According to the company, the introduction of the new trading platform “Smartbroker 2.0”, which has been planned for several years, has been postponed to “probably mid-2023”.
(Photo: press photo)
Frankfurt It took five days: After the Berlin group Smartbroker parted ways with its previous boss Matthias Hach last Friday, the group announced late on Wednesday evening that it had to lower its sales forecast “due to the changed market influences”.
“The company is seeing a decline in transactions per account and a slight decrease in advertising revenue,” the group said. Smartbroker, which until recently operated under the name Wallstreet-Online, now expects sales of between 54 and 57 million euros instead of between 62 and 67 million euros previously.
Compared to the previous year, when sales of EUR 51.4 million were achieved, the company only expects marginal growth. According to the preliminary half-year figures, the profit (Ebitda) is 7.9 million euros, which is about twelve percent below the same half-year in the previous year. This does not include the costs of acquiring new customers.
The introduction of the new trading platform “Smartbroker 2.0”, which has been planned for more than 1.5 years, is also being postponed to “probably mid-2023”. The platform should enable customers of the neo-broker of the same name to open a depot via an app.
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So far, these functions are only available via a browser version – in contrast to the offers of competitors such as Trade Republic. In addition to the broker, the Smartbroker Group also includes various stock exchange portals such as wallstreet-online.de.
Supervisory Board has probably lost patience
Last Friday, the group separated from the previous CEO Hach “by mutual agreement”. “The background to the departure are different ideas about the future strategic direction of the group, especially with regard to the further development of the Smartbroker product,” the group said.
The new Press release suggests that the supervisory board had run out of patience. In March of last year, for example, Hach announced in an interview with the Handelsblatt that the app should already be on the market in 2021. According to the group, however, tests have now shown additional need for development. “The product launch will therefore be postponed by a few months.”
And with that, the plan goals for the coming months are also shifting. In addition to lower sales, Smartbroker also expects “a lower number of new customers” due to the later product launch this year. While the Neobroker was able to open around 120,000 new customer accounts last year and had around 200,000 customers, the current number is only given as “more than 200,000” customer accounts.
The new CEO and founder of Smartbroker, André Kolbinger, is nevertheless optimistic: “Our business model is profitable,” he says. The media business continues to be “highly profitable” and will continue to grow as the Smartbroker’s number of customers increases. However, since the group itself expects only a few new customers, this growth should be limited.
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