Futu - Earnings Call - Q4 2024
March 13, 2025
Transcript
Operator (participant)
Hello, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Futu Holdings' Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2024 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After management's prepared remarks, there will be a Q&A session. Today's conference call is being recorded. If you have any objections, you may disconnect at this time. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host for today's conference call, Daniel Yuan, Chief of Staff to CEO, Head of Strategy and IR at Futu. Please go ahead, sir.
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Thanks, Operator. Thank you for joining us today to discuss our fourth quarter and full year 2024 earnings results. Joining me on the call today are Mr. Leaf Li, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer; Arthur Chen, Chief Financial Officer; and Robin Xu, Senior Vice President. As a reminder, today's call may include forward-looking statements which represent the company's belief regarding future events, which by their nature are not certain and are outside of the company's control. Forward-looking statements involve risk and uncertainties. We caution you that a number of important factors could cause actual results to differ materially from those contained in any forward-looking statements. For more information about the potential risks and uncertainties, please refer to the company's filings with the SEC, including its annual report. With that, I will now turn the call over to Leaf. Leaf will make his comments in Chinese, and I will translate.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Thank you all for joining our earnings call today. Client acquisitions accelerated across all markets amid an eventful quarter. We exceeded our full year guidance by a wide margin, adding 215,000 paying clients in the fourth quarter alone. As of year-end, total paying clients was over 2.4 million, a 41% year-over-year. Year to date, we have observed robust paying client growth across markets and are guiding for 800,000 venue paying clients in 2025.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign langauge]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
In the fourth quarter, Hong Kong market was the top growth driver for new paying clients as we implemented targeted marketing initiatives to capitalize on the momentum of different asset classes. In Singapore, we maintained quality growth. With more paying clients added, there are also higher average assets. We further solidified our position as a leading one-stop investment platform in Malaysia and recorded another quarter of strong paying client growth with our increasingly localized product experience and strengthening brand equity. In Japan, new paying clients grew double-digit quarter over quarter as our superior US stock trading experience gained traction amid a bullish US market backdrop.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
In 2024, we delivered 209 iterations of our mobile app and desktop clients and added 7,762 new features, up 37% and 32% year-over-year respectively. Product velocity remained high in the fourth quarter. In Japan, we launched US margin trading with an increasing adoption rate and improving throughout the quarter. In the U.S., we unveiled Options Strategy Builder on our desktop version to better help traders navigate various options trading strategies. As we continue to refine our options trading products, in the fourth quarter, the number of options traders in the U.S. more than doubled year-over-year, while the number of options contracts traded more than tripled compared to the year-ago quarter. In Hong Kong and Singapore, we established a bond trading desk to help our clients execute large and complex bond orders. For our clients in Australia and Canada, we launched recurring investment plans for local stocks.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Although the pullback in China equities in the second half of the quarter weighed on the valuation of our clients' assets, it was more than offset by stellar net asset inflow across markets. Total client assets were HKD 743 billion, up 43% year-over-year and 7% quarter over quarter. Overseas markets recorded the highest quarterly net asset inflow, almost equivalent to the full year 2023 inflow. Total client assets in Singapore grew by 19% quarter over quarter, marking the 10th consecutive quarter of sequential growth, thanks to robust net asset inflow into US equities and money market funds. US, Canada, and Australia markets also witnessed sequential growth in average client assets the four consecutive quarters. As our clients took on more leveraged positions, margin financing and securities lending balance increased by 25% sequentially to a record HKD 51 billion.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Total trading volume jumped by 202% year-over-year and 52% quarter over quarter to HKD 2.89 trillion. In the fourth quarter, our clients diversified their investing to include more crypto and AI names. As a result, US stock trading volume grew by 36% sequentially to a historic high of HKD 2.08 trillion. Notably, several AI-focused companies, previously less familiar to our clients, emerged as top trader US stocks in 2024, driven by their remarkable outperformance and the rising narrative around AI's transformative potential. Hong Kong stock trading volume grew exponentially by 117% sequentially to HKD 755 billion. The renewed enthusiasm in Hong Kong equities starting from September led to a substantial rebound in trading velocity. Clients showed a meaningful pickup of interest in many technology names as well as leveraged and inverse ETFs, among other things.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Total client assets in wealth management increased 93% year-over-year and 14% quarter over quarter to HKD 111 billion. Money market funds continue to hold strong appeal for our clients even with moderately lower yields in the fourth quarter and drove the bulk of the sequential growth in wealth management AUM. In Hong Kong and Singapore, we expanded our structured product offerings to better address the investment needs of our high-net-worth clients. Total client assets in wealth management accounted for 15% of total client assets, up from 12% in the same quarter last year.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
We had 482 IPO distributions in IR clients, up 16% year-over-year. In 2024, we underwrote 40 Hong Kong IPOs, ranking first among all brokers for the third consecutive year, according to Wind. The new digital IPO settlement platform, Penny, introduced by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, eliminates multi-account subscriptions, shortens the settlement period, reduces the amount of lock-up capital needed, and lowers funding costs through the new pre-funding model. We believe that this new system improves the retail IPO subscription experience, props for our retail participation, and favors market consolidation. We swiftly adapted our subscription process based on the new framework and achieved notable gains in market share.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
Next, I'd like to invite our CFO, Arthur, to discuss our financial performance.
Arthur Chen (CFO)
Thanks, Leaf and Daniel. Please allow me to walk you through our financial performance in the fourth quarter. All the numbers are in HKD unless otherwise noted. Total revenue was HKD 4.4 billion, up 87% from HKD 2.4 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023. We concluded a strong year with full year revenue growing to HKD 13.6 billion, up 36% year-over-year. Brokerage commission handling charge income was HKD 2.1 billion, an increase of 128% year-over-year and 35% Q over Q. The year-over-year and Q over Q increase was both driven by higher trading volume, partially offset by the decline in blended commission rate. We adopt a per-contract and a per-share pricing model for US options and US stock trading, respectively. As a result, brokerage income will grow at a slower rate than trading volume where our clients trade high-priced stocks and options.
Interest income was HKD 2 billion, up 52% year-over-year and 19% Q over Q. Both were driven by higher interest income from our security borrowing and the lending business and higher interest from banking deposits. Other income was HKD 353 million, up 157% year-over-year and 69% Q over Q. The year-over-year and Q over Q increase was both primarily attributed to higher fund distribution income and the currency exchange income. Our total cost was HKD 776 million, an increase of 79% from HKD 434 million in the fourth quarter of 2023. Brokerage commission and handling charge expenses were HKD 112 million, up 90% year-over-year and 38% Q over Q. The Q over Q increase was roughly in line with the movement of our brokerage commission and handling charge income. Interest expenses were HKD 513 million, up 90% year-over-year and 24% Q over Q.
The year-over-year increase was driven by higher interest expenses associated with our security borrowing and the lending business. The Q over Q increase was mainly due to higher margin financing interest expenses as a result of higher funding costs for HKD. Processing and servicing costs were HKD 151 million, up 45% year-over-year and 16% Q over Q. The increase was largely due to higher market information and the data fee for new products with higher system usage fees. As a result, total gross profit was HKD 3.7 billion, an increase of 89% from HKD 1.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023. Gross margin was 82.5% as compared to 81.7% in the fourth quarter of 2023. Operating expenses were up 57% year-over-year and 33% Q over Q to HKD 1.4 billion. G&A expenses were HKD 399 million, up 10% year-over-year and 4% Q over Q.
This increase was partially due to costs related to organizational restructuring in the fourth quarter of 2024. Selling and marketing expenses were HKD 464 million, up 154% year-over-year and 48% Q over Q. The year-over-year increase was due to a triple-digit year-over-year increase in net new paying clients, partially offset by lower client acquisition costs. The Q over Q increase was in line with the growth of our new paying clients. General administrative expenses were HKD 576 million, up 55% year-over-year and 51% Q over Q. The year-over-year increase was primarily due to an increase in the general administrative headcount, and the Q over Q increase was mainly due to higher bonus accrued for general administrative personnel and, to a lesser extent, costs related to organizational restructuring. As a result, income from operation increased 117% year-over-year and 28% Q over Q to HKD 2.2 billion.
Operating margin increased to 50% from 43.1% in the fourth quarter of 2023, mostly due to strong top-line growth and operating leverage. Our net income increased by 113% year-over-year and 42% Q over Q to HKD 1.9 billion. Net income margin expanded to 42.2% in the fourth quarter as compared to 36.9% in the same quarter last year. Our effective tax rate for the quarter was 16.1%. That concludes our prepared remarks. We'd now like to open the call to questions. Operator, please go ahead.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. To ask a question, please press star 1, 1 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star 1 and 1 again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. We will now take the first question from the line of Emma Xu from Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Emma Xu (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Congratulations on the very strong result. I have two questions. The first question is about the new paying clients. You guided 800,000 new paying clients for this year, around 100,000 more than last year. Last year you have two new markets, Malaysia and Japan. This year previously you guided that you do not have new market plans. Just wondering why you are able to guide such a strong new paying client target. The second question is about the CAC client acquisition cost. It increased moderately in the fourth quarter last year despite the very active market. In an active market in general, CAC should be lower thanks to the natural flows.
Just wondering, is it due to the change of the market, the mix of the new paying client market, or due to the change of the channels that lead to the increase of the CAC? What's your target of CAC for this year? Thanks.
Arthur Chen (CFO)
Thanks, Emma. I will take these two questions. [Foreign language]. In terms of your first questions regarding our new guidance for 2025, this 80K new paying clients does not include any new markets we will enter in or not in 2025. So this is all for these existing seven markets. The reason for this very strong guidance is number one is we think these two new markets such as Malaysia and Japan, which we added into last year, still provide a very meaningful robust growth outlook in 2025. Not to mention these relatively mature markets such as Singapore and Hong Kong, we still see very good upside in client acquisitions thanks to partially due to the Chinese asset re-rating what we witnessed from early days of this year.
In terms of the second questions regarding the client acquisition cost, we roughly target HKD 2,500-3,000 CAC for this year. From the end of last year and going forward, we will spend more monies in some brand equities in order to enhance our long-term user loyalty in our platform. Thank you.
Emma Xu (Analyst)
Thank you. Very clear.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Cindy Wang from China Renaissance. Please go ahead.
Cindy Wang (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Thanks for taking my question and congrats for a very strong result in Q4, and I have two questions here. First question, recently we noticed that the US and the Hong Kong market overall market trading volume has very strong quarter-over-quarter performance in first quarter today. Can management give us a little bit color based on current run rate? What's the trading volume, trading velocity, net asset inflow, and the margin financing, securities, and lending guidance? The second question is related to the new product pipeline. We know Futu has a lot of product pipeline every year. Can you give us a roughly pipeline on the equity, derivatives, and crypto products? Thank you.
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
[Foreign language]. First of all, I'll give you some color on the quarter to date operating matrices. We've seen this year there was a lot of trading opportunities for both the Hong Kong and US stock market. Retail investors continue to be very highly engaged, and year to date, based on the current run rate, we forecast higher net new paying clients as compared to the fourth quarter last year. We've also seen higher net asset inflow, which coupled with the appreciation of China equities led to a very meaningful sequential increase in total client assets. Based on the current run rate, we also forecast our total trading volume to further increase on top of the high base last quarter. We've seen that the clients remain highly engaged and very high risk tolerance year to date.
Regarding our product plan, this year for all of our overseas markets, we have a very rich product pipeline in order to satisfy the client demands for different risk rewards. In Japan, for example, we will continue to catch up with our product trading capabilities around Japanese equities, and at the same time continue to optimize and extend our leadership in U.S. trading. In Malaysia, we also will have a number of product innovations and iterations based on local clients' needs. In the U.S., we plan to roll out crypto trading in the next couple of months. In terms of wealth management, we plan to continue to expand our wealth management offerings, including offering more structured notes for our retail and high net worth clients. Thank you.
Cindy Wang (Analyst)
Thank you. Very clear.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one. We will now take the next question from the line of Chiyao Huang from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Chiyao Huang (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. So basically two questions. One is on what areas of the business that management think have the most potential to integrate AI models like DeepSeek and what kind of efficiency gains and how should that strengthen the product offerings and services. The second question is on crypto offerings and just wondering is there any update on the licensing process or what can be done to accelerate the client penetration or investor education and the marketing side on the crypto business in Hong Kong and Singapore. What will be most differentiated offering from Futu's crypto office compared to peers? Thank you.谢谢。
Arthur Chen (CFO)
Thank you, Qi. Leaf will answer your first question and my colleague Robin will answer your second question regarding crypto. Thank you.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
In the past couple of years, we've made a number of explorations in AI based on different usage scenarios, and we've incorporated AI capabilities both for internal operations and for client-facing capabilities. We're also doing vocal deployment of DeepSeek. Internally, we've found that AI helps us to meaningfully lift our efficiency in terms of the market use and data generation, filtering of content in our social community, and the designing and the graphics, etc. In terms of client-facing user experiences, in Hong Kong, we've launched a new synthesis function for individual stocks twice a day in the morning and at night. We also have an automatic interpretation of the corporate announcements and analysis of the financial results.
These are all based on the AI model, which we believe helps our clients to quickly understand market dynamics and reduce the time needed for them to make investment decisions. We are also doing a lot of studying and research in terms of how better to incorporate AI to empower more applications for retail investors. We believe that if we use AI to help with decision-making, that puts a much higher requirement in terms of the timeliness and the accuracy of the information generated. The unpredictable quality of the responses will actually increase the investment thresholds for the retail investors and prolong the time needed for them to make effective investment decisions, thereby lowering their investment experiences. We hope to make a lot of thorough preparations and to make sure that the information we generate through AI in different usage scenarios are highly accurate.
At the same time, we need to do very prudent assessment and very comprehensive testing to make sure that we strike the right balance between user experience, compliance, and technological innovation so as to maximize our investors' benefits and also to protect their needs. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Charles Zhou from UBS. Please go ahead.
Charles Zhou (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. I have two questions. The first one is we understand the company plans to develop wealth management business in both Hong Kong and also Singapore. What is your expectation for the total addressable market size? Also, how does Futu differentiate from its competitors in other, I mean, say for example, private banks or insurance companies? Can you maybe talk about your competitive advantage from product distribution and etc.? Do you think the business will be scalable? My second question is following the strong trading volume in Q4 last year, US stocks corrected sharply over the past months. How did it impact your trading volume in Q1? If the sales momentum continue in the US stock persist, the client AUM will decline.
Will this also affect overall your trading volume in the rest of this year and 2025? Thank you.
Leaf Li (Chairman and CEO)
[Foreign language] in terms of the trading volumes, despite we saw some setback in the U.S. stock markets in the first quarter so far, but actually the market setbacks create more volatilities, which inspire more clients trading to bottom fish the markets in the U.S. stock market. In the meantime, the trading volumes in Hong Kong made a huge spike due to China assets rerating and a lot of DeepSeek related theme. On a collective basis, Daniel mentioned it before, in the first quarter so far, we see the overall trading volumes remain very robust. Now I hand over to Robin.
Robin Xu (SVP)
[Foreign language]
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
I'll first translate about the crypto updates, and then Robin also touched on wealth management. In the fourth quarter, the crypto market had a huge boom, which lifted our clients' trading interests and sentiments. We've seen that in November and December, the crypto trading volume on our platform grew exponentially, which is almost five times what we saw in October, and our daily trading volume surpassed HKD 35 million. We've also seen a similar growth rate in terms of our number of crypto traders on our platform. In the first quarter, we've seen that the crypto prices experienced some pullback, and at the same time, there's a lot of trading opportunities in the Hong Kong and U.S. stock markets.
We have seen a subsiding interest in crypto trading on our platform, but the trading volume and the crypto traders are still at a relatively high level. Right now in Hong Kong, we offer four trading pairs to our retail investors, and we offer six trading pairs in Singapore. In the future, we plan to roll out more kind of mainstream trading pairs. At the same time, I think we will enhance our management of the capital efficiency and also the liquidity and the security, and also kind of lower the costs of our clients moving funds in and out, which we believe will help with client conversion and with further penetration of crypto trading.
We believe in Hong Kong and Singapore, most of their retail investors are still in the very early stage of building up awareness of those asset classes, and we think there is a lot of further room for penetration. We hope to leverage more investor education materials, a seamless fund deposit experience to assuage our clients' concerns towards this relatively new asset class. As the regulatory framework gets more clear in these two markets, Futu, as one of the earliest retail players in the space, will enjoy the early mover advantage in building up a user mind share, especially in terms of compliant operations, which will help us gain advantage as the crypto asset class becomes more mainstream in these two markets.
As we mentioned earlier, we're also planning to roll out crypto trading in the US this year, and we are expecting a higher penetration of crypto among our US client base compared to what we have seen in Hong Kong and Singapore so far. As regards to our VATP license, we got a conditional approval from the SFC, and we are working on our product development. We do not have a very specific timeline for our official launch yet, and we look forward to giving more color down the road. About the wealth management, this year we've entered into a rate cut cycle, but we still believe money market funds will continue to be attractive to our clients in the foreseeable future.
At the same time, we have provided very seamless automatic subscription and redemption functions for our money market funds, which really maximize our clients' capital efficiency so as to help them to seize the trading opportunities in the market and at the same time earn yields on their IR cash. Typically, we expect an outperformance of fixed income-related assets during a rate cut cycle, and we have built a comprehensive set of products in this space in Hong Kong and Singapore, which we believe will help our clients navigate these different investment cycles to achieve long-term capital appreciation. At the same time, as mentioned earlier, we intend to further enrich our wealth management product offerings, including more structured notes for both our retail and high net worth clients. We are optimistic about the AUM growth for our wealth management.
To add some additional color to what Robin just said about wealth management, I think some of our key competitive advantages in this space is, number one, we really offer our clients a seamless experience to navigate across different asset classes on our platform, whether it's equities or wealth management or crypto, etc. I think that is one of our key competitive advantages. We do not just lead our competitors in just one specific asset class, but it is a very seamless one-stop experience for clients to very easily switch between asset classes and to cross navigate different cycles. Number two, I think we adopt a platform model, which is a key advantage for our high net worth clients' wealth management business.
For example, in terms of structured products, we onboard structured offerings from a number of different private banks, and our clients can compare these returns and the performances and pick the best asset class on our platform, as opposed to maybe some other institutions will prefer to sell to their clients their own proprietary products. This platform model really gives our clients access to a variety of different assets, and us as an intermediary is very neutral and just makes sure that we will be able to provide our clients with the most attractive investment opportunities. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of You Fan from CICC. Please go ahead.
You Fan (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. This is Yu Fan from CICC and the two questions. The first one is regarding the AUM breakdown in four Q. So how much is from the client net asset inflow and how much from market to market impact? And what's the regional breakdown of the client asset? And the second question, we see the active Hong Kong IPO subscription recently, so what's the impact on our income statement and what's the contribution to our new paying clients and the net asset inflow?
Arthur Chen (CFO)
[Foreign language] in terms of the net asset inflow breakdowns in the fourth quarter, as we mentioned before, the market to market implications in the fourth quarter actually was a negative number. So the client asset inflow, the number is much larger than the movement of the balance between two quarters. And among the 24% of the asset inflow actually come from non-Greater China areas. This number one year ago was just 20%. We see it is a very good indicator for our overseas markets' continuous engagement for clients. The second question, the direct revenues from Hong Kong IPO just contributes low single digit of our total revenue, given that we are further diversifying our revenue stream in the past four to five years. Also, due to the new mechanisms in Hong Kong, such as FINI, the settlement duration, the leverage financing duration were both shortened. On one side, it is a negative to all the brokers, direct commission, and the interest income, but on the other hand, it further engages clients to the markets to enhance the market liquidity, and there is more interest in terms of the retail clients participating in this market. On a net basis, it is still very positive to our business. Thank you.
You Fan (Analyst)
[Foreign language]
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of J.P. Morgan. Please, Peter Zhang, please go ahead from J.P. Morgan.
Peter Zhang (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Many thanks for giving me the opportunity to ask questions. This is Peter Zhang from JP Morgan, and I have two questions. First is about the operating expense, and we noticed that from sequential perspective, the G&A expense increased by over 50% Q on Q in fourth quarter, while R&D expense only moderately picked up by 4%. We wish to understand what's the drivers behind this diverging trend for the two different operating expense in fourth quarter, and what will be your outlook for 2025 in terms of your Hackham growth and your R&D and G&A expense growth into 2025? My second question is about other income.
We noticed that other income grew by 69% Q on Q to a record quarterly high in fourth quarter. We wish to understand what's the drivers behind this increase and what's the outlook into 2025? Thank you.
Arthur Chen (CFO)
[Foreign language]
For two questions, number one is regarding the G&A Q on Q expenses increase mainly due to three reasons. Number one is our year-end bonus equipment, especially for the overseas markets management. Secondly is due to some one-off professional expenses relating to some new license applications and the new markets feasibility studies. And the third is due to some one-off organizational restructuring. Looking forward to 2025, we expect the number of our Hackham will continue to increase in low to middle single digit versus the situations in 2024.
For the second question regarding the breakdown of the key drivers of the other income, it mainly comes from two facts. Number one is revenues derived from the wealth management, including the funds distribution and also more fees from the structured products like structured notes and the TBOs, et cetera. The other is relating to foreign FX exchange fees. This is partially due to very divergent market performance between the U.S. market and the Hong Kong market in the fourth quarter. We saw more clients try to switch their assets between these two markets. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Zoey Zong from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Zoey Zong (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Thanks Management for taking my questions and congratulations on your strong results. I have two questions. First, we have seen the blended trading commission rate decline both year over year and sequentially in Q4. However, the trading volume contribution from HK stocks actually increased in Q4. Excluding the structural impact, what's the reason for the commission rate decline? My second question is about capital return. We ever had $500 million share buyback program, which is effective here in December this year. May I ask how much is the remaining quarter and what's your capital return this year? Also, do we have any consideration of regular dividends? Thank you.
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
[Foreign language] in terms of the blended commission rate, the Q over Q decrease was mainly due to the product exchange. In the fourth quarter, more clients trading these high value, nominal values US stocks and also high nominal values US options, which made the blended take rates have some Q on Q decrease. In the fourth quarter so far, we saw our take rates remained very stable. The second question regarding the shareholder returns, so far we have not utilized our share repurchase program, which will expire at the end of 2025. We still think these new market, new business lines were still in a fast growth stage.
There will be a huge room for us to deploy the capital for this new business and the new markets, which we think in the long run will enhance our competitive edge in the markets and also our profitability. Having said that, as we mentioned in our third quarters, we do concur part of our shareholders is very focusing or care about cash dividends. We will revisit and evaluate our dividend payout policies when 2025 full year complete, and we'll consider the relative measures to provide a reward to thank our long-term shareholders. Thank you.
Zoey Zong (Analyst)
That's very clear. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Hanyang Wang from 86Research. Please go ahead.
Hanyang Wang (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Thanks Management for taking my questions. This is Han Yang from H6 Research. I have one simple question regarding the derivatives trading. What is approximately the percentage of derivatives in the total trading volume in the fourth quarter? Considering the increase in market volatility recently, do you see an increase in the proportion of derivatives trading on your platform in Q1? Thank you.
Robin Xu (SVP)
[Foreign language]. In terms of the derivative commissions, it roughly accounts for one third of our total trading commissions in the fourth quarter, slightly down to our historical high in the past. In the first quarter so far, we do not witness any material change for this ratio. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Alan Chen from Citi. Please go ahead.
Alan Chan (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. Thanks Management for giving me the chance to ask a question. This is Alan from CT Bank. Could Management give us some breakdown of the interest income in terms of either cash interest income versus margin financing, security lending income? And if Management could share what's the prevailing interest rate on clients' idle cash, what's the idle cash yield in 4Q 2024? Since September last year, we have already seen the Fed cutting the Fed rate by 100 basis points. I'm wondering how much of that 100 basis points Fed rate cut has already been reflected into the client's idle cash interest rate. Thanks.
Arthur Chen (CFO)
[Foreign language]. In terms of the breakdown of the interest income, roughly 40%-45% interest income was derived from the idle cash deposits, and the remaining belongs to the margin financing and the security lending, et cetera. The impasse for the rate cut, if we use the fourth quarter end client assets numbers to make our projections, every 25 basis points cut by the federate, our pre-tax profit monthly pre-tax profit will be negatively impacted by HKD 8 million-HKD 10 million. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. We will now take the last question from the line of Zhihan Wang from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Zhihan Wang (Analyst)
[Foreign language]. My first question is, do we have a regional breakdown of the new paying client growth in 4Q? And for 2025, what proportion of 800,000 new paying client is expected to be from new markets, and what proportion from mature markets? My second question is, do we have a guidance for AUM per client growth in 2025? Will it be diluted as paying client growth is very fast and majority of them may be from new markets? And in the long run, what levels do we expect the AUM per client to reach in each region? Thank you.
Arthur Chen (CFO)
[Foreign language]. In terms of the breakdown of the new client acquisition geographic locations for these mature markets like Hong Kong and Singapore, which on a collective basis contribute roughly 40%-45% of our total new paying clients acquired in fourth quarter. The remaining countries in Asia alongside Australia contribute roughly 40% as well. The remaining 20% belongs to North America. Thank you.
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
[Foreign language]. Let me briefly translate. First of all, I just want to comment on net asset inflow. In 2024, we saw a very meaningful step up in net asset inflow in comparison to 2023, and we foresee a similar very robust net asset inflow in 2025 as well. As you understand, like average client assets are, first of all, impacted by our new client mix between different markets and also impacted by market-to-market trends. Both of these factors are less within our control than net asset inflow, so it's very hard to predict how average client assets is going to trend for 2025. In terms of average client assets in different markets, some markets will structurally have high average client assets.
For example, Hong Kong and Singapore, like these clients will have higher investable income and therefore will have more capital that they can deploy on Futu's platform. At the same time, what we found super encouraging is that in the fourth quarter, all of our markets experienced very meaningful Q1Q growth in average client assets. We expect this trend to continue because as we onboard more products, I think there is a lot of cross-selling opportunity, and we think there is ample opportunity for our existing clients to put more assets onto our platform. At the same time, as our product capabilities get enhanced and as our brand equity gets enhanced, we are able to attract more high-quality clients, including high-net-worth clients in many of these markets. Thank you.
Operator (participant)
Thank you. I will now like to turn the conference back to Daniel Yuan for closing remarks.
Daniel Yuan (Head of Strategy and Investor Relations)
That concludes our earnings call. On behalf of the Futu Management Team, I would like to thank you for joining us today. If you have any further questions, please do not hesitate to contact me or any of our investor relations representatives. Thank you and goodbye.
Operator (participant)
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.