Can Plus500 play at Home and Away?  

I feel like a team captain on Question of Sport today, in the home and away round.

I am playing at home and writing about Israeli-based but London-listed margin trading broker, Plus 500. 

Though, as we will see in the article, that description is not strictly appropriate for the business anymore.

These days Plus500 sees itself as a multi-asset fintech, with a proprietary technology stack 

To get a feel for the business, let's look at some numbers: 

In FY 2025, Plus500 generated US $792.40 million in revenue and had more than 242,000 active customers. 

Whilst at the halfway stage in 2026, which fell at the end of June and was reported on August 10th, Plus500 had generated $462.90 million in revenue and had 197,000 active customers. But was generating an average of $2,346.0 per customer, compared to just $1,578.0 back in the first half of 2025.

Those interim results represented a 5 year high for customer income, money Plus 500 earned from its customers and a 3-year high in overall revenues.

Earnings from margin trading are a moveable feast at the best of times. However, Plus500 has a knack of delivering. As an industry insider put it to me recently, on the face of it, the company just looks like a B-Book broker, yet they seem to make all the right moves.

A case in point was the announcement on October 13th of the acquisition of Hedge Capital Markets, a FINRA- and SEC-regulated securities broker that offers its customers commission-free trading on US stocks, options and ETFs.

Plus500 didn't disclose the purchase price, but it is to be an all-cash transaction funded by the firm's cash reserves, which at the time of the announcement stood at $860.0 million.

Plus500 is expected to launch a so-called super app following the completion of the deal, allowing its customers to trade futures, stocks, options, ETFs, prediction markets and CFDs all in one place. 

The app will initially be launched in the US, the market that has the biggest potential for growth, as far as Plus500 is concerned. 

True, not every product will be applicable to every customer, because of the regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions. No OTC CFDs for US customers, or prediction markets for those in the UK, for example. 

However, product boundaries are blurring and are likely to continue to do so. On-exchange perpetual futures look a lot like CFDs, for example, and are the latest product to be adopted by US futures exchanges.

So the timing of this acquisition and the prospective launch of the super app probably couldn’t be better. 

Investment bank Jefferies commented on the deal, saying that :

“Strategically, this fills the principal regulatory and product gap in Plus500’s US proposition, complementing its CFTC-regulated futures and prediction-markets franchise. In 1Q27, PLUS will launch a US super-app to provide customers with a unified experience for trading futures, prediction markets, stocks, options, ETFs, and other SEC-regulated products. We view the deal as strategically positive: it accelerates entry into US cash equities and ETFs, expands the addressable market, creates scope for cross-selling, more efficient client acquisition and better retention.”

Broker Panmure Liberum pointed out that Plus500 was establishing a New York hub to help the firm capitalise on securities trading, work with regulators, and build out its broker-dealer operations, custody and clearing relationships.

This could be a transformational deal for the firm; Cavendish called it the last piece of the jigsaw, and in truth, it's perfectly in line with the strategy that Plus500 outlined back in 2021, which was to strategically buy licenses and market access, and use the firm's cash flow and resources to scale those new areas of operations. 

Plus500 is due to publish a Q3 2026 trading update on October 26.

Performance

On paper, Plus500's prospects look good, but that doesn't mean you should underestimate the challenges and complexities of making it big in America; for example, Interactive Brokers has 5.60 million customers, and Robinhood has a mind-boggling 28.60 million clients, though its ARPU is just $187.00 per annum per customer. 

That highlights that exchange-traded margins are much smaller than they are in the world of OTC trading. 

That’s a distinction that Plus500 shareholders will have to get used to. 

However, for now, at least, there is no reason that the two businesses can't operate in tandem, with OTC revenues providing the capital for on-exchange expansion. 

We also have to consider that, over time, exchange-traded perps could displace CFDs in Europe and Asia; if that happens via an exchange-traded model, then profit margins will drop. 

However, if that transition comes about using the Crypto model, where the exchange and the broker are the same entity (essentially a rebranding of the proprietary CFD trading model), then OTC margins should be protected.

Crypto exchange Kraken were said to be in discussions about buying IG Group back in March, which might provide a clue about the direction of travel.

The uncertainty about the future has been reflected in the Plus500 stock price, which is down by -7.66% Year to date and by -20.38% over the last 6 months; over 10 years, however, it has risen by +445.0%. 

Plus 500 is highly cash-generative, and the firm uses that cash to reward its shareholders; since its IPO back in 2013, it has returned approximately $3.10 billion, which is equivalent to its current market cap.

Panmure Liberum has a Buy recommendation and a 5400p price target on the stock. 

Overall rating: 4.0/5.0

Pros: high-performing margin trading house, generating long-term capital growth for shareholders. Significant potential for US expansion.

Cons: May lack the scale and expertise to conquer America; OTC trading margins could come under pressure as the competition heats up.

Technical overview 

The chart doesn’t look that great, with the stock selling off from its early July highs of 5185p. 

However, we have recently seen a reversal signal in the shape of a hammer candle, posted in early October, under which the market is said to be beating out a bottom in the price. 

A move above resistance at 3462p and the 50-day MA line at 3545p would help to confirm that change in sentiment. Perhaps next week's trading update could provide a catalyst for price change.

Rating 3.50/5.0

Fundamental overview 

Plus500's fundamentals read very well; it’s on a forward PE of just 10.68 times, it has a return on equity of 47.43%, and profit margins of 38.56%. 

If we were looking for weak spots, its negative 5-year dividend growth of -7.61% is not that great; however, the company's share buyback policy is hard to fault, and so is a 5-year stock price gain of +142.35%.

The biggest challenges lie ahead for the group; however, its conservative acquisitions policy and preference for organic growth have left it with substantial cash balances that should comfortably support its US expansion push and the development and deployment of the new “Super App ”.

Rating 4.0/5.0