Plus500 expects its US futures and prediction markets business to run at a profit margin of “20% and above,” Chief Executive David Zruia said yesterday (Monday). He put “the market practice” at 10%.
No profit figure for that business appears in Plus500’s interim accounts, which treat all of Plus500 as one operating segment. Zruia’s answer to a KBW analyst on the first-half earnings call is the first public marker of what the US operation earns.
The non-OTC business covers futures, prediction markets and share dealing. It brought in about $70 million in the first half, roughly 15% of group revenue, and the company is targeting about $140 million annualized for 2026.
A 20% margin on that revenue works out at about $28 million.
Plus500 does not break out prediction markets revenue and did not say whether the 20% refers to profit before or after tax. The figure is a management expectation, not a reported result.
Four Charges on the Same Flow
Chief Financial Officer Elad Even-Chen broke the institutional prediction markets business into four revenue lines. Partners pay a software fee and a clearing fee, firms using Plus500 for execution pay for order routing, and the company earns interest at the omnibus account level.
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Retail customers pay a commission instead. In the older CFD business the charges are spreads and overnight financing, Even-Chen said.
Hedge funds are among the institutions clearing the prediction markets contracts Plus500 extended into sports in June, Even-Chen added.
He also described introducing brokers whose clients hold opposite positions in the same commodity, which he said leaves the book naturally hedged.
And what about the competitors in the same market? Kalshi holds about 60% of prediction market share and runs its own venue.
NinjaTrader, owned by Kraken, created an artificial intelligence role in July as it moved into the same products.
Plus500 owns its clearing and execution and sells them to other firms. It signed Wealthsimple in Canada in July and announced a tie-up with Brazil’s Nelogica on Monday.
A Super App and the Licenses It Still Needs
Zruia said the plan is to “expand and go live with a super app, one-stop shop trading app,” which he expects to arrive next year.
Plus500 is looking for bolt-on acquisitions to supply the licenses and other layers that product needs before it can launch, he said.
Its most recent purchase, Mehta Equities in India, closed in February. “We are yet to include this in our near-term plans or numbers,” Zruia said, adding that Plus500 is still optimizing it.
Asked how much of the 30% year-over-year growth in non-OTC revenue came from Mehta, he gave no figure. Latin America is “quite untapped,” Zruia said, and Plus500 is adding marketing and operational staff there.
Guidance Rests on Repeating the Second Quarter
Plus500 said full-year revenue and EBITDA will be in line with market consensus. Even-Chen said the company reaches that level on the second quarter’s run rate alone, without any improvement.
An analyst at Cantor Fitzgerald asked Zruia to quantify July and early August trading against that run rate. “I cannot add in addition to that,” he said, after repeating the consensus line.
Plus500 first reported the half-year revenue and EBITDA figures in a July trading update. Revenue grew 12% year over year and EBITDA 1%.
Clearing Ties Up More Than Half the Cash
The US business “may require additional capital,” Even-Chen said, when the Cantor Fitzgerald analyst asked whether scaling it would shrink the surplus available for buybacks. He did not address the buyback question.
Of the roughly $860 million Plus500 held at June 30, about $550 million is tied up in regulatory capital, working capital, clearing funds and risk balances, according to the results presentation. Surplus capital was about $310 million.
Plus500 declared $182.5 million of dividends and buybacks alongside the results. That brought returns announced in 2026 to $370 million.
The company came to prediction markets as clearing partner for a joint venture between CME Group and FanDuel, before it began offering the contracts to its own retail customers.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.AnalysisRead More
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