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DATE

Thursday, May 21, 2026 at 5 p.m. ET

CALL PARTICIPANTS

• Group President and U.S. CEO — Anthony Michael Denier
• Group Chief Financial Officer — H. C. Wang

TAKEAWAYS

• Revenue -- $159.9 million, representing a 36% increase year over year, attributed to high trading volumes across all core asset classes.
• Customer Assets -- $24 billion, up 90% year over year, with a slight sequential decrease due to market volatility.
• Equity Notional Volume -- $261 billion, a 104% year-over-year increase and 9.2% sequential growth.
• Options Contract Volume -- 159 million contracts, up 31% year over year and 3.2% sequentially.
• Futures Volume -- Up 84% year over year and 27% sequentially, driven by commodities futures, especially oil.
• Adjusted Operating Expenses -- $145.1 million, an increase of 64% year over year, largely driven by higher marketing and branding investment.
• Adjusted Operating Profit -- $14.8 million, yielding a 9.3% margin, with profitability achieved for the sixth consecutive quarter.
• Adjusted Net Income -- $9.2 million, or 5.8% of revenue, reflecting increased marketing expenses.
• Trading-Related Revenues -- $110.9 million, up 36% year over year, with DARTs rising to 1.31 million.
• Interest-Related Income -- $40.1 million, a 29% increase year over year, although sequentially lower due to less fully paid stock lending.
• Order Flow from Institutional Business -- 9.5% of total platform equity volumes, indicating traction in the institutional and B2B segment.
• Share Repurchase Program -- Up to $100 million of Class A shares authorized, demonstrating capital return to shareholders.
• Funded Accounts -- 5.11 million, an 8% year-over-year increase, with approximately 80,000 new funded accounts added in the quarter.
• Registered Users -- 27.6 million, up by more than 3 million over the past year, a 15% year-over-year increase.
• Quarterly Retention Rate -- 98.4%, marking a record high.
• International Expansion -- Approval to operate in 22 additional European markets, active operations now span 15 total markets, with zero-commission offerings in 7 markets outside the U.S.
• APAC Customer Assets -- $4 billion, with over 790,000 funded accounts outside the U.S.
• Self-Clearing License -- U.S. approval received, enabling in-house clearing and custody, expected to be operational by the end of the year upon further regulatory onboarding.
• AI Vega Analyst Launch -- AI-powered research platform in beta testing, soon to roll out in the U.S. and globally.
• Portfolio Blueprint and Planned AI Portfolio -- Announced product initiatives targeting active traders with portfolio construction, copy trading, and AI-driven portfolio management.
• Pattern Day Trader (PDT) Rule Readiness -- Systems updated for June 4 regulatory change, positioning Webull to enable unlimited day trades immediately as allowed.
• Institutional Client Base -- Approaching 200 onboarded institutional clients, with Meritz highlighted as the largest contributor in South Korea.
• B2B Product Launches -- Webull Connect deployed for Australian advisers and TrustLink launched in Hong Kong for trustee-managed portfolios.
• Prediction Markets Revenue -- Approximately 2% of total revenue, with an average of 100 million contracts traded monthly.
• Crypto Revenue -- Nearly 2% of total revenue for the quarter, with plans to roll out coin-in, coin-out, and staking products in Q2.
• Monthly Operating Metrics -- Webull began publishing monthly operating data starting this quarter, available via the Investor Relations website.

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RISKS

• Adjusted operating expenses increased 64% year over year, primarily due to "increased marketing and branding investments," leading to lower operating profit margin and net income compared to prior quarters.
• Customer assets and net deposits both showed sequential declines during the quarter, which management attributed to "a challenging macro backdrop in Q1 as a software sector sell off and escalating geopolitical tensions drove equity market volatility."
• Interest-related income experienced a sequential decline due to a decrease in fully paid stock lending revenue, described as "an industry wide dynamic tied to market conditions" with normalization expected as market activity returns.
• Rollout of crypto coin-in, coin-out, and staking products was delayed as resources were diverted to agentic AI projects, impacting the pace of crypto revenue expansion.

SUMMARY

Webull (BULL 5.44%) reported significant year-over-year growth in revenue, trading volumes, and customer assets, driven by surging activity across equities, options, futures, and global markets. Management emphasized the platform's readiness for the imminent SEC Pattern Day Trader rule change and outlined new AI and portfolio management initiatives targeting active traders and institutional clients. Recent international authorizations and the securing of a U.S. self-clearing license were cited as strategic milestones for scalability and margin expansion, though these benefits are largely prospective. Operating expense growth and sequential deposit declines were explicitly discussed as responses to challenging market conditions and prioritized investments in brand and customer acquisition.

• Webull management described the institutional and B2B segment as contributing nearly 10% of order flow, with continued onboarding momentum for clients such as Meritz and nearly 200 institutional accounts now on platform.
• CEO Denier said, "our cohort of active traders where it is actually it is actually a moment to be more engaged in the market." during volatility, distinguishing platform engagement compared to industry peers.
• B2B product launches in Australia and Hong Kong, and initial European expansion, were positioned as strategic moves to broaden the company's global institutional footprint.
• April and May 2026 trading volume and market share were described by CFO Wang as "an all time high. And we see that trend, continuing and actually accelerating into May," with plans to release monthly performance data to enhance disclosure.
• Approximately 20% of new funded accounts initiated trading activity with crypto, reinforcing the strategic potential for crypto-related revenue once product enhancements are deployed.
• Management highlighted ongoing work with regulators to address risks from AI agentic platforms, emphasizing "a lot of concentration on building out new risk controls and products."

INDUSTRY GLOSSARY

• DARTs: Daily average revenue trades, a measure of the average number of trades executed per day that generate revenue.
• Self-Clearing License: Regulatory approval allowing a brokerage to directly process, settle, and custody trades in-house rather than through external clearing firms.
• Pattern Day Trader (PDT) Rule: U.S. regulation limiting the number of day trades for accounts under $25,000; its removal allows unlimited day trades for qualifying accounts.
• Agentic AI: Artificial intelligence tools or automated agents executing trading or research functions autonomously on behalf of clients via APIs.
• B2B2C: Business-to-business-to-consumer model, where a platform supports professional intermediaries serving end investors.
• Coin-in, Coin-out: Crypto functionality enabling users to transfer cryptocurrencies to and from external wallets, as opposed to only conducting fiat transactions on platform.

Full Conference Call Transcript

Anthony Michael Denier: Good morning, good afternoon and good evening, everyone. Welcome to Webull's first quarter 26 Conference Call. Earlier today, we issued a press release detailing our first 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. During the call, we will be making 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 additional 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 the 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, they should not be considered in isolation.

Or construed as an alternative to their directly comparable 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 Michael Denier and our Group CFO, H. C. Wang. We will begin with prepared remarks then take questions at the end. With that, I would like to now turn it over to Anthony. Thank you, Carlos, and hello, everyone. For joining us today.

Before I walk through our first quarter results, want to step back and share how I think about the moment that our industry finds itself in and the direction it is heading. I believe we are living through a genuine inflection point in financial services. For the past decade, the defining competition in retail brokerage was fought on user interface. Who had the cleanest app, the most intuitive UI, the strongest brand, This healthy competition is certainly not over. But a new channel has opened and we are at its beginning. Increasingly, the question is not how a human interacts with a trading platform, but how an AI agent does.

The interface of the future is not a screen on a smartphone. It is an API. And the brokerage platform best positioned for the future is the 1 with the most complete, most reliable, and most developer friendly execution and custody infrastructure. That is the platform we are deliberately building to position Webull as the industry leader. This is not a distant aspiration. It is informing decisions we are making today. In our API architecture, in our AI product road map, and in our B2B infrastructure design. And it is why I believe the results we are reporting today not only signal another strong quarter, but confirm that Webull is executing on the right long term strategy.

Webull's first quarter results represent a strong start to 2026. Our second year as a public company. Revenue grew 36% year over year to $160 million Customer assets reached $24 billion up 90% year over year. And importantly, order flow from our institutional business which we highlighted last year as a new area of growth reached 9.5% of total platform equity volumes in the first quarter. A testament to the strength of our institutional product offerings.

Since our listing just over a year ago, we have continued to execute on our ambitious plan to elevate, expand, and scale the business across 3 dimensions, enhancing the trading experience for active traders, expanding our global reach and extending the platform into B2B and institutional markets. That execution has put us on a path of solid business growth and balance sheet strength. Which is why we recently announced a share repurchase program of up to $100 million of our Class A ordinary shares. This program reflects our confidence in Webull's long term value and our commitment to disciplined capital allocation. We are a company that invests for long term growth and also returns capital to shareholders when appropriate.

I am very proud of what the Webull team has achieved and extremely excited about what we plan to deliver to our customers and our shareholders. With that, let me now walk you through the highlights of this past quarter in more detail. Turning now to Slide 2 to summarize our first quarter highlights. We recorded revenue of $159.9 million up 36% year over year. Driven by high trading volumes across all core asset classes, Customer assets decreased slightly from the beginning of the year to $24 billion due to market volatility, but still represents a 90% increase year over year.

Equity notional volume increased by 104% year over year, to $261 billion, and option volume rose by more than 31% to 159 million contracts. Our additional offerings including futures, prediction markets and crypto, all contributed to our growth this quarter. Futures in particular is seeing excellent growth 84% on a year over year basis. And 27% growth sequentially. That growth was driven by huge interest in commodities futures, especially oil futures, showcasing the breadth of our offerings and the breadth of instruments we offer investors in times, of geopolitical and market uncertainty. While we have now been public for over a year, we are still in an early and high conviction phase of our growth journey.

And we will continue to aggressively invest in targeted opportunities that will power long term growth. That investment is reflected in our adjusted operating expenses of $141.1 million representing an increase of 64% on a year over year basis. We are not managing this business to increase short term margins. We are building for long term category leadership. Now turning to slide 3. And on our 2026 priorities. AI sits at the center of everything we are building. Our product road map this year reflects 3 distinct but reinforcing priorities. Deepening the experience for self directed active traders, expanding our global footprint, and building the infrastructure that powers our institutional and B2B platform.

For active traders, we are rolling out 3 initiatives that materially expand the self directed investment experience at Webull. First is Vega Analyst, which builds upon our industry leading AI capabilities to revolutionize the research experience for self directed active traders. For the first time, in minutes, retail investors will have access to comprehensive, nuanced and personalized research akin to sell side research available to institutions. Subscribers to Vega analysts can request research reports on any company at any time, enhancing their ability to make informed real time decisions. We are currently beta testing this new feature with a select group of customers, but look forward to rolling it out across The U. S. And globally in 2026.

The second initiative is portfolio blueprint. Enables 1 click portfolio construction and execution, including copy trading. Portfolio blueprint will give active traders the ability to act on conviction with the speed and sophistication our platform is known for. Lastly, later this year, we plan to add AI portfolio, enabling agentic portfolio construction and trading for our customers. Bringing the power of AI driven decision making directly into the hands of active investors. The SEC's elimination of the Pattern Day Trader Rule is a structural tailwind for everything we are building for our active traders. When the rule becomes effective on June 4, Webull will be ready to support our customers on Day 1.

Our engineering team moved quickly to update our systems and implement the rule change ahead of the effective date. Demonstrating the agility and technical capability that distinguishes Webull from legacy brokers. Every Webull customer that qualifies for intraday margin will be able to place unlimited day trades from the moment the rule change takes effect. With the full benefit of our zero commission model and product depth behind them. On international expansion, expanding global access remains a key pillar of our growth strategy. And we have taken some truly exciting steps in the first quarter.

We received permission to operate in 22 additional markets in the European Economic Area during Q1, and are now approved to expand across all of Europe. Currently, we operate in 15 total markets. Have expanded our zero commission offerings to 7 markets beyond The United States. Namely Hong Kong, Singapore, Canada, The U. K, Australia, Brazil, and Mexico. We recently launched operations in Germany. And will continue our rollout into additional European markets through the year. In APAC, our customer assets have grown to $4 billion and we now have over 790 thousand funded accounts outside The US.

Our ability to export The US retail trading experience at scale Thanks to our global infrastructure, compliance capabilities and product depth, remains a genuine competitive differentiator. For our institutional and B2B platform, this quarter we received approval for our U. S. Self clearing license. A significant step for our B2B business and the evolution of our platform. This gives us the ability to clear trades and custody securities entirely in house. Strengthening the operational backbone of our B2B business and creating meaningful synergies and operating leverage as the institutional business scales. On the technology front, we recently released our MCP server enabling AI agents to interact with Webull's platform natively.

Positioning Webull as a preferred execution and custody layer in the emerging agentic stack. As AI driven investing becomes mainstream, we believe broker infrastructure quality will be as important a competitive differentiator as user experience is today. And we are investing accordingly. Institutional flow accounted for 9.5% of our notional volume during Q1. Reflecting meaningful traction in a business we are in the early stages of scaling. In Australia, we launched Webull Connect, a tech enabled portfolio management and execution platform purpose built for financial advisers. In Hong Kong, we launched TrustLink, a system designed specifically for trustees enabling them to manage segregated investment portfolios for individual trust clients.

Together, these launches reflect our commitment to building B2B infrastructure that serves the full spectrum of professional and institutional clients across our key markets. On slide 4, I will discuss our continued user and funded account growth. Our investments in marketing continue to drive adoption And during the first quarter, we added approximately 800 thousand registered users. Over the past year, we added more than 3 million registered users. A 15% increase compared to the first quarter of 25. And bringing the platform to a total of 27.6 million registered users. You may know Webull originated as a global market data platform before evolving to become the leading digital investment platform we are today.

As a result, we have a considerable number of registered users that still take advantage of our data offerings in countries where our trading platform is not yet available. We are committed to providing access to best in class market data and information to all users irrespective of geography, and their ability to invest on the platform. On the right side of the slide, you can see funded account metrics. Funded accounts 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 showed steady growth. We added approximately 80 thousand new funded accounts this quarter, bringing the total number to 5.11 million.

An 8% year over year increase. As we continue to innovate and enhance our offerings, we are also happy to report that our quarterly retention rate was at a record high at 98.4%. Turning now to Slide 5. Customer assets increased by over 90% on a year over year basis to $24 billion and customer net deposits in the quarter were $2.1 billion, also up over 90% year over year. Sequentially, both metrics declined reflecting a challenging macro backdrop in Q1 as a software sector sell off and escalating geopolitical tensions drove equity market volatility, while rising energy prices and inflation concerns weighed on investor sentiment. This was an industry wide dynamic.

What the numbers demonstrate, however, is that our customers remain engaged and continue to make meaningful deposits into the Webull platform during the quarter. A testament to the trust they place in us. On Slide 6, you will find trading volumes for the quarter. We continue to see growth in prediction markets and crypto. But equities and options trading remain at the heart of our business. And equity and option volumes continue to increase. In the first quarter, equity notional volumes surpassed $261 billion up 104% year over year and up 9.2% sequentially. Options contract volume totaled 159 million contracts, for the quarter. Up 31% year over year and up 3.2% sequentially.

These results reflect an all time high for Webull and highlight our commitment to providing the first choice platform for active traders both here in the U.S and increasingly globally. Our user base trades consistently across all assets, reflecting a grounded approach fueled by discipline and forward looking commitment rather than short term gain and momentum chasing behavior. With that, I will pass the call over to HC for a closer look at our financial results for the quarter.

H. C. Wang: Thank you, Anthony, and thanks to everyone for joining us today. In the first quarter, Webull generated total revenue of $159.9 million representing a 36% increase on a year over year basis. This strong performance reflects continuous strength across both trading and interest related income streams, which I will walk through in more detail shortly. On the expense side, adjusted operating expenses were $145.1 million up 64% year over year. Primarily driven by increased marketing and branding investments. In the quarter, we continued our successful asset matching programs in a number of our global markets. driving $2.1 billion of net deposits in the quarter despite a very challenging market environment.

We also launched awareness campaigns to promote our zero-commission offerings in international markets such as Hong Kong, Canada and Australia. On the branding side, we became the first official Jersey patch sponsor of the Tampa Bay Rays and remained their official online brokerage. This has deepened our presence in the Tampa Bay area giving us a marquee platform to engage sports fans and create meaningful brand visibility in a priority market. We are pleased with the returns we are seeing on these investments and marketing will remain a priority for us as we continue to invest in customer acquisition and AUM growth. I will now walk through profitability, and then the key components of revenues and expenses in more detail.

Turning now to Slide 8. Q1 marks our sixth consecutive quarter of operating profitability. Adjusted operating profit of $14.8 million representing a 9.3% operating profit margin. And adjusted net income came in at $9.2 million or 5.8% of revenue. Both are lower compared to prior quarters primarily reflecting the step up in marketing investments I just discussed. We remain confident that as revenue scales, marketing as a percentage of revenue will continue to come down and margins will improve accordingly. Turning to Slide 9. Our trading related revenues continue to grow as we witnessed another quarter of record trading volume across asset classes.

Trading related revenues increased 36% year over year to $110.9 million and DARTs increased to 1.31 million in the first quarter. We are seeing broad based activity across our core equities and options products. As well as newer products such as futures crypto, and prediction markets. Once again, our results demonstrate that our active traders remained engaged and traded through what was a fairly choppy macro environment in Q1. We are seeing a strong rebound in trading activities in April and May as the market recovers and reaches all time highs. This positions us well for sustainable growth in trading revenues over time. Turning to Slide 10.

In the first quarter, interest related income grew 29% year over year to $40.1 million mainly driven by growth in our margin loan and client cash balances. This line item has been relatively stable the last few quarters. The sequential decline was primarily attributable to a decrease in fully paid stock lending revenue. Which was an industry wide dynamic tied to market conditions which we expect to normalize as the market activity picks back up. Finally, let's turn to Slide 11 for a closer look at operating expenses. Adjusted operating expenses increased 64% year over year again mostly driven by marketing and branding investments. Excluding those expenses, our cost base remains well managed.

As our operating profit margin ex marketing has remained at 40% or higher every quarter since Q3 of 24. As revenue continues to grow, we are confident that we will be able to scale expenses at a slower rate over time. Lastly, many of you have asked and I am excited to share that starting this month, we will be publishing monthly operating metrics. You will find them under the Investor Relations tab of webullcorp.com. We believe more frequent data points will give investors and analysts a better view of our business performance between quarters. With that, I will turn the call back to Anthony before we open the line for questions.

Anthony Michael Denier: Thanks, HC. Q1 was a strong start to our second year as a public company. We delivered record trading volumes and solid growth in revenue and AUM while making real progress across all 3 of our priorities. Deepening the experience for active traders, expanding globally, and growing our B2B and institutional business. I am energized to continue the hard work of this quarter alongside our global team as we are committed to enhancing expanding and extending our business to cement Webull as a leader in an increasingly popular and evolving industry. We look forward to engaging with you at our forthcoming investor events this quarter.

And on that note, we welcome any questions you may have either here on the call or 1-on-1. Thank you.

Operator: We will now begin the question and answer session. First question comes from Karim Assef with Bank of America. Bank of America. Please go ahead.

Analyst (Karim): Good evening and good morning, Anthony and H.C and team. I hope everyone is doing well. Appreciate the update and congrats on a strong quarter, strong results. My first question is on the Pattern Day Trader Rule. How do you think about the impact of that change on your client base both in terms of trading activity and cohort expansion And how meaningful could this be for Webull as a structural driver of engagement and monetization in the future?

Anthony Michael Denier: Hey, Karim Assef. Thanks for the question. So we have been preparing for PDT, it seems like now for almost a year. Happy to, to make it very clear, like we just announced, we will be ready on day 1, which is now June 4. I think there will only be several of our peers that maybe will be ready on June 4 with the legacy in my opinion, will not, not only because they have a much bigger shift to turn. I especially with legacy systems that they have had in place combining with acquisitions and older systems, a lot of Band Aids to kind of remove. Also, it is not their top priority. Right?

If you look at kind of the AUM of customers, on neo brokers and fintechs, significantly lower than on kind of legacy, web-based platforms, the Schwab's of the world, any trades of the world. So their customer AUM, PDT was not as big of an issue, for their active Trader client base. The average account size at Webull as of our end of quarter AUM sits just below $5 thousand per account. So our the biggest cohort of clients that we have on the Webull are directly impacted by this rule change. We have several different models that we put together whether you want to call them, kind of a bear, a neutral, and a bull case.

My expectations and, of course, this is speculation. But my expectations on the low end is an increase of 20%. On the low end in terms of transactions, transaction increase we are going to see with the removal of PDT. This is not going to happen on day 1 on June 4, but I believe will happen over time. Also, the removal of PDT presents a very unique opportunity for account consolidation across the industry. You may be aware, you may not be aware, but it is quite common for active smaller AUM clients to have multiple brokerage accounts.

And because of that PDP rule, they will day trade 3 times on 1 platform and then they have to wait 5 whole calendar days to day trade again. And you will see them go to a different platform, engage match up their PDT there, so on, so on, so on. So the removal of the PDT and being a first mover is, I think, really significant for us to do a consolidation of a lot of those client assets into their Webull account.

And we have a marketing plan already laid out, and we are going to start going live as we get closer to the date to make sure that there is, 1, education of the rule change, what it exactly means. Obviously, awareness that we are ready to not limit the amount of day trades. And also possibly offer incentives to consolidate those accounts over to Webull. So it is a very big event for us, and we are making sure that we are taking full advantage of it.

Analyst (Karim): Got it. That was very comprehensive. Thank you, Anthony. My second question is on volumes and you guys touched on that a little bit in your prepared remarks. We have kind of I think in Q1 versus Q4, we have kind of seen a broad sequential decline in equity and options volume some of your peers, but yours was very strong and accelerated quarter over quarter. Appreciate that part of the increase in the equity volumes in Q1 was driven by the institutional opportunity or the institutional volume. So could you maybe like speak about that a little bit?

How meaningful or how big of a contributor do you see that institutional opportunity for Webull over time, especially in periods when there is, like, you know, a pullback from, you know, the retail? Cohort.

Anthony Michael Denier: Of clients. Well, first off, I appreciate you very much pointing out the fact that our volumes increased in versus a lot of our competitors decreasing in Q1. So thank you for that. I would attribute our continued acceleration in volumes across equities and options having to do with multiple factors. I think 1 is the core client base that we concentrate on, and that is obviously the active client base. In times of volatility, when you see a rising VIX, there is a lot of momentum and a lot of opportunity where a casual retail trader will often kind of sit on the sidelines and wait for things to kind of normalize and calm down.

We see often the opposite effect, with our cohort of active traders where it is actually it is actually a moment to be more engaged in the market. And take advantage of those big swings. I think the second factor in our increase in volume has been our international growth. Right? We have seen huge increases in equities and options volume trading coming from our broker dealers that are outside of The US. In fact, you know, Hong Kong in particular. You know, now is doing, I believe, we have a Hong Kong broker-dealer's equity flow is now a very close second to all 13 of the others combined.

Meaning that 1 broker dealer and tell you why it is been so high. But that 1 broker dealer internationally is contributing so much order flow because of its concentration on institutional and B2B accounts outside of The US. And so that is the third factor. We did separate institutional order flow in this quarter's earnings.

We have been talking about the buildup and the energy we are putting building our B2B infrastructure, and we wanted to put some context behind it in Q1 on this earnings call, we can actually display exactly how much how much positive reinforcement that institutional and B2B business is bringing to our order flow representing almost 10% now of our order flow is coming from nonretail. And we only expect that number to go up and accelerate very quickly and very aggressively.

Analyst (Karim): Thank you very much. That was very comprehensive Anthony. I will hop back in the queue. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Christopher Brendler with Rosenblatt. Please go ahead.

Christopher Brendler: Hi, thanks for taking my questions and congratulations on the results. I want to dig a little deeper into the PDT rules and just how we should think about the opportunity to consolidate customers who have multiple brokerage accounts? It seems to us that this would be a significant part of the opportunity for Webull, just given your platform and advanced trading tools that you offer? Any early color on how you guys are thinking about that opportunity? As more and more customers can concentrate their trades at just a couple of venues instead of spreading it around?

Anthony Michael Denier: Hey, Christopher Brendler. For a moment, you dropped off. I do not know if I heard the whole question. So I am going to apologize. So I heard are there any tools or differentiation in the platform that will help us in PDT? Was that the question?

Christopher Brendler: it is like just as you think about the competitive landscape and Webull's competitive positioning on active traders, I would think this would be a pretty significant opportunity for Webull to consolidate when clients start consolidating their trades at a fewer venues because they do not need to spread trades around, I would think it would be a significant opportunity for Webull just given your competitive positioning and focus on active traders, but we are not sure how to think about that yet. I am just wondering if you had any early thoughts. Yeah.

Anthony Michael Denier: No. And you, I mean, hit it right on the head. Webull from day 1 has been built for the active retail trader. Right? We did not bolt this on, you know, after operating for, you know, 5, 6, 7 years. We have always been focused on active traders. So this represents a great opportunity, I think, specifically for the customer that we have always catered to the 1 that I think we speak their language in terms of the way that we offer and the way we prioritize execution quality, the way we prioritize the ability to navigate the app and quickly be able to make decisions.

Also, I want to counter with our AI integration into the platform is also going to be specifically focused on making active traders better at taking advantage of opportunities as they come up in real time. And so, you know, as we have rolled out the AI Vega product, we have seen that our active traders so we kind of drop them into 3 distinct cohorts. We have our active traders, our kind of investor class of traders, and then we have the beginners. And the active traders are using our Vega platform on average about 16 to 17 times. Per month. and 20% of those are making a trade after they engage with Vega.

And the majority of those inquiries are on an in-depth stock analysis and then they are making a trade. So all the tools that we are building are leading towards this removal of PDT to take the restrictions off of our customer base on how often they can they can trade on an idea and an opportunity in real time.

Christopher Brendler: Great. A quick follow-up there. You think from an education standpoint, how quickly will we see this play out? Will it take a couple of quarters, a year, Would we see an inflection in June? How should we think about the implementation on June 4?

Anthony Michael Denier: So we are trying to maximize on the immediate impact with a lot of our, marketing plan. that we have put together. As I mentioned earlier, we are going to be using incentives to consolidate our active trader base. So they are moving their balances from our competitors over to Webull, specifically, 1, we are built for them. Number 2, we are ready to go on day 1. And number 3, we are going to continue to bring out products that cater to active traders. And we are again, positioned perfectly, in my opinion, to take advantage of this immediately.

Now that being said, you know, at the end of you know, on our Q2 call, you know, in several months, you know, I will have at least almost 1 month of data to share with you. But know, expectation is that this is probably going to be a bigger Q3 impact. Rather than the 1 month that will exist in Q2. But we are Sure, refined, and prepared to take advantage.

Christopher Brendler: Okay. Great. Last question for me would be on the prediction markets. Lot of momentum in the fourth quarter. You give us a little more color on how prediction markets trended in the first quarter? I think it is like blended with the futures business, obviously a nice bump up in the revenues there, but just would love to see, I would love to hear how prediction markets trended in the first quarter, if you could give us any color there?

Anthony Michael Denier: Thanks. Prediction markets through Q1 kind of stayed on the same trajectory path as we saw in Q4. To be fair, I do not think we have not fully tapped the opportunity that exists in prediction markets. You guys have heard me talk about this before, but prediction markets, I think, is the greatest tool for new customer acquisition and reengagement of dormant customers. it is a very easy product to market and it is it expands our addressable market, I think, by a magnitude of multiples. So that is where the value is and continues to be for us.

In terms of volume and prediction markets, we are kind of averaging around 100 million contracts a month to put a number on it. But from an overall revenue, you know, revenue percentage, Prediction market revenue still represents a small amount of, you know, quarterly revenues, I would say, an approximation around 2%. Of our total revenues coming from prediction markets. Are still very focused on equities and options as our core.

Christopher Brendler: Okay, great. Thanks so much for the color and congrats again. Thanks.

Operator: The next question comes from Steven Chubak with Wolfe Research. Please go ahead.

Steven Chubak: Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. So maybe to start, Anthony, you mentioned the future of trading with more customers leveraging agentic tools. Now the expectation among most investors that we have engaged with on this topic is that this could spur a meaningful uptick in trading activity, but there is also concerns around the risk of third party agentic tools gaining access to the platform, and I want to get your perspective on how you might protect against things like rogue behavior or the potential risk of hallucinations in a world where these agentic tools are leveraged more readily?

Anthony Michael Denier: Sure. So like I mentioned on the call in the beginning, I believe that access and being the infrastructure for these new AI agentic platforms that seem like they are popping up. I mean, every day, I am hearing of several new ones. there is a lot of safety measures that we need to be aware of. I readily agree with that. I think 1 of the-- 1 of the priorities that we have always had at this platform is security, is safety, and it is, of course, compliance. You know, we are a regulated, a very heavily regulated business. We are here for customer protection. If the customers do not succeed, Webull does not succeed.

So although we are fully embracing our investment in our new MCP server, you know, investments in the different API infrastructures. There also is a lot of concentration on building out new risk controls and products, making sure that, 1, education, a disclaimer, as well as notification and making sure that customers understand what this AI agent is doing for them and within their account, that is going to be top priority. In fact, I mean, since this is such a kind of new area, we are working hand in hand with regulators kind of as we speak on building out what the proper framework, what the proper control should be. For this new way of trading.

But regardless of however, you know, those conversations come out, this is going to be a structural change of this business over the next 2 to 3 years? Where the idea of competing simply on a user on a smartphone is no longer going to be the battleground. it is going to be on access to products pricing, execution quality, and having the best integration with these AI agentic platforms. I appreciate that perspective, Anthony.

Steven Chubak: And for my follow-up, just a question on the margin outlook. Was hoping you can offer some perspective on how you are balancing investment spend and revenue growth. You noted that you are not going to sacrifice near term margin for the long term upside. But might be helpful if you can outline how you expect OpEx to trend based on your current investment plans as well as your marketing budget and how that informs incremental margins as some of these investments begin to bear fruit?

H. C. Wang: Sure. I think I will take this question. So as you can see that since we have been a public company, we have been profitable every single quarter on an adjusted non GAAP basis. And also, we have been kind of managing toward around a 40% profit margin excluding marketing. While the 40% margin excluding marketing is not a hard and fast rule, but I think it demonstrates our commitment to really be a profitable company and be disciplined, around our operating expenses. Of course, marketing has been and will likely continue to be for a period of time, a significant portion of our revenue. it is been around 30% the last 2 quarters.

I think Anthony had mentioned that we have prepared marketing plans around the PTT rule. there is also going to be we have been doing marketing promotions around our zero commission offerings outside The U. S. there is also a number of events coming up later this year, around new products. So we will continue to invest in these strategic initiatives and opportunities for customer acquisition and AUM growth. But over the course of the next year or 2, I think we fully expect revenue to really pick up, especially with these tailwinds that we are seeing And should expect to see a narrowing of the marketing spend as a percentage of revenue.

Even if the absolute amount does not decrease. And then we will see expansion in operating margins over time.

Steven Chubak: that is a full perspective. Thanks so much for taking my questions.

Operator: The next question comes from Mike Grondahl with Northland Securities. Please go ahead.

Michael John Grondahl: Hey, guys. Thank you. Anthony, could you talk a little bit about how Meritz is ramping? How many stocks now are traded on your platform and just give us a flavor for that?

Anthony Michael Denier: Hey there, Mike Grondahl. So, yeah, I mean, Meritz is-- Meritz is progressing very, very well. In fact, part of that almost 10% institutional flow a big part of that is from Meritz. I am a little apprehensive to disclose exactly the amount of flow that they are sending us. Because that is, you know, that is better described by them. But we have expanded the amount of symbols that they are sending us. A lot of the order flow is just the overnight order flow, but it is regular session order flow, which is much more profitable for us in a take rate scenario. So very healthy growth there.

But outside of Meritz, which I definitely wanna highlight, I mean, I know I mentioned on previous calls that it takes a long time to onboard excuse me, to onboard these institutional clients, these B2B clients. We are nearing 200 institutional clients now that are onboarded on our platform. And, yes, Merits is the 1 that we press release because it is the largest and the first that we have onboarded in South Korea. But like I have mentioned before, the pipeline is extremely strong, and it is only getting stronger. And all the investment that we put into building out this B2B infrastructure through 2025 is now starting to bear fruit.

This is only Q1, which to be fair, was a very difficult market for trading volumes. And I think the proof is in the results. And we are going to continue to see that international allocation expand terms of our total trade volume.

Michael John Grondahl: that is great. 200 is a big number. Maybe second for H.C. Can you state what you said about April and May again? Especially maybe in relation to March February, January? How were April and May?

H. C. Wang: Sure. Actually, thanks for asking. In fact, we starting this quarter, we have started to release monthly metrics So this is actually on our presentation. In the appendix section, first slide on it. In the appendix section, actually. So you can see our trading volumes are at all time high. In April, and our, market share is an all time high. And we see that trend, continuing and actually accelerating into May. So we and we will be releasing these monthly metrics, probably just a couple weeks after the end of the month. So you guys would not need to wait until the next earnings call to find out you know, how we are trending.

Michael John Grondahl: Got it. And maybe just lastly for Anthony, crypto, are you said prediction markets was maybe 2% of revenue. Is crypto anywhere on that scale?

Anthony Michael Denier: So in the past, I have laid out very clearly that crypto is a huge opportunity for us. If you look across our peers, crypto represents anywhere from 15% to 25% of revenue contribution in terms of product. Crypto for us as of Q1 was 1, call it, call it, almost 2%. So, again, very similar in terms of revenue attribution. But I have plans. Again, that is the-- that is the opportunity there. And to have a March rollout of 2 different important products that will level us on the playing field in crypto. And that is simply coin in, coin out capabilities.

So Webull customers can have their own wallet it is not a fiat in, fiat out scenario, which it currently is and secondly is staking. Those actual products were pushed back on a timeline. We have not released them yet. Specifically, because we diverted resources to make sure that we put in place our agentic MCP server. To take advantage of this new evolution of agentic AI trading platforms. So it was pushed back a little bit on timeline. But in retrospect, it is still a very difficult time for crypto, so I think it was the right time to focus on prioritizing product rollout.

We are still expected in Q2 to roll out the coin-in, coin-out and the staking products for crypto which will then give us, again, that opportunity to squeeze the street in terms of margin price, in terms of margin compression, in terms of pricing of the crypto product serving an active crypto trading clientele. And I think 1 anecdote that is really important to understand is all the new accounts that we have opened year to date about 20% of those, the first trade that they made after funding was an actual trade in crypto.

Which tells me that our customer base is still very much engaged If 20% of my new accounts are trading crypto as their first engagement on the platform, That is a huge opportunity to take our representative approximately 2% of revenue currently to take that up closer to 20%. In a in a in a short, you know, short amount of time. The customer is there. We just have to get the product there. So I am I am very optimistic still on crypto even though it is a relatively small product in terms of revenue.

Michael John Grondahl: Got it. That framework helps. Helps us. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Jose on for Edward Engel with Compass Point Research and Trading. Please go ahead.

Analyst (Jose): Hey, everyone. This is Jose on for Edward Engel. Thanks for taking our question. You guys were approved for self clearing. And so now that you are approved, how would self clearing help improve competitiveness for the B2B2C business? And how long will it take to start seeing benefits from those cost savings?

Anthony Michael Denier: Yes, thank you for the question. First off, becoming a or being granted a self clearing license in The United States is 1, no easy feat. It actually has taken us multiple years to finally get over the line and get approval from our regulator. But the journey is not over. There are still 2 different institutions that we need to get I am using hand quotes, to get approved from and onboard with, and that is DTCC for the equities settlement as well as the OCC for the option settlement. So I do not expect the self clearing business to be operational.

Until the end of the year, meaning clearing our own equity trades and clearing our own options trades probably until Q4 of this year. But having said that, having the ability to self clear our own trades now for US products is a huge game changer for our business. Not only does it streamline the ability of being able to manage our own costs better, Think about every single trade. The millions and millions of trades we do every day, we have to pay a fee to our clearing firm to clear those trades and to custody those trades.

So it not only will decrease our costs, our transaction costs significantly, but we can also pass those reduced transaction costs to our customers making us much more competitive on the pricing side to win more business, especially on the B2B side.

Analyst (Jose): Got it. No. that is very helpful. Thank you. And then as a just another quick question to ask. You guys highlighted your international expansion opportunity very well in the 2026 roadmap slide. How should we think about the rollout in Europe? Are you seeing similar B2B2C opportunities there like you are in Asia?

Anthony Michael Denier: I think it is still early to tell. We only launched our first European broker dealer, which was our Dutch broker dealer back in September of 2025. So it is still a relatively new operation You know, it is not well staffed yet, to be honest. And we are just starting to roll out into Greater Europe. So the focus now for B2B is clearly on the APAC region where we use Hong Kong as our hub for that business. And here in The U. S, where we have our St. Pete office for the hub for that business. Those are the 2 core B2B onboarding 1 for the Western Hemisphere, 1 for the Eastern Hemisphere.

I think most of the onboarding from Europe potential partnerships are actually gonna come through The US. So again, still a very new business. I will have more updates as we get a bit more mature.

Analyst (Jose): Understood. Thank you so much for the time.

Operator: This concludes our question and answer session and today's conference call. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.