2025-02-10 Paul Brody.2025 UBS Financial Services Conference

2025-02-10 Paul Brody.2025 UBS Financial Services Conference

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
All right. Good afternoon. Thanks, everyone, for joining. I'm pleased to be joined by Paul Brody, CFO at Interactive Brokers.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的，下午好。感谢大家加入我们。我很高兴今天邀请到了盈透证券的首席财务官保罗·布罗迪。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
I'd love to dive right into growth actually. Last year, really tremendous growth at Interactive. It's 33% account growth, I want to say, 30% year-over-year -- 33% on client equity, actually, pardon me. So you look ahead this year, already started, what do you see as the key drivers of account growth? And are there any particular segments or innovations, product innovations that you think could have a meaningful impact?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
我想直接谈谈增长。盈透去年增长非常强劲，账户增长33%，我想说，同比大约是30%——其实准确来说，是客户资产增长了33%。那么展望今年，已经开始了，您认为账户增长的主要驱动因素有哪些？是否有特别的细分市场或产品创新，您认为可能带来实质性影响？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure. Well, more of the same. We've been pretty successful at growing that client base on what is still a relatively low marketing and advertising spend. We've seen it pretty much across the board, particularly in the individual's account segment, but also in IBrokers, the introducing brokers. There's a steady pipeline of those IBrokers, and that brings us certain kinds of advantages.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
当然。我们会延续已有策略。我们一直在相对较低的市场营销和广告支出下成功扩大客户基础。增长几乎在各个板块都有体现，尤其是个人账户板块，同时也包括引介经纪人（IBrokers）。这部分IBrokers保持着稳定的增长管道，并为我们带来了某些优势。

We're not -- the IBrokers may bring us fully disclosed accounts, which means we put all the underlying accounts on our platform and service them like we would our direct customers, but some come in as omnibus. And as a result, they're doing a lot of the up-front work. They have client interface and maintaining accounts and so forth. And -- but we're getting all the same volume business, margin lending, et cetera. So we would expect more of that going forward, sure.
我们不会——IBrokers 有时会带来“完全披露账户”，这意味着我们会将所有底层账户放到我们的平台上，像服务直接客户一样进行服务；但也有一些是“综合账户（omnibus）”。在这种情况下，大部分前端工作由他们负责，包括客户接口、账户维护等等。不过我们仍然能获得全部的交易量业务、保证金贷款等。所以我们预计这种模式未来会继续增长。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes. What is the pipeline on the entities? I mean, how many -- how does it compare today versus where it was, let's say, a year or 2 ago?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
是的。那么现在这些机构客户的管道情况如何？我是说，现在的数量与一两年前相比，有什么变化吗？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
It's a steady stream. A year ago, we talked about a specific large international bank...
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是一条稳定的流水线。一年前我们还提到过一家大型国际银行……

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes, I remember.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
是的，我记得。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
\[indiscernible], which naturally took longer than we would have hoped only because large international banks move a little bit more slowly than we do. So -- but it's more a steady stream of smaller than that IBrokers, and that's perfectly a productive activity for us.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
\[听不清部分]，这确实比我们预期的要慢一些，主要是因为大型国际银行的运作速度通常比我们慢。所以——目前更多是一些规模较小的IBrokers持续不断地加入，而这对我们来说也是完全有价值的业务活动。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Okay. Margin loan growth has been really impressive, too. January, I want to say was like nearly 50% year-over-year. So have you -- this is sort of inherent in the question, right? Clearly, there's more risk appetite. So that's a reflection or an outcome of that. But is there any particular client behavior around the usage of margin that you've noticed that would suggest as a focus on a particular asset class or any increase in risk taking?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
明白。好的，保证金贷款的增长也令人印象深刻。我记得一月份同比增长接近50%。所以您是否——其实这个问题本身就已经暗含一些前提了，对吧？显然市场的风险偏好在提升，这种增长可以被看作是其结果。但您有没有注意到客户在使用保证金方面有什么特别的行为？比如是否集中在某一类资产，或者在承担更多风险方面有显著变化？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
So we don't track it so much by asset class. We're happy to do margin lending with our own risk management methods. We have sophisticated risk management that is real time. That takes into account liquidity of markets and concentration of positions and inherent volatility in the underlying positions. And yes, it is largely, in the market, takes a risk on attitude, then we're the beneficiary of that.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我们并不按资产类别去细分追踪这些数据。我们非常乐意进行保证金贷款，因为我们拥有一套完善的风险管理方法。这些风控是实时的，能够综合考虑市场流动性、头寸集中度以及底层资产的内在波动性。是的，从整体市场来看，这主要反映出一种“风险偏好上升”的态度，而我们正好是这一趋势的受益者。

And -- but it's also important to put it in the context that one way to look at it is our aggregate margin lending is about 11% of our customer equity, which is, from a historical perspective, actually a relatively low number. And so does that mean there's room to grow? Maybe from that measure. But most of this is coming from the market's take on risk on versus risk off.
但也要把这个数据放在整体背景下来看：我们整体的保证金贷款规模约占客户资产的11%，从历史角度看，这其实是一个相对较低的比例。所以这是否意味着还有增长空间？从这个指标来看，也许是的。但大多数的变化还是来自市场整体对“风险偏好上升”或“规避风险”情绪的判断。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Sure. When you think about that metric because we track that, too, we've noticed it's sort of been coming down, right. It's sort of a range. But is there any change in the customer makeup or your client base that might suggest lower levels of margin vis-à-vis the client equity?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的。当您考虑这个指标时——我们也在追踪这个，我们注意到它似乎一直在下降，对吧？它在某个区间内波动。但是否在客户构成方面出现了什么变化，可能意味着保证金相对于客户资产的比例变低了？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
We can't point to any -- there's no straight line connection between that. Margin lending is -- it is across -- an across-the-board activity. And there will always be some accounts in each segment that are utilizing it more and some less.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我们无法指出有任何——这个之间没有直接的线性关系。保证金贷款是一项广泛存在于各个板块的活动。每个板块中总会有一些账户使用得更多，另一些使用得更少。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Okay. Got it. Thinking about rate sensitivity since we're on the balance sheet, right. Are you able to increase the stability or durability of the NII in any way? Like maybe some kind of a hedging strategy or adjustment in the balance sheet that you might consider?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
明白了。既然我们在讨论资产负债表的问题，那我们来谈谈利率敏感性。你们有没有可能通过某种方式提高净利息收入（NII）的稳定性或持续性？比如采用某种对冲策略或调整资产负债表结构？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
So it's important how you look at rate sensitivity. We have a built-in spread model that says that we will pay interest to our customers on a benchmark minus something. Say, in the U.S., it's Fed funds minus 50 basis points, and that's a locked-in spread. So as the benchmark goes up and down, that's a constant number and it fluctuates. It expands with expanding balances, which is exactly what we saw in the fourth quarter when rates came down, our balance has actually expanded more than that, and we were able to maintain that certain level.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
利率敏感性要看你从什么角度理解。我们采用的是一个内建的利差模型，即我们向客户支付的利息是基准利率减去一定幅度。例如在美国，是联邦基金利率减去50个基点，这是一个固定的利差。因此无论基准利率上升或下降，这个利差是恒定的。但它会随着客户余额的增加而扩大。我们在第四季度就看到了这种情况，当时利率下降，我们的客户余额反而增长得更快，从而使我们能够维持在某个收益水平。

Where the sensitivity comes from is what we call fully sensitive balances, small balances in accounts, first \$10,000, we don't pay interest on before we start to pay a good market level of interest. And we have house capital. That's all invested at current short-term rates. So that is, in fact, sensitive to rates going up and down.
而真正体现利率敏感性的，是我们所谓的“完全敏感余额”。也就是说账户中的小额余额，比如前一万美元，我们是不支付利息的，超过之后才开始支付较有竞争力的市场利率。还有我们的自有资本，全部投资于当前的短期利率工具，这部分确实会受到利率上下波动的影响。

But quite frankly, the way to look at it is that we would expect our rate sensitivity to go up, and that's a good thing because it means that our customer balances are going up even more and raising the baseline from which that sensitivity comes from.
但坦率地说，我们更倾向于认为利率敏感性会提升，而这其实是一件好事，因为这说明客户余额在进一步增加，抬高了我们利率敏感性所依赖的基准水平。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Okay. Revenue from securities lending has been sort of in focus. You guys, I guess, put a new graphic in your investor presentation that helps with this, but I think it might be helpful to walk through for the audience and folks listening to the webcast.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的，明白了。证券借贷收入最近备受关注。我看到你们在投资者展示材料中加了一张新图表，挺有帮助的，但我觉得为收听网络直播的观众详细解释一下可能更有意义。

So number one, there's a slide to point to, which I thought was really instructive. And then could you maybe talk about what's going on there and why the securities lending revenue, when you consider it in total, is actually way more stable than it looks on a reported basis?
首先，有一张幻灯片可以指给大家看，我觉得它很有启发性。然后您能不能讲讲这里的实际情况，以及为什么如果从整体来看，证券借贷的收入实际上比财报中呈现的要稳定得多？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure. And thanks very much for pointing to that presentation, that chart, and the -- the thanks go to Nancy Stuebe, our Director of Investor Relations, who came up with that because you all have been asking so many questions to gain an understanding of it, which we can appreciate.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
当然可以。也非常感谢您提到那张展示图表，这要归功于我们的投资者关系总监南希·斯图比（Nancy Stuebe），是她提出这个图表的，因为你们一直在提出很多相关问题，希望搞清楚这个问题，我们对此非常理解。

The basic way to look at it is this. So our securities lending revenue all in has been actually quite stable at between \$150 million and \$200 million a quarter. You have to put the components together and only 1 component for accounting purposes is reported as coming from securities lending. The basic transaction is that we lend out customer shares and take in cash collateral. Take the cash collateral and put it -- you invest it or deposit in bank somewhere. And it earns, let's just say, the benchmark rate.
基本的理解方式是这样的：我们的证券借贷总收入实际上是相当稳定的，每个季度大约在1.5亿到2亿美元之间。但你需要把几个组成部分合并来看，而在财务报告中，只有其中一部分会被归类为“证券借贷收入”。交易的基本逻辑是，我们把客户持有的股票借出，收取现金抵押。然后我们将这些现金抵押投入某个投资工具或存入银行，并赚取——我们可以简单理解为——基准利率。

When rates are low, the revenue from that transaction comes out in the securities lending side because you're earning very little on the other side. When rates are higher, as they have been 4%, 5%, you take the cash collateral, put it in an interest-bearing instrument, and now more of the revenue generated by the transaction is coming out on that side. All in, they add up to a fairly stable balance overall of revenue generated by that activity.
当利率处于低位时，该笔交易的收入主要体现在“证券借贷”这一方，因为另一端的利息收益非常少。而当利率上升，比如目前是4%、5%的水平时，我们把现金抵押投入计息工具，交易产生的大部分收入就体现在那一侧了。总的来说，这两部分加起来，使得整个证券借贷活动所带来的总收入整体上是相当稳定的。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. When you consider the whole -- all the different component parts.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对的，尤其是当你把所有不同的组成部分都考虑在内时。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes. So we're happy with security lending revenue that grows as our customer base grows. And also, of course, we do the best to take advantage of stocks that become hot, short stocks with high lending rates. We'll lend out customer stocks and it generates revenue for us.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的。所以我们对随着客户基础的扩大而增长的证券借贷收入感到满意。当然，我们也会尽力把握机会，借出那些变得热门、空头需求高、借贷利率高的股票。这类股票我们会借出客户持股，为我们创造收入。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. And the hard to borrows or specials, as they're called, have been pretty low. How much of that do you think -- and that's not just an interactive thing, that's an industry-wide because we cover a lot of companies that are involved in that business. How much do you think it's because we've had such a quiet banking? Like there's very little M\&A. So there's not a lot of merger \[arm]. The IPOs are limited. A lot of that can lead to more hard to borrow, right? Have you looked at how much you think maybe the slower banking is holding it back?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对。目前市场上的“难借证券”（或称“特殊证券”）数量相当低。您觉得这在多大程度上——当然这不仅仅是盈透的问题，而是整个行业的现象，我们覆盖了很多从事这项业务的公司。您认为这是不是因为目前投行业务整体比较低迷？比如并购活动很少，几乎没有套利空间，新股IPO也非常有限。而这些因素本来是能催生更多“难借证券”的，对吧？你们是否研究过，当前投行业务的放缓在多大程度上抑制了这部分业务？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Well, those are contributing factors to be sure if you can tell me what's going to happen in that environment with IPOs and mergers and acquisitions and so forth. I can tell you that at least there will be more opportunities because we will see more hard-to-borrow stocks come and go and they do have an impact. There are short-term impacts, but very high-rate stocks, so they definitely generate revenue.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
确实，这些都是相关因素。如果您能告诉我IPO和并购等市场活动接下来会如何发展，那我就能告诉您，我们肯定会看到更多“难借证券”的出现和消失，而这确实会带来影响。虽然这些影响往往是短期的，但这些股票的借贷利率非常高，所以它们确实能为我们带来不错的收入。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Well, from my perspective, either M\&A revenue is going to grow about 20% this year or some of these investment banks are way overvalued. So we'll see.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对我而言，要么今年并购收入会增长约20%，要么一些投行目前估值就偏高了。我们拭目以待。

Operating margins were a pretty impressive 73%. Commentary on the call though suggested that, that was as much as we should expect from a margin expansion perspective. Maybe could you add some color on why that would be the case? And what factors could drive a little more operating leverage?
贵公司的运营利润率达到令人印象深刻的73%。不过在电话会议上你们提到，这大概就是利润率扩张的上限了。您能否进一步解释一下为什么是这样？以及还有哪些因素可能推动进一步的运营杠杆提升？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure. I always consider this question. Not just what have you done for me lately, but what are you going to do for me in the next quarter? Yes, they're quite high because we -- our entire business model is to automate as much of the process as possible of trading and brokerage. We've been quite successful with that in creating technology and automation for that.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
当然。我经常思考这个问题——不仅是“你最近为我做了什么”，而是“你下个季度还能为我做什么”。是的，我们的利润率确实很高，这是因为我们整个业务模式就是尽可能将交易和经纪流程自动化。在开发相关技术和实现自动化方面，我们已经非常成功。

What could drive it higher? Hard to say. Thomas Peterffy has said, there's not that much space between 75% and 100%. One way to look at it is to the portion of our revenue that's generated by commissions, we talk about something we call growth transactional profit, which is the commission revenue less the strictly variable cost of executing and clearing trades. And that's contained in our reported line item called execution clearing and distribution. But what we do is we take out the distribution fees that are like market data fees and distill it down to, when you execute a trade, there's a commission component and there's a cost component. And what that shows us is that the margin on that activity is about 79%. So that's flowing to the bottom line.
那么利润率还有什么空间进一步上升呢？这很难说。托马斯·彼得菲曾经提过，从75%到100%之间的空间其实已经不多了。有一个角度可以参考：我们部分收入来自佣金，我们有一个概念叫“增长型交易利润”，就是从佣金收入中减去执行和清算交易的严格可变成本。这部分成本在财报中列示在“执行、清算和分销”这项中。但我们会将其中的分销费用（如市场数据费）剔除，更准确地分析：每一笔交易中有佣金收入，也有对应成本。分析结果显示，这类交易的利润率大约是79%，也就是说，这部分利润直接流向了净利润。

So to the extent that our commission revenue is 1/3 or more of our total, any expansion of that would drop to the bottom line. Any pullback in that would have similar downward effects. So yes.
因此，只要我们的佣金收入占总收入的三分之一甚至更高，任何增长都将直接推动净利润；反过来，若出现下滑，也会有相应的负面影响。所以确实如此。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
So that's the volume-driven incremental margin. And then I would assume that NII is probably a bit higher margin. Is that fair? Or is it similar?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
所以这部分是由交易量驱动的边际利润。那么我猜净利息收入（NII）的利润率可能更高一些，对吗？还是说差不多？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Well, it drops down with essentially no cost. We don't add people or expenses really just because we're lending more money.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
净利息收入基本是“零成本”下沉的。我们不会因为放贷更多而新增人手或开支。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Yes. Okay. So you guys have had a lot of traction with the hedge fund business as you've continued to tweak your approach, your come-to-market approach. How have your High Touch Prime Brokerage services been received? I mean it certainly seems like it's going well. But does this offer -- is this offering the key to driving a lot of that traction? And how is it working from a retention perspective, too?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对，明白了。那么随着你们不断优化市场策略，贵司在对冲基金业务上取得了显著进展。你们的高接触度主经纪服务（High Touch Prime Brokerage）目前客户反响如何？我感觉进展不错。这项服务是否是推动这一增长的关键因素？从客户留存角度看，它的效果又如何？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes. So we're really pleased with how it's gone so far. It's in its infancy. We onboarded 30-something hedge fund accounts that had already been on our platform that we can now offer this much more inclusive service that really combines at least 3 different teams on our side between securities lending -- sorry, securities finance in general, client services, and we have a block trading desk. And so we give a higher level of service. It's gone well.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的，到目前为止我们对这项服务的进展非常满意。它仍处于起步阶段。我们已经为三十多家原本就在我们平台上的对冲基金账户提供了这项更全面的服务。该服务整合了我们内部至少三个不同的团队——包括证券借贷（抱歉，应该说是广义的证券融资）、客户服务团队，以及我们的大宗交易台。因此我们现在能提供更高水平的服务，效果很好。

Has that led to retention? We've been retaining these kinds of clients anyway. So we're just giving them a higher level of service. And then looking forward, the idea would be to develop that more into attracting new hedge fund clients who know that they can get this level of service, whereas before, the rest of what we offer is sometimes not enough for them.
这是否提升了客户留存？其实这类客户我们原本就能留住，我们现在只是为他们提供了更优质的服务。展望未来，我们的目标是将这项服务发展成为吸引新对冲基金客户的利器，让他们知道可以在我们这里获得这种高水准的服务。而以前我们提供的标准服务对他们来说有时可能还不够。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
And have you noticed any shift in your client like demographics as far as size and hedge fund that you've been attracting or just servicing?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
那你们是否注意到在客户群体结构上有所变化，比如对冲基金的规模，或者是你们目前所吸引或服务的基金类型？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Not in particular. I would say we're happy with our hedge fund client acquisition. We would love to push it more. They tend to be -- they are opportunistic in terms of things like corporate actions and positioning themselves and giving us opportunities for more securities financing, sometimes over short periods of time in hedged transactions. All of that makes us happy because we're good at providing that.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
没有特别明显的变化。我可以说，我们目前在对冲基金客户的获取方面感到满意。当然我们也希望能进一步扩大。他们通常比较善于把握机会，比如在公司行为事件中布局仓位，这会给我们带来更多证券融资的机会，有时候是一些短期的对冲交易。我们非常欢迎这样的业务类型，因为我们擅长提供相关服务。

And so to your earlier point, if there is more action in that marketplace, M\&A style, that might bring back some more of those opportunities and hedge funds will come to us for that kind of financing.
所以回到你之前提到的那一点——如果市场上出现更多类似并购的交易活动，那肯定会带来更多这类机会，对冲基金也会因此找上我们寻求这类融资服务。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Okay. Got it. You touched on the introducing broker before and a little on the pipeline and the fact that it seemed like generally towards maybe smaller introducing broker clients. So when -- but when we think about -- you have a few different ways that those clients can connect. When you think about the -- is there a difference in like profitability or how Interactive engages or monetizes those clients depending on how they connect, whether it's omnibus or thousands of accounts?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的，明白了。你之前提到了引介经纪商（introducing broker），也说了一些管道情况，看起来你们主要是面向一些规模较小的引介经纪客户。但考虑到这类客户有多种接入方式，那么你们在盈利能力、合作方式或变现手段方面，会不会因为他们是通过“综合账户”（omnibus）还是“完全披露账户”（thousands of direct accounts）接入而有所不同？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
So we don't treat them differently, but the components fit together differently, right? So as I mentioned before, if they bring us fully disclosed accounts, that's just like bringing direct accounts onto our system, we know what to do there.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我们在对待这些客户时并不会有不同政策，但组成方式确实不同。就像我之前提到的，如果他们带来的是“完全披露账户”，那就跟直接客户差不多，我们会像平常一样将他们接入我们的系统，这部分我们很熟悉。

If they come in as an omnibus broker because they want to retain the direct relationship with their own clients, that's fine with us because they're absorbing some of the cost and the efforts that it takes to interface with those clients and maybe do handholding and any other services that they want to provide on their end. And as a result, it costs us less to support those kinds of accounts.
如果他们是以“综合账户”形式接入，因为他们希望继续维持与自己客户的直接关系，我们也完全接受。因为他们承担了客户接口方面的部分成本和工作，比如指导客户操作、提供个性化服务等。因此我们支持这类账户的成本会更低。

And in return, the introducing broker will bring us high volume and get the benefit of our best tiered pricing, because they're coming in like one client. And so it's very much a mutually beneficial relationship because they're getting very good rates and they're taking over some of the work.
作为交换，引介经纪商往往能带来很高的交易量，并享受到我们最优阶梯定价的好处，因为他们相当于是以“单一大客户”的身份接入。因此这是一种非常互利的关系：他们能获得非常优渥的费率，而我们则减少了部分运营负担。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Okay. You guys more recently in recent years, have built up some decent momentum with RIAs. Do you have visibility into the platforms that those advisers are joining from? And given that it's sort of more of an asset heavier rather than revenue heavier mix for you all, can you maybe walk through how you view this opportunity and the level of resources that you're dedicating to it?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的，明白了。近几年你们在注册投资顾问（RIA）市场上取得了不错的进展。你们能看出这些顾问是从哪些平台迁移过来的吗？考虑到RIA业务对你们来说更偏向“重资产、轻收入”的结构，能否谈谈你们是如何看待这一机会的，以及你们投入了多少资源去支持这项业务？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
So we have some visibility. In the U.S., there's a nice account transfer system that's automated, ACATS, that we can actually see where the accounts are coming from, like direct accounts as well. And suffice to say, we get the largest number of accounts from the largest brokers. It's fairly obvious.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我们是有一定可见性的。在美国，有一个非常便利的自动账户转移系统叫 ACATS（Automated Customer Account Transfer Service），我们可以看到这些账户的来源，包括直接客户账户。因此可以说，我们接收的账户数量最多的来源就是那些最大的券商，这一点其实非常明显。

And in terms of the service that we're offering, we've built out an awful lot for the RIAs to do flexible reporting and various things that they need. And we've seen some flow from other U.S. brokers. And when we get them outside the U.S., it's a little harder to track them, and it's a little less automated to take them on board. But we're -- they're quite happy once they get going.
在服务方面，我们为RIA客户建设了许多功能，比如灵活的报表系统，以及其他他们需要的工具。从美国其他券商迁移过来的客户我们确实看到了一些流入。而在美国以外的市场，引入这类客户会难一些，追踪也不那么容易，流程的自动化程度也较低。但一旦他们入驻并开始使用，我们发现他们的满意度还是非常高的。

You had asked another question?
你刚才还问了另一个问题？

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes. Well, I was also actually going to ask a follow-up, but like sort of the resources that is required in order to service. But specifically, we saw in the past year or 2, there was a merger of a big provider for that market. Did you see maybe an increase in the amount of activity and the movement that happened on the back of that? It was -- it got a lot of attention in investor circles.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对，我其实是想进一步追问一下你们为这块业务配置了多少资源。另外，过去一两年这个市场上有一家大型服务商发生了并购事件，在投资者圈子引起了很多关注。你们有没有在那之后看到相关客户活动或转移的增加？这是否带来了某种程度的流动性提升？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure did. Well we didn't see as much activity as we had hoped for. I can't attribute that to any one factor. But one thing we can say is that we market the fact that we don't have any in-house advisers. It's not part of our model. We put a lot of efforts into supporting independent advisers. So there's no built-in conflict of interest between those 2 sets of advisers who may be competing with each other. And we'll continue with that because we think it's an important aspect of advisers migrating to us.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
确实如此。虽然我们并没有看到我们预期中的那么多转移活动，但这不能归因于某一个具体因素。不过有一点我们可以明确地说：我们在宣传中强调我们没有内部顾问，这不是我们的业务模式。我们投入了大量精力支持独立顾问。这意味着不会存在内部顾问与独立顾问之间的利益冲突，这对他们来说是一个重要的考虑因素，也是吸引顾问迁移到我们平台的关键点之一。我们会继续坚持这点。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes. Yes. We hear that from some other folks who compete in that space, that it matters. We'd love to -- I have a few on capital, always something to discuss with you all. So you've got a pretty substantial equity base, about \$17 billion. To say it exceeds your required capital is to put it lightly. How are you thinking about capital allocation today?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
是的，是的。我们从一些在这个领域的竞争者那里也听到过类似的说法，这一点确实很重要。接下来我想问一些关于资本的问题——这一直是跟你们讨论的重点。你们目前的股本基础相当雄厚，大约170亿美元。说它“超过监管资本要求”都是轻描淡写了。你们目前是如何考虑资本配置的？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure. Well, we want to continue to support a robust balance sheet. There's no question that high-level clients and institutions and hedge funds want to be able to tell their clients, they're with Interactive Brokers without their clients saying "who?". And so it has a real impact.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
当然。我们希望继续维持强健的资产负债表。这一点毋庸置疑，高端客户、机构投资者以及对冲基金都希望能自信地告诉他们的客户，他们是和盈透证券合作，而不是让客户反问一句“这是谁？”。这确实具有现实意义。

With regard to excess, it's not as much as you think. It takes an awful lot of capital of your own capital to support the breadth of business that we do around the world, the number of markets, number of separate affiliates that we maintain in different regulatory jurisdictions, all of which have to maintain their own independent capital. They have to meet stress tests. And the more customer lending we do, that's as well a use of capital.
至于所谓“多余”的部分，其实并不像你想象的那么多。我们全球化的业务布局需要大量自有资本支持——我们涉足的市场很多，还在多个监管辖区设有独立子公司，而这些子公司都必须维持自己的独立资本水准，并通过压力测试。我们做的客户融资越多，对资本的占用就越大。

So -- and then on top of that, you must maintain buffers in this business to be there when the activity hits and the market's in turmoil, it always requires an injection of house money into things like the clearing houses are calling for margin or settlement money or what have you. We've seen this happen multiple times in the past. And so you really must maintain that. So if we -- that excess is certainly only a fraction of our, say, \$16.5 billion equity, it's probably more like 1/3 of that.
此外，在我们所处的行业中，必须保有一定的资本缓冲，以备市场波动或活动高峰时期使用。在市场动荡时，清算所往往会发出追加保证金、结算资金等要求，这些都需要我们用“自有资金”进行应对。过去我们已经多次见证这样的情况。因此必须始终维持这部分资金。所以我们所谓的“过剩资本”，其实只是我们约165亿美元股本中的一小部分，可能大概只有三分之一左右。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
It's more like what?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
你是说大约是多少？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
It's more like 1/3. It's probably more like \$6 billion-plus that we maintain for buffers after we look at everything devoted directly into the business.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
大约是三分之一，可能在60亿美元以上，这是我们在剔除所有直接用于业务运营的资本后，为缓冲用途保留的资金规模。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Okay. So the buffers that you think are appropriate just in case you see spikes in activity or whatever?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
明白了。也就是说，这部分是你们认为必要的缓冲资金，以防市场活动突然激增或出现其他情况？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Sure. Yes. I mean that number is somewhat in excess of the buffers.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的，确实如此。其实这个数额还稍微高于我们设定的缓冲需求。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
In excess of. Okay.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
高于缓冲需求，明白了。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
But it's nowhere near the entire capital. It's -- our capital is well deployed to actually supporting the client activity.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
但它远远不是我们全部资本的规模。我们的资本实际上已经很好地部署于支持客户相关的业务活动中。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes. And one of the uses of capital you guys have spoken to recently has been M\&A, but it's been challenging to find something that makes sense. So are you still actively looking? And what kind of deals would you be interested in beyond the obvious?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对了，你们最近提到资本的一项用途是并购（M&A），但找到真正合理的标的是一大挑战。那么你们现在还在积极寻找吗？除了显而易见的目标外，你们会对哪类交易感兴趣？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes, it's a complex question. We've been talking about it for some time. We're not out in the marketplace actively hunting down targets, but rather, ideas are brought to us all the time. We take those up, we evaluate. We try to -- we spend our time on what might make sense. We haven't been able to get to a positive conclusion on these yet.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的，这是个复杂的问题。我们已经讨论了一段时间。我们并不是在市场上积极主动寻找并购目标，而是不断有各种想法被带到我们面前。我们会接收这些想法并加以评估，把精力花在那些可能“有意义”的方向上。但目前还没有达成一个明确的积极结论。

And what might make sense, that's also a complex question, right? The typical online broker that might have created its own software and system for interface with its customers and otherwise will probably be of less value to us because we have a better system for doing that ourselves than it would be to another kind of investor like private equity or so forth, where they're actually buying something of value that they don't have.
至于什么样的并购才“有意义”，这也是个复杂的问题。比如，一个典型的在线券商，可能已经开发了自己的客户界面系统和相关软件——但对于我们来说，这样的资产价值可能不大，因为我们自己的系统已经优于他们。相反，这类标的可能对其他买家（如私募股权投资者）更有吸引力，因为他们本身并没有这些能力。

So then it comes down to, well, does it make sense if we're just acquiring customers at that cost? Probably not because our customer acquisition rate is so high and our costs of doing that are low. We have low advertising, marketing expenditure. We get a tremendous amount of our client growth through word of mouth, about 40%.
所以最终问题就变成了：如果我们只是通过并购来“买客户”，这值不值得？答案可能是否定的。因为我们自身的获客效率非常高，获客成本又非常低。我们在广告和营销上的投入非常少，大约40%的客户增长来自口碑传播。
Idea
非常清晰的逻辑。
So what does that leave? Well, there can be firms that are either in the business where they maybe are specializing in a product set or a region or a country where we feel that we could do better and maybe at the right cost, it might make sense to take something like that over. It could be in other areas that we're not yet as proficient or expert as we would like to be.
那么剩下的机会是什么？可能是某些公司专注于特定的产品类别、地区或国家，而我们认为自己在这些领域可以做得更好，如果成本合适，那就可能值得收购。也可能是我们目前还未掌握或还不够精通的其他业务领域。

We've been experimenting with AI. There's a lot of firms out there who have smart people who are offering things at varying levels. What we've done so far has really to do with things like answering client inquiries. We have some software that is now developing responses that human beings look at before they actually get back to the client, but results are there are positive. But would an outside expert firm jumpstart that? Maybe. It has to be interesting to us and at the right cost. And that's a tough combination.
我们最近也在探索人工智能。市面上有很多聪明的团队在提供各种层次的AI解决方案。目前我们主要是在客户服务方面试水，比如用软件生成客户回复草稿，再由人工审阅后发送。初步效果是积极的。但是否会有一家外部的专家公司能帮助我们快速提升这项能力？也许可以。但前提是这家公司必须让我们感兴趣，并且价格合适——而这两者同时满足其实很难。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Right. Yes. Right. Okay. The dividend. So the payout -- there's at least one now. For a while, there was none. So -- but the payout ratio, when you look at it as a percentage of earnings is low. It's teens, 13%. If -- are there any other priorities, maybe like reinvestment or buybacks to consider with the excess that you have?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
对，好的。接下来是股息问题。现在至少你们已经开始派发股息了，以前可是没有的。但就派息率而言，相对于你们的盈利占比仍然很低，目前大概是13%。那么你们是否还有其他优先事项，比如再投资或回购，以利用手头的盈余资本？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
We have no plans right now. Certainly, buyback would not necessarily be in our interest because our float being now 25%. We started years ago at 10% at our IPO. It's now gone up to 25%. Most investors would love to see it higher. So the buyback is working against that principle.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我们目前没有这方面的计划。股票回购对我们来说也未必是最佳选择，因为我们的自由流通股比例现在已经达到25%。我们在IPO时只有10%，如今已经提升到了25%。大多数投资者都希望这个比例更高一些，而回购行为其实与这个目标是相悖的。

And as far as the dividend is concerned, we have no immediate plans to increase that. Yes, the yield has diminished as the price has gone up, but that's a good problem to have. And so that's where we stand right now. And as I just got done explaining our uses of capital, we wouldn't have much reason to do a special dividend or anything that would simply reduce the capital level because we like where it is now.
至于股息，我们目前也没有立即提高的计划。确实，随着股价上涨，股息收益率有所下降，但这是一个“值得高兴的问题”。正如我刚才解释的，我们对资本的使用已有明确规划，因此没有太多理由去发特别股息或其他会削减资本水平的行为，因为我们目前对资本结构是满意的。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Okay. Can take a moment and see if there's any questions in the audience. I haven't been having a high batting average on the audience questions today.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
好的，那我看一下现场观众有没有什么问题。今天观众提问的“命中率”不算高。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
No participation?
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
没有人参与吗？

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
They'd rather leave it to me. I got one in the back.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
他们宁愿把问题都交给我来问。哦，后排有一位提问了。

Unknown Attendee
So you were talking about your hedge fund business, you're trying to attract clients, new clients. The biggest challenge is basically access to long-term capital, especially for new managers. Is that something that you've thought about? I mean you have, as you mentioned, quite a bit of capital. Sprinkling some of that capital would go a long way to helping sort of what is kind of a nascent sort of market, since you bifurcated to gigantic hedge funds and a lot of the small hedge fund managers have kind of had a hard time sort of getting access to capital.
不知名与会者
你刚才提到你们的对冲基金业务，正在努力吸引新客户。目前最大的挑战是新管理人很难获得长期资本支持。这个问题你们是否考虑过？你们确实拥有相当充足的资本。哪怕投入一小部分，也可能极大地帮助到这个还处于萌芽阶段的市场。如今市场已经出现分化：一边是巨型对冲基金，另一边是很多小型基金经理难以获得资金支持。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes, good question. We have something we call a hedge fund marketplace where we do make capital introductions in a semi-automated fashion, which, of course, is more along the lines of the way we operate. And smaller hedge funds can get on there. They must be sort of vetted and certified and then they can show themselves. And so there's some of that activity.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的，这是个很好的问题。我们设有一个“对冲基金市场平台”（hedge fund marketplace），通过一种半自动化的方式帮助进行资本对接，这也符合我们一贯的运营方式。小型对冲基金可以入驻这个平台，但需要经过一定的审核与认证，之后可以展示自己的信息。因此，在这方面我们已有一定的探索。

This is not a major activity for us. We would like to continue to expand on that. So we're going to put some efforts in there. We are not an investment bank. So we're not going to get to the level of all that, that entails by any means. But we understand that there's a segment of the market that could do well if we could offer that in addition to everything else that we offer. So we're going to put more work in there.
不过这目前还不是我们的核心业务。但我们确实希望在这方面进一步扩展，因此会投入一些努力。我们毕竟不是一家投行，也不会以投行那种方式全面介入。但我们认识到，市场上确实有一部分对冲基金若能获得这方面支持将会表现更好，而如果我们在已有服务基础上再提供这项功能，会很有价值。所以我们会继续在这方面投入资源。

Unknown Attendee
Maybe as a follow-on is another sort of business. Have you considered having your own asset management arm?
不知名与会者
作为一个相关问题，你们有没有考虑设立自己的资产管理部门？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
No. We spend all of our time and we have our hands very full with expanding our brokerage offering. And so while bigger deviations into new business lines are not rejected out of hand, they're simply not at the top of our priority list right now.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
没有。我们目前所有精力都集中在扩大我们的经纪业务上，已经非常忙碌了。虽然我们不会完全排斥进入全新业务线，但这类大幅度的业务扩张目前并不是我们的优先事项。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Any more? I suppose I should quit while I'm ahead since that's like already, I'm above my average here. The last year, you had spoken a little bit about some new capabilities that you're excited about rolling out. Without asking to tip your hand competitively, but is there anything that you're able to speak to that you guys are working on? You guys are regularly rolling out new tools, new capabilities, new functionality. What's on the docket here for 2025?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
还有其他问题吗？我感觉我今天表现不错，可能该见好就收了。去年你们曾提到一些让你们非常兴奋的新功能即将推出。我不想让你泄露商业机密，但有没有什么你可以透露的？你们经常会推出新工具、新功能、新产品。2025年有什么值得期待的？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes. Well, we don't -- you're right. We don't really talk about what we're working on right now for lots of reasons, competitive reasons amongst them. But happy to mention a few things that we have rolled out in the past 6 to 12 months. A new IBKR desktop, which is a new way for the clients to interface in a more intuitive way. And that seems to be getting a pretty good reception.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的。你说得对，我们通常不会谈论正在开发中的项目，主要是出于竞争等多方面的考量。但我可以分享一些我们过去6到12个月已经推出的东西。比如我们推出了新的 IBKR Desktop，这是一个全新设计的客户端界面，更加直观，目前用户反馈相当不错。

We have regionally put our feet on the ground in Dubai. We open up a small office to -- primarily for sales. As well in the region, we opened up trading at the Saudi Exchange and stocks. So that's definitely an area of expansion for us. I would expect some of that to continue.
我们也在地区扩张方面有所动作，比如我们在迪拜设立了一个小型办公室，主要以销售为导向。同时，我们也开通了沙特交易所的股票交易。这无疑是我们的一个扩展方向，我预计这方面还会继续推进。

It's never easy getting started. But once you're started, you can launch more easily into other products and other services like that. So suffice to say that we will continue to work on all of these types of things, and we expect good things this year.
起步总是困难的，但一旦启动，就更容易扩展到其他产品和服务。简单来说，我们会持续推进这类工作，并期待今年会有不错的成果。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes. One of the things that we hear regularly in dialogue with investors is how engaged the -- most retail investors are right now. When you look at your book of business and the folks that would represent individuals, where is the activity level today versus historical reference? Like are we already past mean level? Or like where is it?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
是的，我们在与投资者的对话中经常听到的一点是，现在大多数散户投资者都非常活跃。那从你们的客户群体来看，尤其是个人投资者这部分，现在的活跃度相较于历史水平处于什么位置？是已经高于长期平均值了吗？还是还在正常区间内？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Yes. Interesting question. We don't actually track activity by -- I mean, yes, we look at commissions, we look at equity held in each segment. The individuals are outpacing the other groups. It's our biggest group, obviously, by far to begin with. And as well, they're outpacing in most of those categories.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
是的，这是个很有意思的问题。我们不会按传统意义上去细分活跃度——不过我们确实会关注佣金收入、各个板块的持股市值等指标。从这些维度看，个人投资者目前的表现优于其他群体。而且他们本身就是我们体量最大的客户群体，因此他们在大多数维度上都是增长最快的。

Professionals tend to be a little more heavy on margin lending. Introducing brokers are some mix of how they're managing their clients' funds. Some are small introducing brokers with 5 clients, and some might have 1,000. And, of course, introducing brokers -- I'm sorry, financial advisers, I meant. Introducing brokers also come in small and large sizes. And so yes, I mean the individuals have certainly been riding the wave of more interest in the markets, more optimism about the stock market. Just look at the prices. And that just translates into more activity for us. It's a very good thing.
专业投资者则在保证金贷款上的比重会更大。至于引介经纪商（Introducing Brokers），他们的资金管理方式各异。有些是小型经纪商，只有五个客户；有些则可能管理一千个客户。当然，我是想说财务顾问（Financial Advisers），但引介经纪商也是有大有小。总的来说，个人投资者毫无疑问正在享受当前市场的热度，对市场更感兴趣，对股市前景更乐观——看看股价走势就知道了。而这直接带动了我们的业务活跃度，对我们来说是非常积极的信号。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Yes, without a doubt. So last one for me. And I feel like I got to -- I did it last year. I got to ask about it again. Thomas went on record in the last earnings call about the fact that he's not interested in selling. But previously, he had noted that he disliked the price, he was not happy with it. The stock was a beast. In the past year, it's been an outstanding stock. Do you have any idea about what his temperature is or thoughts around whittling down his stake at a reasonable pace or at least making progress?
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
没错，毫无疑问。最后一个问题，我去年也问过，今年还是得问一遍。托马斯在上一次财报电话会上明确表示他无意出售股份。但在那之前，他曾经表达过对股价不满。他觉得当时股价太低。但过去一年，这只股票表现极其强劲，可以说是“猛兽级”的表现。你有没有了解他现在的想法？比如是否有意以一个合理的节奏逐步减持，或至少在这方面取得些进展？

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
I don't. But I'll freely admit that it's not a topic of conversation I have with him. I think that one important thing to investors is to understand that there's not a risk of the overhang. He's not ever looking to dump shares on the market. He has talked in the past about selling plans that actually, if they were to meet certain price targets and conditions, they would sort of dribble out small amounts of stock into the market. And other than that, no particular insights.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
我并不了解他的具体想法，坦率地说，这并不是我会和他讨论的话题。但我认为投资者需要明白一个关键点：并不存在所谓“减持悬顶”的风险。他从未有意在市场上大举抛售股份。他过去曾谈过一些减持计划，如果达到某些价格目标和特定条件，会以非常缓慢的节奏、小批量地将股份释放到市场上。除此之外，我没有更多具体的信息。

But he has talked about -- we think that it's -- so we're chasing the target a little bit because the better off we do from a financial performance standpoint, the more he -- he founded this company, he built this company, he believes so solidly in it. And clearly, most of his net worth is in it that he feels aligned with investors. And he has, in mind, probably a high-price target. And the better off we do, the higher that target probably gets.
但他确实提到过——我们认为，这有点像是在“追赶一个目标”。因为我们财务表现越好，他的信念就越坚定。毕竟这是他创办、亲手打造的公司，他对它有极强的信心。显然，他的大部分净资产都押在这家公司上，他和投资者的利益高度一致。他心里很可能有一个较高的目标价，而随着公司表现持续改善，这个目标价可能也会随之上调。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Sure. Right. That's fair. And I -- why not finish on that high-price target, right? Thanks a lot for your time, Paul, really appreciate it.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
当然，听起来很合理。那就以这个“高目标价”作为我们今天的结尾吧。保罗，非常感谢你的时间，真的很感激。

Paul Brody   CFO, Treasurer, Secretary & Director
Pleasure, Brennan. Thanks very much.
保罗·布罗迪   首席财务官、财务主管、董事会秘书
很高兴参与，谢谢你，布伦南。

Brennan Hawken   UBS Investment Bank
Thank you.
布伦南·霍肯   瑞银投资银行
谢谢。

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