Futu Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:FUTU) Q3 2023 Earnings Conference Call November 23, 2023 7:30 AM ET

Company Participants

Daniel Yuan - IR

Leaf Hua Li - Chairman and CEO

Arthur Chen - CFO

Conference Call Participants

Leon Qi - Daiwa

Chiyao Huang - MS

Cindy Wang - China Renaissance

Peter Zhang - JPMorgan

Li Wan - BOCOM International

Operator

Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Futu Holdings Third Quarter 2023 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. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time.

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.

Daniel Yuan

Thanks, operator, and thank you for joining us today to discuss our third 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 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.

So, 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.

In the third quarter, we acquired around 65,000 paying clients, a 12% sequential increase. Our total paying clients reached 1.65 million, up 14% year-over-year. Three quarters into 2023, we have exceeded our full-year guidance by acquiring over 163,000 paying clients.

In the third quarter, Hong Kong market contributed over 40% of new paying clients. This acceleration in client acquisition was driven by the relief rally in the first half of the quarter and successful marketing around the government's Green Bond and Silver Bond issuances in the second half. These two bond offerings attracted allocation driven clients to our platform.