Futu Holdings (FUTU) Q1 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending March 31, 2023

May 24, 2023 7:30 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Well, to Futu Holdings’ First Quarter 2023 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference call is being recorded. [Operator Instructions]. I would 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 first quarter 2023 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 annual report on Form 20-F.

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

Leaf Hua Li

[Foreign language]

Thank you all for joining today. As of quarter end, our paying clients surpassed 1.5 million representing 15% growth year-over-year. Based on paying client growth in the first five months of the year, we expect to add 150,000 paying clients in 2023.

In the first quarter, Hong Kong market contributed over one-third of paying client growth as client acquisition accelerated on the back of the rally of China technology names in January. We also witnessed resilient paying client growth in Singapore, as we continue to strengthen our brand awareness through offline events and promoted demand for lower-risk fund products through industrial education.

[Foreign language]

We continue to broaden our trading product offerings and upgrade trading features in various markets. We became the only broker in Hong Kong that allows clients to trade certain U.S. stocks and ETF 24 hours a day, five days a week, thereby enhancing the flexibility and accessibility of the U.S. stock trading. We also launched leverage foreign exchange trading in Singapore, where clients can trade 36 major currency pairs on margin to take advantage of volatility in the foreign exchange market.