Aaron Li; Investor Relations; UP Fintech Holding Ltd
Tianhua Wu; Chief Executive Officer, Director; UP Fintech Holding Ltd
Fei Zeng; Chief Financial Officer, Director; UP Fintech Holding Ltd
Cindy Wang; Analyst; China Renaissance
Emma Xu; Analyst; BofA Securities
Hua Fan; Analyst; CICC
Operator
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the UP Fintech Holding Limited third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. (Operator Instructions) at this time. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. November 12, 2024. I would now like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Mr. Aaron Li, the Head of Investor Relations. Thank you. Please go ahead.
Aaron Li
Thank you, Mel. Hello everyone and thank you for joining us for the call today. UP Fintech Holding Limited's third quarter 2024 earnings release was distributed earlier today and is available on our IR website at ir.itigerup.com, as well as GlobeNewswire services.
On the call today from UP Fintech are Mr. Wu Tianhua, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Mr John Zeng, Chief Financial Officer; Mr Huang Lei, CEO of US Tiger Securities; and Mr Kenny Zhao, our Financial Controller.
Mr. Wu will give an overview of our business operations and discuss corporate highlights. Mr Zeng will then discuss our financial results. They will both be available to answer your questions during the Q&A session that follows their remarks.
Now let me cover the Safe Harbor. The statements we are about to make contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of the US Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. A number of factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those containing any forward-looking statement.
For more information about factors that could cause actual results to materially differ from those in the forward-looking statements. Please report our Form 6-K furnished today, November 1,220 24. And our annual report on Form 20-F filed on April 22, 2024. We undertake no obligation to update any forward-looking statement except as required under applicable law.
It is my pleasure to now introduce our Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Wu. Mr. Wu will make remarks in Chinese, which will be followed by English translation. Mr. Wu, please go ahead with your remarks.
Tianhua Wu
(interpreted) Hello everyone. Thank you for joining Tiger Broker's third quarter 2024 earnings conference call. In the third quarter driven by expanded client base, comprehensive product offerings, and active market backdrop in the US, total trading volume reached USD163 billion. Cash equity trading volume was USD41.4 billion, reflecting a quarter-over-quarter increase of 54% and 24%, respectively.
Commission income rate USD41.2 million increased 21% quarter over quarter and a 78% year over year, the highest in the past three years. The uptake in market activity also contributed to a rise in market financing and security spending business which increased 29% quarter over quarter and doubled year over year, reaching USD4.5 billion at the end of the third quarter.
Despite the ongoing rate card cycle, interest income increased 9% quarter over quarter to USD48 million. Our total revenue for the third quarter was all time high of USD101 million, a quarter over quarter increase of 16% and year over year increase of 44%.
GAAP and non-GAAP net income attributable to UP Fintech was USD17.8 million and USD20.1 million this quarter. Both exceeded the total amount for the first half of this year and increased 34% and 26% year over year, respectively. Also, we are glad to see our operating profit margin increased to 26% in the third quarter indicating ongoing improvement in the operating leverage of our business model.
In the third quarter, we added 50,500 newly funded accounts, representing a 3% sequential increase and a 105% increase year over year. Singapore and Southeast Asia region were the primary contributors. The number of funded accounts as of the end of the third quarter reached 1,000,300, increased 19% year over year.
In the first three quarters of this year, we added a total of 128,000 newly funded accounts. By now, we've already achieved our annual guidance of acquiring 150,000 newly funded accounts. In terms of total client assets, retail clients net asset inflow remains strong at USD1 billion for this quarter.
Total client assets increased by 7% quarter over quarter and 116% year over year to USD40.8 billion, setting another historic high. We are glad to see that our client assets have now risen for eight consecutive quarters and kept setting new records for the past four consecutive quarters.
Notably, in addition to steady growth in client assets from Singapore market, we've seen over 25% quarter-over-quarter increase in client assets from new markets like Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, and the US.
In the third quarter, we continued to upgrade our product offerings on our platform to enhance user experience. In September, we officially launched Hong Kong stock option and Hong Kong short selling features on our platform.
And in early November, we collaborated with Hong Kong Exchange to upgrade the Hong Kong stock option feature by offering weekly contract in addition to monthly contract to better meet investors' trading and risk management needs, allowing them to trade based on short term events.
Additionally, Tiger Boss debit card is gaining more popularity since its launch in Singapore. So we upgraded the product to include T+0 automatic subscription and redemption feature for Tiger Vault, our wealth management product. The integration allows users to manage their investment portfolios more conveniently, seamlessly bridging daily spending, wealth management and stock investment.
Moreover in October, we enhanced our overnight trading capabilities and field. Unfilled night session orders will be automatically passed on to the premarket and regular trading session to ensure user experience and execution quality.
Our two businesses continues to perform well. In investment banking, we underwrote 13 US and Hong Kong IPOs in the third quarter, including NIP Group and Voicecomm Group. And we served as the exclusive lead bank for the NIP Group and XCHG US IPO. In our ESOP business, we added 18 new clients in the third quarter, bring the total number of ESOP clients served to 597 by the end of the third quarter of 2024, increased by 18% year over year. Now I would like to invite our CFO, Zeng to go over our financials.
Fei Zeng
Great, thanks. All right, thanks Tianhua and Aaron. Let me go through our financial performance for the third quarter. All numbers are in US dollar. Thanks to our expanded user base and robust market activities. We saw healthy growth in all top nine items this quarter. Commission income were $41.2 million increased to 21% quarter over quarter and 78% year over year. Interest related income were $48 million this quarter, increased 9% quarter over quarter and 25% year over year.
As a result, total revenue increased 16% quarter over quarter and 44% year over year to reach an all-time high at USD101 million. Cash equities take rate was 6.4 bps this quarter, slightly decreased from 6.7 bps of last quarter. Within commission revenue, about 63% comes from cash equities, 30% from options, but the rest from futures and other products.
Now on to cost. Interest expense was $15.7 million increased 29% from the same quarter of last year, in line with the growth of margin and the security lending balance. Execution and clearing expense were $3.5 million increased. 48% from the same period of last year, primarily due to an increase in our trading volume and we keep improving our clearing efficiency. Cash equity clearing expense as a percentage of cash equity commissions is about 3.6% this quarter and remains one of the lowest in the industry.
Employee compensation and benefits were $28.8 million, an increase of 11% year over year due to head count increase to strengthen overseas growth and R&D. Occupancy, depreciation, and amortization expense slightly decreased 3% to $2.2 million. Communication and market data expense were $9.7 million, an increase of 28% year over year due to the increase in user base and IT related services
Marketing expense increased 59% year over year to $8.2 million this quarter. We see market backdrop was supportive for more customer acquisition and branding campaigns while maintaining ROI targets.
General and administrative expenses were $6.9 million, an increase of 27% year over year due to more professional service fees and the general expense incurred alongside with our business expansion. Total operating costs were $59.3 million an increase of 22% from the same quarter of last year.
Our bottom line increase quarter over quarter and year over year on a GAAP and non-GAAP basis. GAAP net income was $17.8 million, increase of 585% quarter over quarter and 34% year over year, while long GAAP net income was $20.1 million increased to 287% quarter over quarter and a 26% year over year. Now I have concluded our presentation. Operator, please open the line for Q&A. Thanks.
Operator
(Operator Instructions) Cindy Wang, China Renaissance.
Cindy Wang
(spoken in foreign language) Thanks for taking my call, my questions and I have two questions here. First one is please give us a break down of the original mix of newly fund accounts. And the second question is the commission income up quarter over quarter nicely in the quarter, the blended take rate and cash equity take rate both down sequentially, what is the reason behind it? Does NVIDIA stock split have impact to your take rate and what is the Q4 trend? Thank you.
Tianhua Wu
(interpreted) In the third quarter, about 60% of our newly funded users came from Singapore and Southeast Asia, about 15% each from Australia, New Zealand region, and Hong Kong market, more than 5% were from the US market. Thank you.
Fei Zeng
(interpreted) So first of all, the decline in blended take rate is largely due to an increase in future trading volume. Since futures are currently based on nominal value instead of contract value, so the trading volume will amplify in the third quarter, that's why we saw 24% increase in stock trading volume, while total trading value jumped to 54%.
There are several reasons for the drop in cash equity take rate. Number one is the Nasdaq had a general upward trend in Q3, which pushed average stock price higher, so lowered the take rate. And also the second reason is the ADR in the third quarter accounted for only 10% of the trading volume, while the major US stock, especially Magnificent 7 increased a lot, which further raised the average trading price and the lowered the take rate.
And also even though in Hong Kong, our trading volume has gone up a lot during the end of the third quarter, but in Hong Kong, we offer zero commission, zero platform fee. So the Hong Kong trading volume increase didn't really help much on the take rate.
In regards to NVIDIA stocks rate, it does help the take rate a little bit, but the impact isn't that huge. Several reasons, first of all, is NVIDIA completed stock trading in early June. And the trading volume for NVIDIA in June was much higher than in April and May. By the second quarter, the average trading price was already below $400 on our platform, [not the 1,000 level. In Q3, the average price was about 120]. So in terms of price, the impact is only a bit over 3 times.
Another factor is fractional share. Before the split, a lot of users traded NVIDIA to fractional shares. We charge 1% on trading volume for fractional shares. So this helps the take rate. After the split, the trading volume through fractional shares dropped.
So putting all this together, NVIDIA take rate in Q3 was only about double what it was in second quarter. It's still a high price name even after [space]. If you look at our US stock pricing, the (inaudible) take rate for NVIDIA is only about 2 bps, while our overall cash equity take rate is between 6 bps to 7 bps. So it's not going to have a major impact on our overall cash equity take rate.
Aaron Li
Thanks. Mel, please move on to the next question, please.
Operator
[Emma Xu, Bank of America Securities].
Emma Xu
(spoken in foreign language) So congratulations on achieving the guidance ahead of schedule. The market conditions have been favorable since October. So could you please share the run rate for asset -- for AUM trading volume revenue and profit -- and profit et cetera, since October and quarter-over-quarter basis, the gross rate of your revenue exceeds that of profit without regard to the impairment losses of around $13.2 million in the second quarter. So how do you view the improvement in the operating efficiency and leverage?
Fei Zeng
(spoken in foreign language) Okay, I'll translate. In terms of our client assets, we continue to see net inflow in October, primarily driven by the contribution from our retail investors. The number of newly funded accounts has also maintained the rapid growth trend as we saw in the third quarter allowing us to hit our annual guidance so far of 150,000 newly funded users by now.
Looking at our financials, October was a safe standout month for us with trading volume and commission performance reaching the highest level in our history. Both trading volume and commissions for October more than doubled the average monthly performance for the first half of this year.
Although we are not yet half through November yet, the trading volume is looking solid so far. For instance, on November 6, which was the US election day, [other] volume on our platform increased by about 50% compared to the October daily average, particularly for US stocks which saw even more significant growth.
Looking ahead to the remainder of Q4, there are some uncertainties related to the post-election initiatives and Federal Reserve interest decisions. But overall, we are quite satisfied with how the Q4 has been shaped up so far. Thanks.
(spoken in foreign language) So in the third quarter, Fed rate cuts led to a depreciation of the US dollar. As a result, our subsidiaries that don't use US dollar as their base currencies like Singapore, New Zealand, and Mainland China, so the dollar denominated asset loses value which resulted in foreign exchange losses. For the entire group, the foreign exchange loss in the third quarter was around [5.1 million]. But of course, those FX loss was non-cash and non-operating impact.
If you look at our operating profit, it was roughly $26 million in the third quarter. In the second quarter, as after excluding a $13.2 million one-off impairment, the operating income was about like $18 million. This means we saw about a 45% growth quarter over quarter, which is significantly higher than the 16% growth we saw in the top line. This indicates our overall operating leverage has improved.
The reason we were able to achieve this aside from our business model is that we have been very prudent with our fixed cost. Both labor and G&A expense have remained relatively stable, while variable cost like clearing and customer acquisition costs may rise with increased market activities. But both of our clearing fee and the average CAC remains at the industry leading low levels. Thanks.
Aaron Li
Thanks, operator. Let's move on to the next question, please.
Operator
Hua Fan, CICC.
Hua Fan
(spoken in foreign language) I have two questions here. The first one is about the Hong Kong market. We see the market velocity rebounded since October. So would you please share more color on our current business progress in Hong Kong market?
What's the impact on our customer acquisition and trading volume in Hong Kong market? And the second question is about the wealth management business. How is it going on? And can you share more data, such as AUM and the number of the wealth management clients? Thank you.
Tianhua Wu
(interpreted) We are quite satisfied with our ongoing develop development in Hong Kong. Since the end of September, we have seen a large improvement in market sentiment based on our operating data. Number one is, currently we already made our annual guidance of 150,000 funded users, of which about like 15%, over 20,000 came from Hong Kong. This is a significant increase compared to our first year in the Hong Kong market.
And also the quality of our Hong Kong customer is very high. The average client asset in Hong Kong has now surpassed the Singapore, making it the highest amount -- reaching among international markets we entered. In the third quarter, the average net asset inflow for newly acquired user in Hong Kong is about like USD20,000. And the total client assets in Hong Kong market increased by over 30% quarter over quarter.
Thanks to the high average client asset and high velocity, the ARPU for retail users in Hong Kong was the highest across origins in the third quarter, double that of the retail user in Singapore. In October, we saw a significant increase in Hong Kong trading value. The trading value for October already exceeded the total trading volume of the third quarter.
And also to enhance our trading capability in Hong Kong, we officially launched the Hong Kong stock option and short selling in the third quarter. Additionally, in November, we upgraded the Hong Kong stock option feature by offering weekly contract in addition to monthly contract. Thanks.
Fei Zeng
(spoken in foreign language) Okay. So regarding the second question about the wealth management, overall, we are quite satisfied with the growth pace of our wealth management business and the current diversity of our product offerings.
We offer stable US products, like money market funds and US treasury bonds for investors to manage their cash as well as fixed coupon notes and services like the EAM platform and DPM discretionary accounts for the advanced users, institutions, and family office, et cetera. In the future, we will continue to develop our wealth management business and enhance the synergy with our current brokerage business.
If we look at numbers, in Q3 our wealth management AUM increased over 40% quarter over quarter and doubled year over year, exceeding USD1 billion. Among newly funded users in the Q3, around 30% of them started using our wealth management services.
Additionally, in the Hong Kong market, the wealth management business saw even more significant growth, with the number of clients increasing by nearly 50% quarter over quarter and AUM doubled quarter over quarter. Thank you.
Aaron Li
Operator. Please move on to the next question.
Operator
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. So I'll hand the call back to Aaron for closing remarks.
Aaron Li
Thanks, Mel. I'd like to thank everyone for joining our call today. I'm now closing the call on behalf of the management team here at Tiger. We do appreciate your participation in today's call. If you have any further questions, please reach out to our Investor Relations team. This now concludes the call and thank you very much for your time. Bye-bye.
Operator
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect. Speakers please stand by.
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