Plus500 shares soar as revenues rocket on the back of crypto trading fever

Online trading platform Plus500 has seen its revenues rocket in the first quarter of this year, as its new cryptocurrency offering helped rake in the cash and drive up customer numbers.

The London-listed business, which specialises in allowing customers to trade contracts for differences (CFDs), boosted revenues by 284 per cent on the same period last year to a record $297.3m (£216.3m) – meaning Plus500 has already brought in 68 per cent of last year's total.

Meanwhile the number of active customers rose 204 per cent and 72,960 new customers joined, which Plus500 attributed to "a period of relatively volatile markets and high levels of interest in the company's cryptocurrency CFDs offering".

"Having a flexible business model and a lean cost structure enables us to optimise our performance as necessary despite the recently announced regulatory changes," said Plus500's chief executive Asaf Elimelech.

"Having the industry leading framework enables us to be confident about the future."

The new regulatory changes Elimelech referred to were brought in by the European Securities and Markets Authority (Esma) earlier this year. The regulator banned retail investors from trading binary options and applied limitations to CFDs to help protect investors.

CFDs allow investors to bet on the underlying price movements of an asset without actually having to own it. Plus500 today again confirmed that it was already in line with the new rules, which it believed would "create a more level playing field".

However the business added that "we do not expect such an exceptional performance to be repeated in the remainder of the year".

"We have since seen market conditions return to more normal levels in the last two months," Plus500 said in its trading update, adding that Esma's new rules changes meant "performance could be further impacted by the rate at which customers opt to be reclassified as professional investors".

Plus500's shares shot up more than 11 per cent in early trading.

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