for today’s conference call, Daniel Yuan, Chief of Staff to CEO and Head of IR at Futu. Please go ahead, sir.

Daniel Yuan

Thanks, operator and thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2022 earnings results. Joining me on the call today are Mr. Leaf Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Arthur Chen, Chief Financial Officer; and Robin Xu, Senior Vice President.

As a reminder, today’s call may include forward-looking statements, which represent the company’s belief regarding future events, which by their nature are not certain and are outside of the company’s control. Forward-looking statements involve inherent risks and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company’s filings with the SEC, including its registration statement.

So with that, I will now turn the call over to Leaf. Leaf will make his comments in Chinese and I will translate.

Leaf Li

Thank you all for joining our earnings call today. In the fourth quarter, we added over 42,000 paying clients, down 27% sequentially. Stock market plummet in the first half of the quarter and uncertainties around the sustainability of market rebound in the second half affected user sentiment, which led to the deceleration of client acquisition. Our total paying clients reached around 1.5 million, representing 20% growth year-over-year. In 2022, we managed to add over 240,000 paying claims exceeding our full year guidance by 20%. Despite a challenging market backdrop, our average quarterly client retention rate in 2022 remained above 98%, which speaks to the stickiness of our product.