⚠ Earnings Ride the Market's MoodModerate threat

Because trading revenue scales with turnover, GPW's core earnings are hostage to the mood of the market. A booming year like 2025 — record volumes on a rallying Warsaw index — flatters the numbers and makes the operating leverage look magical; a bear market, a liquidity drought, or a rotation of global capital away from emerging Europe does the reverse, and the same leverage that amplified the good year amplifies the bad one. The exchange cannot manufacture volume; it can only collect a toll on whatever volume the market provides.

The risk is that an investor extrapolates a peak. The temptation after a record year is to treat the high volumes as the new normal, but Polish equity turnover is volatile and sentiment-driven, and it can fall as fast as it rose. The commodity and data segments and the recurring listing fees cushion the swing — that diversification is precisely why it matters — but the transaction line, the single largest revenue stream, will always breathe in and out with the market. Buying GPW at the top of a volume cycle — at about 19 times earnings after the shares more than doubled from 40,45 złoty at the end of 2024¹² — is buying the toll booth on the busiest day of the year and assuming every day will be as busy.