Earnings Call Transcript - HOOD Q1 2026

Operator, Operator

Thank you to everyone for joining Robinhood's Q1 2026 Earnings Call, whether you're tuning into the live stream or here with us in person. With us today are Chairman and CEO Vlad Tenev; CFO Shiv Verma; and VP of Corporate Finance and Investor Relations Chris Koegel. Vlad and Shiv will offer opening remarks and then open the call to Q&A. During the Q&A portion of the call, we will answer questions from the audience, which includes institutional research analysts, finance content creators who may hold an ownership position in Robinhood and both institutional and retail shareholders. As a reminder, today's call will contain forward-looking statements. Actual results could differ materially from our current expectations, and we may not provide updates unless legally required. Potential risk factors that could cause differences, including regulatory developments that we continue to monitor are described in the press release we issued today, the earnings presentation and our SEC filings, all of which can be found at investors.robinhood.com. Today's discussion will also include non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the GAAP measures we consider most directly comparable can be found in the earnings presentation. With that, please welcome Vlad and Shiv.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

All right. All right. How's everyone doing? I've been told that this may be the first ever outdoor earnings call in history. Can you believe that? Shiv, they told us before we went public that earnings calls aren't going to be very much fun, that they're going to be a chore, that actually being public wouldn't be very much fun. I think part of what we're trying to do is improve the branding of being a public company. I think that's going to be pretty important. The branding of it has been very negative, and maybe that's contributing to companies staying private longer and longer and retail shareholders being left out of all those potential returns. So yes, hopefully you guys find this informative and also entertaining, and we can shift the perception of what it means to be a public company slowly but surely. So we're back at our HQ in Menlo Park, with a growing audience of in-person folks, shareholders and analysts. So thank you all for being here. Before I get into the meat of Q1, I want to highlight a historic milestone in our mission to democratize finance for all: Trump Accounts. We announced a few weeks ago that Robinhood will be the broker and sole initial trustee for the Trump Accounts under the direction of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Over 5.5 million American children are already signed up, and 60 million are eligible. These children will now experience the power of equity ownership in the U.S. stock market, which we believe is the greatest engine of wealth creation in human history. It's an incredible honor to be trusted by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and to partner with BNY, America's oldest bank, which was appointed as a financial agent to manage the program. By developing and managing the new Trump Accounts app, we're getting Robinhood technology in front of the next generation of investors, 60 million of them. This is also a new way to extend Robinhood's mission beyond just retail and institutional to helping governments and building a public sector business, which we see as a big opportunity where we can really help. Our hope and aspiration is that this should be the best technology product that the government has ever built or been associated with. So we're really excited about this. Now let's get to Q1. As a reminder, we're focused on a three-part strategy: number one in Active Traders, number one in Wallet Share for the Next Generation, and our long-term mark, number one Global Financial Ecosystem. For Active Traders, we want, if you're an active trader, you should feel like you're at a disadvantage trading anywhere besides Robinhood. Using another brokerage or financial platform should be an irresponsible and irrational decision. That's the goal. A few things to highlight there. As we continue shipping great products for our customers, in Q1 we saw record levels across Prediction Markets, Futures, Index Options, Shorting and Margin. Our active traders were very active. We saw double-digit year-over-year growth in equity and option volumes as well. Looking at prediction markets specifically, we're spending time getting ready for the Q2 launch of our JV with Susquehanna. This is our exchange Rothera, and that's coming later this quarter. Today, Robinhood is the largest retail brokerage firm in prediction markets, and we've been one of the first to adopt this new asset class. Susquehanna is one of the largest market makers. Up until now, we've relied on third-party exchanges. With the launch of Rothera, this vertical integration gives us end-to-end control of the customer experience, including product selection and pricing. We'll have more control over what products and what pricing we can offer to customers, which I think will be very nice. Moving on. Robinhood Social, strong engagement. We've rolled out Robinhood Social to the first 10,000 customers. What we're hearing is they absolutely love verified profiles. They love verified returns and trades. The value proposition for Robinhood Social, as opposed to other social media platforms or places to chat about finances, is you have a guarantee that customers have actual skin in the game with real positions and real returns. It seems that's proving out. People love that, and we're working to add new requested features on a weekly basis, such as live stock charts, expanded personal profiles and tools to find other traders. We're also bringing popular creators on the platform. There's been strong demand from creators to participate in this network. Second, wallet share. We are building our customers' financial super app, and we can see this starting to resonate. Across Retirement, Gold credit card, Strategies and Banking, customers added 500,000 funded accounts in Q1 and more than 1.5 million in the past year. We're continuing to broaden the offering beyond brokerage. A special highlight to Robinhood Banking: Robinhood Banking grew 5x since the last earnings. It's rapidly become a leading premium digital banking offering and one of a kind. Over $2 billion in net deposits. Over 125,000 funded customers. Most interestingly, a 40% direct deposit attach rate. That's a 40% direct deposit attach rate, which tells us this isn't just an add-on to your brokerage account for keeping extra cash; people are thinking about this as a primary bank account. That's very exciting. Gold Card: Gold credit cards have surpassed 800,000 customers with annualized purchase volume, APV, of $15 billion. This is already a heavy purchasing card. Credit performance continues to be strong, and we're on track to surpass 1 million cards and $100 million ARR this year and well before the end of the year. Demand for the new Platinum Card, which many of you saw at the Take Flight event, was very popular. The card is, I believe, the heaviest credit card on the market. Demand has exceeded our expectations, and we're responding to initial feedback. The team iterates, and I think you'll see a better product than what was even unveiled. Third, Global Financial Ecosystem. We're making progress as we expand to different markets around the world. International is picking up and we approach 1 million funded customers. We plan to launch crypto in Canada around midyear via our WonderFi acquisition from last year. We have received in-principle approval from regulators in Singapore to offer a comprehensive suite of brokerage services there. That's a big deal. Bitstamp continues to win institutional customers, gaining market share, and we're enhancing the offering. There's been a lot of interest in institutional lending, and you'll see us digging in there. Across the business, we're turbocharging Robinhood with AI. The impact of AI on our business is threefold. First, we're leveraging AI to drive efficiency and productivity internally. We've been doing this for a long time, and Shiv will discuss the wins we've seen. Second, we continue to give customers access to high-quality AI-powered tools. Robinhood Cortex, unveiled about a year ago, has been used by nearly 1 million customers so far. This is AI intelligence throughout the Robinhood app — you can see it in the Stock Digest and in Cortex Assistant, our AI assistant within the product. Cortex Assistant has rolled out to all Gold customers. We're putting financial intelligence coupled with our market data in your pocket. Customers use it for portfolio and P&L analysis, stock research and screening, and you should expect it to improve. Last December there was a step change in agentic capabilities in AI models, and we're working to bring frontier capabilities into products, spending time chiseling what an agentic product could look like. Stay tuned there. Third, AI is affecting markets and investors. We're empowering customers to participate in the economic value created by AI companies. Unfortunately, many of them are still private. Robinhood Ventures was built to solve this. Robinhood Ventures first fund, RVI, had its IPO in March. We have a great portfolio of late-stage frontier companies and we just added OpenAI last week. We're hearing from customers who want access to emerging AI companies at earlier stages, and we've begun building the initial portfolio for our next fund, RVII. We're excited to share more soon. Our aspiration is that founders should consider retail as part of initial seed capital. If we succeed, we could move the needle on entrepreneurship and make it better for entrepreneurs to access retail. Taken together, relentless product velocity has driven another quarter of strong business results. Total net revenue grew 15% year-over-year to $1.1 billion. Net deposits were $18 billion, another quarter of 20%-plus annualized net deposit growth and our third-highest ever. Gold subscribers grew 36% year-over-year to a record 4.3 million, a 16% attach rate relative to the total customer base and 40% of new customers in Q1. We're seeing customers adopt Gold quickly, which energizes us. Looking ahead, we have new products to share. We are extending agentic capabilities into Robinhood Cortex and your Robinhood experience, with exciting products coming in late May. We also have a crypto event early July in the United Kingdom. We'll be holding our annual HOOD Summit for active traders in the fall. I'll turn it over to Shiv now to discuss our financials, and then we'll circle back for Q&A. Shiv?

Shiv Verma, CFO

All right. Thank you, Vlad. Before we get started on the financials, I wanted to share three big takeaways from Q1. First, as Vlad mentioned, our product velocity continues to accelerate. We're investing for the long term and aggressively leveraging AI across the business, leading to products being shipped faster than ever. Second, we delivered another strong quarter of 20% annualized net deposit growth. This is our North Star KPI. It's great to see customers continue to trust us with their assets even with a more challenging macro backdrop at the start of the year. Customers remain engaged, they deposit on the platform, and they're rapidly adopting our new products — for example, Banking, as Vlad mentioned. All this led to 15% year-over-year revenue growth and 50% adjusted EBITDA margins. Third, Q2 is off to a good start in April. Trading volumes for equities and options are on track to be our highest month of the year and our second-highest month in history. Net deposits are already approximately $5 billion month-to-date. Retirement assets just crossed $30 billion. Now to Q1 results, all compared to a year ago. Revenues grew 15% to $1.07 billion, driven by growth across the business. Transaction volumes increased with growth in equities and options, and we had a record quarter for both prediction markets and futures. Interest-earning assets continue to grow and more than offset lower short-term interest rates, so net interest margin grew. Other revenues were up as Gold subscribers reached a new all-time high of 4.3 million. We stayed disciplined on costs. Adjusted OpEx and SBC was $607 million, and this included $14 million of costs related to Rothera and Trump Accounts that were not included in our outlook. Looking ahead, we expect to invest an incremental $100 million into building Trump Accounts with approximately half in Q2 as we prepare to launch. We're excited for this. These costs include building an exceptional user experience, a brand-new app, best-in-class customer service and educational content. Importantly, our work for Trump Accounts is contracted on a cost-plus basis with a small margin, so we expect revenues to exceed costs. Given the $100 million investment, we are raising our full year 2026 outlook for adjusted OpEx and SBC by $100 million; our updated range is $2.7 billion to $2.825 billion. On capital allocation, we've leaned into share repurchases to start the year. So far this year we have repurchased over $300 million or 4 million of our shares, keeping share count on track to be approximately flat this quarter. In March, our Board refreshed our share repurchase authorization to $1.5 billion. Looking ahead, a few top-of-mind themes. First, we'll continue investing for the long term while maintaining discipline. Customers are responding well to new products and our faster product velocity, and we believe this combination can deliver outsized growth for years. We continue to underwrite each investment to strong long-term ROIs. Second, we're increasing focus on top-of-funnel customer growth. While we continue to add customers organically, we see an opportunity to improve our customer growth rate in the U.S. and internationally, and we're allocating more capital to adding new customers while maintaining strong annualized net deposit growth. This is in addition to supporting Trump Accounts, which puts Robinhood technology in front of the next generation. Third, we're leaning into AI investments across customer-facing products and internally. Last quarter we shared nine-figure efficiency benefits already generated in engineering and customer support. We are giving every team the tools and mandate to adopt AI into daily workflows. Today over 90% of our employees are using AI tooling in their workflows, and adoption continues to increase weekly. One metric we watch is commits per engineer, which measures how much code our engineers deploy into production; it hit a new high in Q1 and is up 50% since the start of last year as engineers leverage AI to build faster. We believe AI can transform financial services for customers and employees, and as a technology company, we plan to lead that charge. Putting it all together, opportunities for 2026 and beyond remain massive. Our teams are shipping great products while staying lean and disciplined to generate operating leverage for shareholders. Our financial North Star remains the same: maximize earnings per share and free cash flow per share for shareholders over time. With that, Chris, why don't we go to Q&A?

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. For the Q&A session, we'll start by answering shareholder questions from Say Technologies, and after the Say questions, we'll turn to live questions from our audience. Then we'll go to dial-in participants. The first question from Say comes from Sebastian G. who is joining us live via Zoom.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

Sebastian.

Shareholder, Shareholder

My question is around the dividend tracker that you had previously announced. Can you give me an update on the current status of that?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

We love our dividend investors at Robinhood. We call them dividend hounds. Are you a dividend hound, Sebastian? The short answer is it's in the works, and we're going to be launching it this year — on track for that. The reason it hasn't launched already is that as we thought about what we could do for dividend hounds, one complaint was some other brokerages pay out dividends in the morning but we do it in the evening. Why can't we pay out dividends earlier? We looked into this and discovered that the dividend record date is typically up to two to three weeks before dividends are paid out. We saw an opportunity not just to match others but to beat them and give your dividends an average of 17 days, or two to three weeks, earlier. That's real value, and one of the reasons we believe it should be irrational to use another brokerage for dividend investing than Robinhood. We're shipping that — it should be live this month. Now the team is turning their attention to making what needs to be the world's best dividend tracker. Stay tuned, and enjoy the early dividends in the meantime.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Awesome. All right. The next Say question is from Matt S.

Shareholder, Shareholder

Okay. So my top voted question was: will Robinhood have IPO Access to any of the upcoming mega offerings?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

That's a great question. I have to preface that I can't be specific about what IPOs may or may not be on the platform before you see it. That said, in the past couple of years we've seen a distinct shift where pretty much every major IPO of consequence has been on Robinhood's platform. In many cases, founders and CEOs engage with us directly asking for help with their retail strategy. There's been a big change since we launched IPO Access in 2021. We used to have to claw and scratch to get retail allocations, and everyone told us you don't want retail in your IPOs or more than 10% retail allocation. Now we're seeing CEOs drive larger allocations, 20% or 30%, and questions about how big is too big. We've helped change the game, and retail has a real seat at the table in IPOs. With Robinhood Ventures, we're driving retail access even earlier. It's a durable trend that should continue, and we'll keep working to get high-quality IPOs and private companies to treat retail as a first-class constituency.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. That concludes our shareholder questions from Say Technologies. Now we'll move to Q&A from folks here live in Menlo Park. So the first question goes to Alex Markgraff.

Alexander Markgraff, Analyst, KeyBanc

Alex Markgraff from KeyBanc. Maybe a couple of questions, Vlad. One on Shiv's comment on customer growth. The Trump Accounts effort is obviously one source, but as you think about other sources of customer growth when you're putting more capital behind it, where does your mind go?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

I think there's a lot we could do on the product side, making onboarding simpler and getting customers to see value faster. In the past few years we've focused more on deepening relationships with customers and getting higher-value customers more value, which meant we've spent less attention on top-of-funnel simplicity. Now we have lots of products to market and put in front of customers, and the challenge is organizing these offerings so customers quickly get what they're looking for without cluttering the interface. We're also seeing good impact from marketing activities; marketing continues to be very high ROI for us and gives us more levers to drive growth.

Alexander Markgraff, Analyst, KeyBanc

Great. Maybe Shiv, on OpEx. Last quarter we talked about the profitable growth framework. As you think about the flexibility that showed up in Q1 around the $607 million, when you look at the rest of the year, maybe help us think about where the flexibility exists on the lower side, if need be, to ensure that framework?

Shiv Verma, CFO

Great question. Our North Star is still the same: drive free cash flow per share and earnings per share over the long term. That means we need to make investments. We want to keep investing while being disciplined. We're constantly re-underwriting everything to make sure it still makes sense. About 85% to 90% of our costs are fixed, but a large portion are discretionary. As a software platform we constantly evaluate internal resource allocation. We also have marketing spend and some variable costs, even though the business is predominantly fixed. I feel good about our outlook. We're building for the long term, we came in better this quarter, and we'll continue to monitor, but our posture is to invest for the long term while keeping levers we can pull if needed.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Alex. Now, Alex just had his second child, so we let him have two questions. But for the remainder of the question askers, please limit yourself to one question. All right. So the next question is from Dan Fannon.

Daniel Fannon, Analyst, Jefferies

Dan Fannon from Jefferies. I wanted to talk about the health of your customer base given the market volatility at the start of the year. You mentioned April comments about equities and options — can you expand beyond equities and options to crypto, prediction markets, securities lending? Any areas where you're seeing changes in behavior as you go into Q2 versus Q1?

Shiv Verma, CFO

I'm happy to start. Our North Star KPI is net deposits. That shows customer health and trust; we had $18 billion in Q1 despite a tough macro backdrop at the start of the year, including government shutdown concerns, a software sell-off and a global conflict. Customers remain resilient. One big difference from a couple years ago is we're far more diversified, with many products customers use: Banking, Robinhood credit card, Robinhood Strategies (our robo-like product with over $1.5 billion). Regardless of macro backdrop, customers use these products. We also have more active trader tools: index options, which allow you to go long or short; shorting is also growing. For active traders, engagement remains strong. On April specifically, we saw really healthy volumes across equities and options. Prediction markets are on track to be around $3 billion and probably our second-highest month ever. Everything we see points to healthy customers who are engaged, with a little more activity from the active trader constituency. Our thesis is that if you build great products, diversify and give active traders the tools, they'll be there throughout cycles, and that's what we've seen thus far.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Great. Thank you, Shiv. Any other questions, Jeff John Roberts?

Jeff John Roberts, Journalist / Analyst

My question is on prediction markets. How does Robinhood see this industry evolving? Do you see in two years it being like an Uber-Lyft-type duopoly, or are there going to be five, ten, fifteen players?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

Prediction markets occur at various layers. Today, think of us as a brokerage and there are a variety of exchanges. Many players are building exchanges and going through CFTC registration; there have been over a dozen. Expect some consolidation because many new exchanges lack differentiation. Differentiation comes from an established engaged customer base and unique economic advantages. We're unique with 27 million funded U.S. accounts and our partnership with SIG to launch Rothera. That gives us an advantage with retail and institutional. The asset class will continue to grow and we're very early; diversification outside sports is increasing. I don't believe there will be dozens of designated contract markets in the future; expect consolidation in the next couple of years.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. Are there any other people here who would like in person to ask a question? Don't be shy. Okay. Well, then let's go to the Zoom queue. For those joining on Zoom, please raise your hand to ask a question. First question is coming from Devin Ryan at Citizens.

Devin Ryan, Analyst, Citizens

A question I want to dig into on the recent announcement on the Pattern Day Trader elimination. What does that mean for Robinhood and customers for modernization and democratization near term? Bigger picture, how does this play into themes like agentic trading and the ability for customers to trade more than they otherwise would have been able to do? Some thoughts on near term and longer term would be appreciated.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

I think it's fantastic. Pattern Day Trading rules prevent day trading for customers under $25,000 based on account balance as a proxy for sophistication, which is vestigial and outdated. With abundant information today, that proxy makes less sense. The rule also penalizes customers who fall into a flagged state by forcing them to churn brokerages if they want to continue trading, which disproportionately affected us as we get many new customers. We're excited to see this go; these rules tying sophistication to account balance are wrong. We're ready to implement the new logic and think it's a great step by FINRA.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Dan Dolev from Mizuho.

Dan Dolev, Analyst, Mizuho

So great stuff here. Everything sounds promising. I was impressed by the agentic trading commentary. Maybe can you educate us a little on what you guys are doing? If anyone is at the forefront of agentic trading, it will probably be Robinhood. I'm curious to know what you're doing there.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

You caught that in my prepared remarks. My preference isn't to reveal too much about products before we ship them, but we have a lot planned this year. There are three events I announced: some launches in May, a crypto event in early July, and the HOOD Summit in the fall. AI agents and putting the best financial intelligence in customers' hands will be a core part of those events. There's been a lot of noise in the industry, and nobody has really figured it out yet. We're still early and intend to be at the forefront.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Great. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Steven Chubak from Wolfe.

Steven Chubak, Analyst, Wolfe Research

This relates to securities lending in particular, which has remained under pressure industry-wide. The outlook is constructive given upcoming IPOs and above-normal retail allocations. Given more clients opt into fully paid securities lending, can you contextualize how meaningful of a windfall this could become? And if you could speak to take rate dynamics for 2Q, that would be helpful as well.

Shiv Verma, CFO

I'll take this. Securities lending shows up in three places in the financials: securities lending net, segregated cash (we get GC collateral back and reinvest it) and margin interest as customers borrow on margin. Customers continue to opt into the fully paid program and the margin book grew. Securities lending net, which is primarily based on rebate rates, was lower due to lower volatility and fewer IPOs, so special rebates were lower. To judge the business, I look at two things: are customers opting into fully paid, and how much assets are opted in. About 25% of customers have opted into fully paid and about 50% of assets are opted in — healthy adoption but with room to grow. It's hard to predict special rebate rates later in the year, but if the market or IPO activity returns, there could be a rebound. On take rates, that's an output metric: when active traders trade more, take rates naturally go down because we have tiered pricing. That's a good thing — it means engagement and market share. Compared with a few years ago, we're seeing healthier active trader adoption during macro events. To start the quarter, crypto take rate is about 7 basis points lower and options is about $0.03 lower, but we're starting to see a rebound in April. We focus on active traders and market share; overall metrics look super healthy.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Thank you, Shiv, for the double header. All right, the next question is from Ben Budish at Barclays.

Benjamin Budish, Analyst, Barclays

Tying this into Steve's question on securities lending: Shiv, can you talk more about margin funding? I think it's been a source of confusion for investors. You've been moving bank sweep cash over to brokerage cash and using some securities lending-related cash. Any modeling help for future plans would be helpful.

Shiv Verma, CFO

On margin book funding, in Q1 we moved over $6 billion of cash that was off balance sheet in the sweep program onto free credit balances on balance sheet to help fund the margin book. No impact to customers; they get the same rate, 3.35%, one of the best in the industry. This was largely an accounting change and also helps fund the margin book. This is common across brokerages. For modeling, expect that to remain roughly at this rate: about 25% of our free credit balances today are in this structure — $24 billion in sweeps and about $6 billion from free credit balances. It could move a bit quarter-to-quarter, but that's a reasonable way to look at it. Most free credit balances will continue earning the same rate; the $6 billion moved over will have a smaller take rate more akin to our sweeps take rate now that it's on balance sheet.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. The next question is from Craig Siegenthaler from Bank of America.

Craig Siegenthaler, Analyst, Bank of America

Great. I have a follow-up on AI, but not Cortex and not agentic AI. Taking this further, where are you in rolling out AI-powered financial advisers? I believe you're working on it and in talks with regulators. Can you share a timeline?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

When people say AI-powered financial advisers, they mean different things. One is advice on what to invest in, a spectrum from trading recommendations to robo-advice. For robo-advisor services, we have Robinhood Strategies. For agentic work, you should expect increased capability. Any recommendations must comply with Reg BI and related rules. We're making progress with Robinhood Strategies, which we believe is one of the best deposit-and-invest products and meets fiduciary standards; we published returns and historical performance recently. Another meaning of financial advice is holistic financial management — banking, spending, budgeting, estate planning. We'll have multiple solutions. TradePMR and other human-advisor channels still matter; there's a synergy conference for TradePMR coming soon where we'll unveil things for the human advisor side. Human advisors fill specific needs that AI may not fully address in the near term. We're also building digital self-serve offerings — concierge pilots for estate planning and taxes have been successful. As we identify more endpoints, activation energy to have an AI assistant that sees everything decreases. Our strategy is to make capabilities available individually and later stitch them together.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from James Yaro at Goldman Sachs.

James Yaro, Analyst, Goldman Sachs

I wanted to touch on crypto. Any views on when crypto volumes and prices could stabilize at a high level? Trends across your crypto franchise across client types? You commented on near-term take rate dynamics; any thoughts on longer-term crypto take rate?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

When talking about crypto, focus less on asset price and more on crypto as infrastructure. Our strategy is to apply crypto infrastructure to assets with real-world utility — tokenization is core. We believe a tokenization super cycle is beginning. You're starting to see it with stables and tokenized stocks. We're at the very beginning and plan to emphasize tokenization at our U.K. crypto event in July. Crypto native asset prices move up and down; I can't predict short-term price action. But crypto as technology infrastructure will be big, and we're investing: Robinhood Chain, Robinhood Wallet, tokenization initiatives. We're very early, and this will play out over many years. Expect to see the next phase at our July event.

Shiv Verma, CFO

On monetization: we are crypto bullish, but crypto was less than 20% of our revenue last year, about 18%. It's important but we've vastly diversified. Take rate is an output metric. Active traders remain on the platform and we're winning market share; that's our focus. Take rates could be higher in the counterfactual, but that might reduce active traders. In April it's a bit lower in crypto, but we're already starting to see a rebound. We're also excited about institutional via Bitstamp, which is more resilient through cycles and where we're gaining share. Active traders are growing and institutional book is healthy; we're making big investments in tokenization and infrastructure.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. The next question is from Patrick Moley at Piper.

Patrick Moley, Analyst, Piper Sandler

One of the biggest retail stories year-to-date has been perpetual futures. You launched crypto perpetual futures in Europe in Q4. Can you provide an update on rollout, adoption trends, and broader thoughts on perpetuals internationally? What are hurdles to offering this in the U.S.?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

Perpetuals overseas have been doing well. We've listed them on Bitstamp and made them available to EU customers, and we're seeing healthy growth. The product continues to improve. It's regulated, unlike some on-chain competition, so we can't offer as high leverage as some offshore venues, but customers have requested and we've been increasing leverage. We're doubling down; our perpetuals team is working hard and we see opportunity to offer more. In the U.S., we need some rule changes to offer perpetuals here. Some firms offering products called perpetuals are really long-expiry traditional futures contracts. That structure has meant customers sometimes go to unregulated offshore entities with fewer protections. We're engaging with regulators and have the ability to roll out a U.S. product if rules evolve. Perpetuals are attractive for active traders and we'll be on the front lines of any expansion or regulatory easing here.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Okay. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Tannor from Future Investing.

Tannor Manson, Analyst / Investor, Future Investing

My question is on AI and automation. You've been early at Robinhood — how has this shifted your hiring strategy and where are you seeing efficiencies or reduced hiring needs across the organization?

Shiv Verma, CFO

Last year we said we had $100 million in efficiency, primarily in CX and software engineering. If you look at volumes last year, they grew about 50% while hiring in customer service was about flat. We didn't need to reduce hiring; we absorbed volumes through increased productivity. We're still hiring engineers and growing, but using efficiencies to deliver products faster. Efficiencies aren't limited to engineering — everyone across the firm is adopting AI in workflows. For example, marketing launched campaigns built end-to-end using AI. Non-developer teams are also using AI. We can absorb volumes through AI efficiencies and ship faster across many vectors.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. The next question is from Brian Bedell with Deutsche Bank.

Brian Bedell, Analyst, Deutsche Bank

Can you hear me? My video is stuck. Just wanted to touch on trading behavior between active and less active traders. As you bring in more accounts and net deposits perform well, how is the customer mix evolving from new deposits? Are these more active traders building that book faster than less active traders? Also on crypto, are active traders cross-using crypto or is that a separate class?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

One highlight is Gold attach rate growth. Gold attach for new customers used to be low single digits and now it's 40%. Those customers then go into the high-yield offering, a great value prop for Gold. Gold gives interest on cash with FDIC protection and interest on options collateral — very attractive for active traders. The behavior we see is many new customers try Gold and then explore other products we offer. Trading isn't a daily use case for most people; some trade less frequently after building portfolios. Banking and credit card products are daily-use; we have a huge opportunity to get more customers into banking and credit. We have 800,000 cardholders and 125,000 bank accounts with a 40% direct deposit attach rate — good traction but still early. As we scale cardholders and bank customers, expect more top-of-funnel driven by those products, which will drive multiproduct adoption.

Shiv Verma, CFO

On where deposits are coming from: they're broadly diversified. Deposits go into retirement, ETFs, high-yield cash and trading. That's one benefit of our diversified business and a contributor to the $18 billion net deposits.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from David Smith at Truist.

David Smith, Analyst, Truist

Following up on banking: to what extent do you see this driving new customer growth versus ARPU expansion, and what levers do you see for growth there?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

There's a lot of potential. Right now we largely give banking to Gold customers; Gold rollout has primarily been to existing customers. Over the next year you should see a shift to more customers who come specifically for the Gold Card and then adopt brokerage and retirement services as adjuncts. We've run experiments and have more to do to smooth the experience. We've been proving the economics. Many successful card rollouts that moved faster than us got into trouble, so our rollout has been fast yet responsible. As we approach millions of cardholders, expect more top-of-funnel driven by card and banking, which increasingly will be part of the same package — Gold Card and banking will be seen as one and the same.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from John Todaro at Needham.

John Todaro, Analyst, Needham

Wondering if we could go back to Bitstamp. It has been resilient despite the crypto downturn. You mentioned institutional lending earlier. Can you expand on cross-sell opportunities within that segment to drive additional revenue beyond crypto trading?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

We closed the Bitstamp acquisition about a year ago. After our crypto event in the south of France last year we engaged institutional customers to ask what they needed. Many needs were basic — reliable order acknowledgement, low-latency execution. We fixed throughput and reliability issues. There's a lot of low-hanging fruit to grow institutional market share. This is before institutional lending desk upgrades and other product improvements. We're at the beginning and customers have been giving us clear feedback; we want to earn more institutional business.

Shiv Verma, CFO

On institutional lending: it's often working capital needs rather than credit risk. Institutional clients want capital to trade instantaneously or for short-term working capital. Given our balance sheet and technology, we can provide that, which is another way to monetize and grow market share with healthy adoption.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you. The next question is from Amit from Amit is Investing.

Amit Kukreja, Investor

Congrats on a great quarter. A question on international expansion: you just got Singapore approval and have a brokerage in Indonesia. Is the plan to expand via crypto offerings, tokenization, then banking products and promotions? Walk us through how you think of global expansion into 2027 and the strategy to get customers in different countries.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

It's both. We want to be everywhere with core products: trading and eventually banking and spending. In markets with clear regulatory environments we get full licensure — in-principle approval in Singapore, and we've expanded in the U.K. Tokenization provides a quicker way to serve many countries via on-chain stock tokens, enabling faster market reach. We can then see where traction justifies deeper investments with traditional offerings. Traditional depth is needed when jurisdictions have tax wrappers or local exchanges requiring specific integrations. Tokenization can help serve the long tail of markets and let us identify where to go deeper.

Shiv Verma, CFO

Our 2x2 matrix is organic and nonorganic, brokerage or crypto. We've used all four paths: built organically via brokerage (e.g., U.K.), built organically via crypto (e.g., EU), and done acquisitions. We're indifferent to the path; we choose based on speed to market, ROI and right to win.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

The line between tokenized and traditional brokerage will blur. Even though the EU was brokerage-first, we have stock tokens there, giving equities exposure. Expect more traditional brokerage assets delivered in tokenized form globally.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

The next question is from Ramsey at Cantor.

Ramsey El-Assal, Analyst, Cantor Fitzgerald

I wanted to ask about the Trump Accounts again and the levels of engagement there and whether you might have a plan to cross-sell or if you'll be able to cross-sell some of your other products over time into that base?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

For us this is a long-term opportunity to be in front of the next generation of customers and to show we can be a reliable partner to the U.S. government. We're proud to be part of the program. We're focused on making the best product the government has been associated with, working with National Design Studio to build a top-quality financial product. We're not spending too much time thinking about immediate benefits to us; our priority is delivering an exceptional experience. We have some of our best people working on it, and we believe good things will follow from doing this well as a business.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Ed Engel at Compass Point.

Edward Engel, Analyst, Compass Point

You mentioned strong April rebounds across equities, options and prediction markets. Did you give an update on how April crypto volumes are trending relative to the past few months?

Shiv Verma, CFO

Good question. I didn't give a specific update. I'd say crypto is more of the same; we're seeing the rebound in equities and options and prediction markets around $3 billion. Crypto remains similar to Q1 and in that general zone.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Shiv. The next question is from Michael Cyprys at Morgan Stanley.

Michael Cyprys, Analyst, Morgan Stanley

I wanted to ask about API connectivity. How is API connectivity contributing to Robinhood today? I believe you offer it in crypto. Can you elaborate on API strategy, key use cases and how the opportunity set emerges multiyear?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

Historically we haven't invested heavily in API offerings; we've focused on first-party experiences that leverage design and user experience. That said, we're interested in API offerings. With movement toward agentic products, there's opportunity for differentiation. We have low-cost infrastructure and internal APIs we use. There has been demand — folks have reverse-engineered integrations in unsupported ways — so stay tuned. When we release an API product, we aim to make it robust and high-quality, and this is an opportunity area.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. The next question comes from Roy from Crossroads.

Roy, Investor

Congratulations on the Trump Accounts. You note in the earnings slide deck that it's a new way to extend Robinhood's mission to helping governments — plural. Beyond this project with BNY and the Trump Accounts, what does that public sector business look like? Can you comment on the plural reference?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

It's two things. One is learning how to be a government subcontractor; it's not always easy and it's a new step for us. As a company around ten years old, this is a big step, and not many fintechs have made it. There are ways we can help domestically with programs related to finance, and we've already heard from a lot of states and other countries interested in similar initiatives. Our focus is doing one excellent program first, but if it's successful it can scale and present opportunities globally to extend our mission.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Craig Maurer at FT Partners.

Craig Maurer, Analyst, FT Partners

A lot of my questions have been asked. I wanted to ask about the flurry of states speaking out against prediction markets and their concerns — does that temper your excitement for the product?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

It's understandable the states have concerns; it's a jurisdictional dispute. We agree with the CFTC's standpoint that these are federally regulated products under their jurisdiction, and some states have a different view. We continue to defend our position and think it would be strange for states to exert jurisdiction over federally regulated CFTC products. This will play out in the coming years.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

All right. Thank you, Vlad. The next question is from Stock Market News.

Investor, Investor / Attendee

I appreciate you allowing me to ask a question. Congrats on a great quarter. I wanted to ask about Robinhood Social. You launched it recently to some initial users. Any updates on expansion and initial findings from the launch?

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

People love engaging with other traders in the Robinhood community. The first rollout was to HOOD Summit attendees from last fall; many had met in person and we wanted to start small. Initial feedback included requests such as seeing the most engaged posts at the top rather than strictly chronological order and being able to see who other traders engaging with are. The team ships weekly and we've extended the rollout to other asset classes — prediction market trades, equities and options. We built an experience that allows trading via posts as well. Expect general availability in the coming months. We like what we see; there's more to do before this becomes the leading financial social product, but that's the aspiration. We have advantages with verification and people care deeply in this domain. We're also onboarding creators, so stay tuned.

Chris Koegel, VP, Corporate Finance & Investor Relations

Great. Thank you, Vlad. That concludes the Zoom queue. Is there anybody else in the audience who would like to ask any more questions? No? Okay. Well then, Vlad, I will turn it over to you to end the first outdoor earnings call possibly in history.

Vladimir Tenev, Chairman and CEO

Where is the Guinness Book of World Records? Invite them to our stuff. Thank you all very much. I hope you can tell from the presentation that we've got a team working incredibly hard. The roadmap is incredibly full and there's always more to do. We're motivated to keep shipping for our customers and for all of you. Thank you for being with us on the journey. See you next quarter and at our product events in the coming months. Cheers, appreciate it. Thank you, Shiv.

Shiv Verma, CFO

Thank you.