India’s Angel One Q1 profit rises 22% as orders surge

BENGALURU (Reuters) – Indian stockbroker Angel One Ltd said on Thursday its first-quarter profit jumped almost 22%, led by surging client additions and orders.

Consolidated profit was 2.21 billion rupees ($27 million) for the quarter ended June 30, compared with 1.82 billion rupees a year ago.

Total revenue from operations climbed nearly 18% to 8.08 billion rupees.

The company, which offers various trading apps, said its total client base rose about 45% to 15.1 million, while the total number of orders advanced more than 20%.

The results come as India’s benchmark indexes hover near record highs, with the NSE Nifty 50 surging over 10% and S&P BSE Sensex gaining about 10% during the quarter.

Average daily turnover on Angel One’s platform more than doubled to 22.7 trillion rupees.

Traditional stockbrokers such as Angel One are in the midst of a strategic shift towards spending more on technology and new price packages in the face of intense competition from startup brokers such as Zerodha, Groww and Upstox, which are drawing users with discounted offerings and easy-to-use smartphone apps, analysts say.

Angel One held a 12.5% share in the number of demat accounts in India in the June quarter, up from 10.8% last year.

The company declared an interim dividend of 9.25 rupees per share.

Shares of Angel One closed 0.2% lower ahead of the results.

($1 = 82.0868 Indian rupees)

(Reporting by Manvi Pant and Kashish Tandon in Bengaluru; Editing by Dhanya Ann Thoppil)