Futu Holdings Limited (NASDAQ:FUTU) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Cindy Wang: Thank you management for taking my call. This is Cindy from China Renaissance. So I have two questions. First question is related to the customer acquisition cost. So, we see the second quarter new clients have a good strong sequentially. However, the CAC actually went down. So, is that going to sustainable in the second half of 2023? And the second question is related to the Japan market. So congrats to get the license approval from Japan Government, so since we have down the Beta version for Moomoo app in Japan. So can you talk about a little bit more color on what’s the effect in the Beta version in terms of client feedback and MAU? And is that going to help you to grow your new client members in the second half of this year? Thank you.

Arthur Chen: Thank you, Cindy. I will take your first question, and I think Leaf will be very happy to share more colors and his thoughts about the Japan markets. In the second quarter blended commission — blended client acquisition cost was around HK$3,000 per client. The CAC in Hong Kong was slightly higher than average while that in the U.S. and in Singapore was lower than the average. I think in the second quarter, we continue to optimize different channels particularly some offline channel promotions to get a very good results. So, our efforts on the acquisition efficiency of target client groups has got me reward, and in the future we will further dynamically adjust our marketing strategy to improve the efficiency and also the quality of customer acquisitions.

Looking into the second half of this year, I personally think the uncertainties still remain across the different markets, but having said that our view on average CAC will be slightly more optimistic than our view before. Therefore, we think the full year CAC course may have a high single digit decrease compared with them of last year. Thank you. I hand over to Leaf.

Leaf Hua Li: We have been operating as a pure information market data platform in the Japanese market for less than a year, accumulating a lot of good feedback from Japanese users. We’ve also iterated many community networking features based on market trends and user interests. And our data shows that Moomoo’s user community in Japan is highly, highly active with the DAU to user ratio averaging around 15% on trading days, indicating very high engagement and certainly significant growth potential. Although trading function is currently not available on Moomoo in Japan. We believe Moomoo has already brought unique value to Japanese users. And in terms of product capabilities, Moomoo now offers various functionalities that were absent among local platforms, such as visual displays of fund flows covering U.S. and Japanese stocks, fundamental and technical analysis.

And secondly, most securities brokers in Japan have a 15 to 20 minute delay in market data. And real-time quotes are provided with a cost. However, Moomoo provides free real-time quotes, not only for Japanese and U.S. stocks, but also for foreign exchange options in future state of global capital markets. And furthermore, Moomoo is currently the only online platform in Japan offering an online user community. We’ve introduced numerous KOLs and conducted live broadcast for popular financial events in the social community, resulting in very high engagement. And last but not least, we have strong trading capabilities in terms of product categories or types, trading duration, and various analytical tools, which can also be replicated in Japan in the near future.

And regarding our future development plans, after we received the approval from the Japanese regulators, we are actively preparing and aim to launch the trading functions in the fourth quarter this year to provide Japanese investors with a comprehensive and smooth investment experience.

Operator: We will now take the next question coming from the line of Leon Qi from Daiwa. Please go ahead.