Nordnet's Second-Best Quarter Ever Comes With a Customer Growth Problem It Won't Spin Away

A 30th-anniversary platform compounding 21% profit growth, a German launch three weeks out — and a home market where new accounts are arriving slower than the target management set for itself.

SAVE.ST · Earnings Call · 2026-10-22

The best quarter that still isn't good enough

Nordnet's third quarter of 2026 was, by the CEO's own accounting, the second strongest in the company's history. Revenue reached SEK 1.6bn, up 18% year-on-year. Profit before tax came in at SEK 1.1bn, up 21% — the third consecutive quarter above the SEK 1bn mark. Net savings rose 23% to SEK 26bn, taking the nine-month total to SEK 80bn, and total savings capital closed at nearly SEK 1.5trn, up SEK 317bn or 28%. The customer base expanded 12% to roughly 2.6 million. Five years of revenue compounding against 8% underlying cost growth — excluding Germany — has produced a 21% CAGR in adjusted profit before tax. That is the headline. The story is the line item underneath it.

The number management cannot spin

Nordnet's medium-term target is 13%–15% annual customer growth. It delivered 12%. Analyst Patrik Brattelius put it bluntly: the company has been below target "for quite a few quarters." Rasmus Järborg did not reach for the usual hedging language. On Sweden specifically he was unusually direct:

We are not happy with the customer growth in Sweden. It is obviously tracking below our target and below our other countries.
Rasmus Järborg, CEO · 2026-10-22

That admission matters because it sits in tension with the rest of the call. Where the company is strongest — engagement, cross-border trading, fund penetration — the numbers are excellent: revenue per trade rose 13% to SEK 41.4, cross-border activity accounted for 42% of traded value, and 54% of customers now hold a fund product. Where it is weakest — winning new accounts in its home market against what it calls a highly competitive market — the growth engine is sputtering even as the product improves. The explanation offered is brand awareness lagging product quality, and the remedies are a campaign programme rather than a product fix: 30th-anniversary marketing, reactivation pushes, new refer-a-friend mechanics, and a Swedish free trading trial that grants new joiners commission-free dealing until 30 June next year.

The deposit pool is shrinking as a share — and nobody wants to model it forward

Customer deposits closed at just over SEK 96bn, but they now equal only 6.6% of savings capital. Brattelius flagged it as an all-time low. Järborg's answer was that this is a deposit composition issue, not a franchise issue: “It's a function, of course, of how risk-on our customers are and how much they're invested into the markets.” — Rasmus Järborg, CEO · 2026-10-22 He added that only about a fifth of the customer deposit balance sits in remunerated accounts, which is the genuinely important detail — it caps how much net interest income actually swings on the deposit share. Net interest income still climbed nearly 20% to SEK 687m on a steady 275bp yield, with full-year 2026 guidance held at roughly SEK 2.7bn. But when Ermin Keric asked for the 2027 snapshot, he got a refusal dressed as a compliment: “I will self-censor not give you that guidance at this point. We will happily do so in the Q4.” — Rasmus Järborg, CEO · 2026-10-22 Worth noting this is a theme the whole market is chewing on. retail deposits was a top-75 global keyword this quarter, and regional banks from FITB to AMAL to CIVB spent their calls on deposit betas and funding costs. Nordnet's version is inverted: it is not paying up for deposits, it is watching its customers spend them into equities and funds.

Capital: strong, and deliberately under-deployed

The balance sheet is not in question. CET1 of 18.1% and a leverage ratio of 4.7% against a 4.0%–4.5% operating band and a 3.5% regulatory floor. Yet the buyback initiated at the end of September was only SEK 250m, and the company is calling its SEK 600m AT1 in November without a replacement. Jacob Hesslevik asked the obvious question, and the CFO's answer effectively conceded the constraint:

The AT1 is part of the answer. We will not replace that with the new AT1, that is why we wanted to be a little bit cautious. The leverage ratio of that one would at end of September be 4.2%... We might come back later on with further buybacks.
Lennart Krän, CFO · 2026-10-22

Read plainly: the capital return is being throttled to keep the leverage ratio inside the band after the AT1 call, with SEK 21bn of deposit-taking capacity still available before the floor. It is prudent. It is also another quarter in which investors have been told to wait for a fuller capital return decision.

The moonshot, and the reason it exists

The most revealing new language on this call was strategic, not financial. Järborg introduced a moonshot — the ambition to serve 100% of customers' wealth across self-directed, advised and managed capital, digital assets and private markets. He was refreshingly honest that it is a direction of travel, not a plan: each product family and geography must "stand on its own" and be prioritised by the board. The concrete near-term pieces are real, though. The German launch goes phased-live in November, deliberately ahead of Germany's 1 January pension reform and the new Altersvorsorgedepot. Järborg's framing — that "there is a Nordnet shaped hole in the German market" between mobile-only apps and active-trader platforms — is a credible positioning, and he is candid that the market will be crowded. Back home, the partnership with ABG Sundal Collier to build a portfolio management and advisory JV launches in Sweden in spring 2027, with Norway next; customers and assets stay on Nordnet, with 50% of JV profits flowing back. And on PFOF ban economics, management welcomed the regulatory shift outright: “if you're not paying for the product, you are the product.” — Rasmus Järborg, CEO · 2026-10-22 Meanwhile the competitive set it named — Robinhood, Interactive Brokers, JPMorgan Chase, Revolut, Trade Republic — reads less like a threat assessment and more like a statement of where the multiple should sit if the moonshot lands. Notably, this is an argument management is making at a company-specific moment: the global keyword tape for the quarter is dominated by rate-path and deposit topics, not by European retail brokerage consolidation.

Bottom line

Nordnet is telling two stories at once. The first is a 30th anniversary platform with genuine operating leverage, a 28% savings-capital growth rate, and a credible European expansion into the single largest retail pension reform in Europe. The second is a company missing its own customer-growth target, in its home market, with a deposit ratio at a record low and a buyback that looks token against an 18.1% CET1. The bull case needs the first story to arrive before the second one is allowed to compound. On this call, management was more convincing about the destination than about the next two quarters.