Webull Q2 2026: 51% revenue growth on 26 days of the rule change

Webull reported record results on Wednesday evening. Revenue grew 51%, adjusted operating profit grew 169%, and a company that lost $28.3 million in the year-ago quarter earned $24.4 million.

The number that frames all of it is not in the release: 26. That is how many days of the quarter fell after June 4, 2026 — the date the pattern day trader rule ceased to exist.

The quarter

	Q2 2026	Q2 2025	Change
Total revenue	$198.8M	$131.5M	+51%
Trading-related revenue	$147.7M	$88.8M	+66%
Interest-related income	$42.8M	$36.3M	+18%
Adjusted operating profit	$62.6M	$23.3M	+169%
Adjusted operating margin	31.5%	17.7%	+13.8 pts
Net income	$24.4M	−$28.3M	swing to profit
Diluted EPS (GAAP)	$0.04	−$1.20	—

Zacks put the consensus at $0.03 a share and scored the quarter at $0.07 on its adjusted basis — a figure Webull does not itself report; its release gives GAAP EPS and adjusted net income of $43.2 million.

Operating metrics:

	Q2 2026
Customer assets	$28.5B, +79%
Funded accounts	5.13M, +8% (4.73M a year ago)
Assets per funded account	~$5,556 (our arithmetic)
Options volume	213M contracts, +68%
Equity notional volume	$279B
International funded accounts	~810,000, across 18 markets

Prior-year figures are from the same filing (trading-related revenue = order-flow rebates plus handling-charge income); margins and shares of revenue are our arithmetic. See the method note.

Did Webull issue guidance for Q2 2026?

No — Webull’s first-quarter results release and presentation (Form 6-K filed May 21, 2026) gave no quantitative revenue or earnings guidance for the second quarter. Against the year-ago quarter, total revenue rose 51% to $198.8 million and trading-related revenue 66% to $147.7 million, as reported. Net income attributable to the company was $24.4 million against a net loss of $28.3 million, and diluted EPS was $0.04 against a loss of $1.20 per share.

Three effects, one growth number

The pattern day trader rule required a $25,000 minimum equity balance for anyone placing four or more day trades in five business days in a margin account. The SEC approved its elimination on April 14, 2026; FINRA set the effective date at June 4, 2026, replacing the designation with a risk-based intraday margin framework under amended Rule 4210, under which eligible margin accounts above $2,000 receive intraday buying power.

Critically, FINRA gave broker-dealers an 18-month phase-in, running to October 20, 2027. Some firms switched it on immediately. Others have not.

Webull switched it on immediately, and announced it.

That means the 51% contains at least three distinct things, and they have very different lifespans:

1. The underlying business, which was growing before June 4. Two months of this quarter predate the rule change entirely.
2. An industry-wide level shift. Removing a $25,000 gate on day trading permanently increases how much intraday activity small accounts can generate. That is durable, and it accrues to the whole industry — not to Webull specifically.
3. A first-mover share gain. For as long as slower competitors are still phasing in, Webull is one of the few venues where a $3,000 account can day trade freely. This is the largest of the three effects in the short run and the only one guaranteed to erode.

The forward implication runs both ways, which is why it is worth stating plainly rather than picking a side.

Q3 mechanically gets more of effects 1 and 2: a full 91 days of the new regime instead of 26. Absent a market shock, the reported trading revenue should step up again — and the Q3 headline will be flattered by the same calendar arithmetic that flattered Q2, only more so.

Effect 3 decays on a schedule that is public. Every competitor that completes its phase-in before October 2027 removes a reason to be at Webull. The question no single quarter can answer is how many of the accounts acquired in this window stay after that.

The revenue mix moved toward the cyclical half

Trading revenue grew 66%. Interest-related income grew 18%.

	Share of revenue
Trading-related	74.3% now, 67.5% a year ago
Interest-related	21.5% now, 27.6% a year ago
Crypto	~1.1% (per Investing.com’s summary of the call)

Interest income of $42.8 million included $20.8 million from client cash and $12.9 million from margin financing, per the results presentation. That is the balance-driven half of the business — it scales with assets held and with rates, and it does not require anyone to trade. It is the closest thing Webull has to recurring revenue, and its share of the total fell by roughly six points in a year.

This is the opposite of the transition brokerages usually describe. Coinbase spent three years telling investors that a rising subscription share made its revenue more predictable. Webull just posted a quarter in which the volatile line grew nearly four times as fast as the stable one.

That is not a criticism of the quarter — trading revenue is real revenue, and 66% growth is 66% growth. It is a statement about what the next drawdown does. A business at 74% trading revenue falls harder when volumes normalise than one at 68%.

Crypto, at roughly $2.25 million according to Investing.com’s article summarizing the call, is barely over 1% of revenue. Management noted that stronger crypto activity would be immediately accretive given how small the contribution currently is. That is true, and it also means the crypto optionality is worth close to nothing in the numbers as they stand.

The operating leverage is real. The gap to net income is mostly real cost.

The incremental economics here are genuinely impressive. Revenue rose about $67 million year over year; adjusted operating profit rose about $39 million. That is an incremental adjusted operating margin near 58% (our arithmetic) — most of each new dollar of revenue reaching the operating line, which is what you would expect from a platform where marginal trades cost almost nothing to process.

Adjusted operating margin went from 17.7% to 31.5%, as reported.

Now the other side. Adjusted operating profit was $62.6 million. Net income was $24.4 million. The gap is about $38 million (our arithmetic), and net margin on a GAAP basis is 12.3% (our arithmetic) against the 31.5% adjusted figure.

The release reconciles it. Adjusted operating profit adds back $17.1 million of share-based compensation and $10.8 million of other expense, net; income before taxes was $34.7 million, and a $10.3 million tax provision takes it to $24.4 million. So only the share-based compensation — about $17 million, under half the gap — is an add-back of a cost shareholders bear in dilution rather than cash. The other ~$21 million is other expense, net and tax, which are real.

The practical point: the adjusted operating margin flatters the result by the full $38 million, but most of that gap is ordinary cost, not accounting choice. Adjusted net income, which adds back stock compensation and $3.9 million of foreign-currency transaction losses and deducts a $2.2 million deferred-tax item, was $43.2 million — and the $0.07 Zacks scored against its $0.03 consensus is not the $0.04 diluted EPS that flowed to shareholders under GAAP.

Where the $28.5 billion came from

Customer assets grew 79% to $28.5 billion. Funded accounts grew 8% to 5.13 million, from 4.73 million a year earlier, putting average assets per funded account at about $5,556 (our arithmetic), up roughly two-thirds from about $3,370 (our arithmetic, from the reported growth rates). On the call, per the Investing.com transcript, the CEO said the average account had “nearly doubled to over $5,500.”

Run that together: the asset growth came overwhelmingly from existing accounts holding more, not from new accounts arriving. Funded accounts barely moved between quarters — 5.11 million at the end of Q1, 5.13 million at the end of Q2 — and the release says net deposits grew 7% year over year. Customer assets are measured at market value, so the 79% includes market moves on what customers already held as well as new deposits; the release does not split the two.

It matters because the two stories carry different economics. Existing customers depositing more is a deepening relationship and it is cheap. New customers arriving is a growth engine and it costs marketing dollars. This quarter is mostly the first.

International is ~810,000 of the 5.13 million funded accounts, or about 16%, across 18 markets, with the acquisition of Pi Securities in Thailand announced in the quarter.

What management did and did not say

Webull gave no formal revenue or profit guidance. For a company whose revenue just stepped up on a regulatory change with an uncertain durability profile, that is a meaningful absence rather than a neutral one.

The one forward cost signal offered on the call, per the Investing.com transcript: the CFO said marketing spend for the rest of 2026 “will not be lower compared to the Q2 levels, but we also don’t expect it to be higher than the Q1 levels.” Marketing and branding expense was $49.4 million in Q1 (per the Q1 release, Form 6-K Exhibit 99.1 filed May 21, 2026) and $35.0 million in Q2. Read plainly, H2 sits somewhere in between — so the 31.5% adjusted margin has a known headwind against it, of a size the company has chosen not to quantify.

The bear case, stated fairly

• The best comparison is behind, not ahead. By Q2 2027, the year-over-year comparison includes the post-PDT period. Growth rates compress mechanically at that point regardless of how the business performs.
• The first-mover advantage has an expiry date printed on it: October 20, 2027, when the last phase-in window closes.
• The revenue mix is more cyclical than it was, at a moment when trading volumes are elevated.
• PDT removal disproportionately enables the accounts least equipped for day trading — those previously below $25,000. Higher activity from that cohort is good for revenue per account and questionable for the durability of the account.
• About $38 million of the adjusted operating profit does not reach GAAP net income — $17 million of it stock compensation.
• No guidance, at a moment when the forward path depends on variables management understands far better than the market does.

What to check at the Q3 report

• Trading revenue against $147.7 million, with a full quarter of the new regime rather than 26 days. A step-up is close to mechanical; the size of it is the real signal.
• Funded accounts against 5.13 million. This is the number that separates “existing customers deposited more” from “we are acquiring”.
• Interest income against $42.8 million and its share of the total. A recovering share would say the balance-driven half is keeping pace.
• Adjusted operating margin against 31.5%, into the flagged increase in marketing spend.
• The GAAP-to-adjusted bridge. If the ~$38 million gap persists at scale, it belongs in any valuation.
• Any commentary on competitor phase-in. The moment large brokers complete their PDT transitions, the share-gain component starts to unwind.
• Crypto revenue against the ~$2.25 million in Investing.com’s summary of the call. Management has framed it as free upside; it is currently a rounding error.

The read

Webull had an unambiguously good quarter. Revenue, profit, margin and customer assets all moved sharply in the right direction, and the swing from a $28.3 million loss to $24.4 million of net income is a real change in the business rather than an accounting one.

What it is not is a 51% growth rate. It is a business growing at some underlying pace, plus a regulatory unlock that arrived with 26 days left in the quarter, plus a temporary advantage over competitors who have not finished switching the same thing on. The next two quarters will make the first number look better and start eroding the third.

The disclosure that settles most of this is already in the release: funded accounts grew 8% while assets grew 79%. Q3 will show whether a full quarter of the new regime brings new accounts, or only more activity from existing ones.

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Sources and method. Company figures are from Webull’s Q2 2026 results, filed as Exhibits 99.1 (press release) and 99.2 (presentation) to a Form 6-K on August 19, 2026 (CIK 0001866364, accession 0001213900-26-091702), read directly from SEC EDGAR; prior-year comparatives are the filed year-ago columns. Call remarks — the average-account comment and the marketing-spend outlook — are quoted from the Investing.com transcript of the August 19 call, and the ~$2.25 million crypto revenue and its ~1.1% share are from Investing.com’s article summary of the call; none are filed figures. The consensus EPS of $0.03 and the $0.07 adjusted EPS it is compared with are Zacks’s figures (via Yahoo Finance), not company figures. Whether the quarter beat or missed the company’s own guidance is judged only against the year-ago quarter, because Webull issued no quarterly guidance: its first-quarter release and presentation (Form 6-K filed 2026-05-21, accession 0001213900-26-060085, Exhibits 99.1 and 99.2) contain none; the Q1 marketing and branding expense of $49.4 million is from that Q1 release’s income statement. This piece makes no claim about the share-price reaction. Shares of revenue, the incremental operating margin of ~58%, the GAAP net margin and assets per funded account are our own arithmetic on disclosed numbers. The regulatory chronology — SEC approval on April 14, 2026, FINRA effective date of June 4, 2026, and the phase-in window to October 20, 2027 — comes from the linked Schwab coverage of the rule change, not from Webull.

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