(Bloomberg) -- Toss Securities Co., one of South Korea’s leading platforms for trading US stocks, is setting up a New York subsidiary this year as more Korean retail investors pour money into US equities.
The brokerage arm under Korean fintech leader Viva Republica Co. is seeking to outrun larger incumbents in US stock trades. Toss Securities was first in the country to adopt real-time fractional trading for US equities in 2022, and that practice, which allows investors to buy a sliver of a $116 Nvidia Corp. share, has won over young retail investors.
About 57% of Toss Securities’ 6.1 million users are in their 20s and 30s, helped also by the brokerage service’s placement within Viva Republica’s Toss app and a Reddit-like online community.
“We are growing our US equity trading business,” after securing about 23% of that market in Korea, Chief Executive Officer Kim Seungyeon said in an interview with Bloomberg TV on Wednesday. The company now has five to six key partners in the US, including DriveWealth LLC, Velocity Clearing LLC and Apex Fintech Solutions LLC, he said. “It makes sense for us to expand into the US market and work more closely with them,” Kim said.
The startup turned profitable a little over a year after starting its domestic stock-trading service in 2021. This week, it reported first-half net income of 34.3 billion won ($25 million), driven by a near-doubling of US securities trading volume. Revenue climbed about 82% to 175.1 billion won during the same period.
Kim, who formerly served as TikTok’s general manager in Southeast Asia, expects Toss Securities’ operating profit to top 60 billion won in the second half of this year, aided by its recently-launched US bond trading service. In the first six months of the year, the firm posted operating income of 30.6 billion won.
--With assistance from Shery Ahn, Haidi Lun and Sohee Kim.
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