Swissquote Seeks to Shake Crypto Link Despite 1,500% Stock Rally

This content was published on May 9, 2025 - 11:30

4 minutes

(Bloomberg) — When Swissquote Group Holding SA became the first European bank to let clients trade Bitcoin in 2017, the cryptocurrency was changing hands for around $2,000 per token.

Shares in the online brokerage have surged more than 1,500% since then, riding the wave of soaring demand for digital currencies that has pushed Bitcoin back above $100,000. But being closely linked to crypto also comes with volatility and risks — and Swissquote wants to be clear that there’s more to the company.

“We definitely don’t see ourselves as a Bitcoin stock,” co-founder and chief executive officer Marc Buerki said in an interview. Still, “it’s possible that certain investors look at us primarily through our crypto business,” acknowledged Buerki, who launched the platform with fellow engineer Paolo Buzzi in 1996 and is still Swissquote’s largest shareholder.

Buerki is looking to transform Swissquote from an online trading firm into a more complete financial-services platform. “That includes becoming the first banking address for clients, rather than just another account for trading,” he said, adding that the company could even be an alternative to the likes of UBS Group AG.

Cryptocurrency accounts for less than 15% of the firm’s revenue, with the rest coming from interest income, fees, and trading of currencies and other asset classes, according to company filings. But it’s the crypto connection that has supercharged the shares: They were one of Europe’s top performers in 2024, with a 70% gain, and are up another 29% so far this year.

Martin Lehmann, a fund manager at Zurich-based 3V Asset Management who holds Swissquote shares, said that the company has “a well-diversified range of revenue sources” and can rely on strong trading income or interest income from uninvested assets.

Still, “it will be the first Swiss firm to pop up in investors’ mind looking to get some crypto exposure,” and to get away from that won’t be easy, he said.

The share-price rally has pushed Swissquote’s market capitalization to 6.9 billion Swiss francs ($8.3 billion), making it bigger than both EFG International AG and Vontobel Holding AG. The pair, which are among Switzerland’s larger private banks, each manage more than double the 76.3 billion Swiss francs in assets under management that Swissquote has.

Gains have also driven Swissquote’s shares well above the average target set by analysts, potentially making further upside more tricky.

The stock, which had a clean sweep of buy ratings among Bloomberg-tracked analysts in early 2024, is now rated hold or sell by a majority. And the average 12-month price target of 386 Swiss francs suggests about 14% downside from the current level.

Swissquote’s full-year results showed positive growth for revenue and customer accounts, driven by crypto enthusiasm in 2024, UBS analysts led by Haley Tam wrote in a recent note. Still, “we don’t expect the crypto tailwind to be sustainable both in trading activity and as a tool for new customer acquisition,” they wrote, cutting their price target on the stock.

At 20 times 12-month forward earnings, the shares are cheaper than US peers like Robinhood Markets Inc. at 38 times and Coinbase Global Inc. with a multiple of 29. UBS’s Tam says the discount is appropriate because of the potential longer-term impact of competition from new entrants in Europe on Swissquote’s market share and volumes.

Others, however, see plenty more room to run.

“Thanks to the scalability of its platform, Swissquote should see a disproportionate increase in profits,” said Zuercher Kantonalbank analyst Daniel Regli, who rates the stock outperform.

“The share price hasn’t exhausted its potential and deserves a higher multiple than it currently has.”