Frankfurt The US trading app Robinhood disappointed investors with weak quarterly figures and thus also weighed on the shares of the Frankfurt online broker Flatexdegiro. The corona-related stock market boom seems to be slowing down, which is having an impact on customer growth and broker trading activities.
Robinhood posted a loss of $423 million in the past quarter, compared to a net profit of $13 million in the fourth quarter of 2020. The company announced this on Thursday evening.
In the first quarter of 2022, Robinhood expects revenues of less than $340 million. Compared to the same quarter of the previous year, in which the neo-broker benefited greatly from the hype surrounding stocks such as Gamestop, this corresponds to a decrease of at least 35 percent. The stock fell about 15 percent in after-hours trading.
As a result, the Flatexdegiro share, which is listed in the SDax, lost up to 4.7 percent to EUR 16.61 at times up to Friday afternoon. In June last year, the share had reached a high of EUR 29.70. Since the end of December alone, the minus has added up to around 17 percent.
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At the beginning of January, however, the online broker announced that it had met the annual goals it had set itself. In 2021, the number of customers rose to over two million. In addition, Flatexdegiro processed over 91 million transactions.
In the current year, customer accounts are expected to increase to 2.7 to 2.9 million and the number of transactions to 95 to 115 million. However, the management is only assuming around 40 to 45 transactions per customer. Last year there were still around 55 transactions per customer.
This shows that Flatexdegiro also expects less trading activity from its customers in the future. But there are now also question marks with regard to the targeted growth in new customers.
Declining shareholder numbers in Germany
According to Deutsches Aktieninstitut (DAI), 12.1 million people in Germany invested in shares or share-based funds last year. That was around 280,000 fewer investors than in 2020, when many Germans had developed a new interest in the stock markets during the corona lockdown.
It is therefore possible that one or the other shareholder has doubts about the feasibility of Flatexdegiro’s ambitious medium-term goals. By 2026, the online broker wants to serve up to eight million customers and process up to 350 million transactions per year.
Flatexdegiro is favored by the fact that declining shareholder numbers in Germany are not the only decisive factor for the company. With the Degiro brand, the online broker is active in many European countries.
>> Read here: The EU Commission wants to ban the neo-broker’s controversial fee model
The analysts who cover the company, according to data provider Bloomberg, therefore appear to remain bullish on the stock. Almost without exception, they recommend buying the share. Marius Fuhrberg from MM Warburg has set his price target for the next twelve months at 38 euros. Christoph Greulich von Berenberg then even sees the price at 39 euros.
The neobroker Trade Republic, which has grown to well over a million customers during the pandemic, is not yet listed. But here, too, it remains to be seen to what extent investors, some of whom are still inexperienced, remain loyal to saving on shares even in weak stock market phases.
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