Angel One – Comprehensive Stock Analysis Report | Scrolls

by Karnivesh | 2026

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Angel One’s journey mirrors the transformation of India’s retail investing itself.

Founded in 1996 as a traditional, relationship-driven brokerage, Angel spent its early years operating much like every other full-service broker branches, sub-brokers, research reports, and human relationships at the core. But as markets digitised and retail participation exploded post-COVID, Angel made a decisive shift. It reinvented itself as a mobile-first, scale-driven financial platform, rebranding from Angel Broking to Angel One and re-architecting the business around technology, data, and mass retail engagement.

Today, Angel One sits at the intersection of discount broking efficiency and full-service advisory depth. It is no longer just a place to buy and sell shares it is a platform where millions of Indians trade, borrow, invest, and manage wealth.

The Scale Story: Millions of Clients, Hundreds of Millions of Trades

Angel One’s most striking achievement is scale.

By Q2 FY25, the platform had crossed 34 million clients, up sharply from 22.2 million just a year earlier. Trading activity has scaled even faster. In Q4 FY24 alone, Angel executed over 470 million orders, making it one of the most active retail trading platforms in the country. With roughly 16.5% demat market share and over 20% share of retail equity turnover, Angel has become a systemically important retail intermediary rather than a niche fintech.

This scale matters because it creates operating leverage. Customer acquisition costs fall, fixed technology and compliance costs get absorbed, and every additional active trader meaningfully boosts profitability.

How the Money Is Made: Beyond Brokerage

Angel One’s evolution is most visible in how it earns money.

Earlier, the business lived and died by brokerage fees. Today, revenue is deliberately layered. Broking still anchors the ecosystem especially futures and options—but it is no longer the whole story. In Q2 FY25, F&O contributed about 46% of gross revenue, while cash equities and commodities added another ~14%.

The real shift lies elsewhere.

Nearly one-third of revenues now come from interest income, earned by funding client trades through margin financing and collateralised lending. Angel has quietly become a lender to its own most active customers, earning recurring, high-yield income rather than one-time transaction fees. Alongside this, distribution income from mutual funds, depository services, wealth advisory (Ionic Wealth), and its AMC arm add smaller but growing streams of recurring revenue.

The result is a business that looks less like a pure broker and more like a financial platform monetising activity, balance sheet, and relationships simultaneously.

Profitability: Scale With Discipline

Despite intense competition and falling brokerage yields industry-wide, Angel One has remained highly profitable.

In FY24, consolidated operating income crossed ₹42,700 crore, while net revenues stood near ₹34,800 crore. Profit after tax reached ~₹1,693 crore, growing ~26% year-on-year. Management continues to guide for 40–45% operating margins, an unusually high level for a regulated financial intermediary.

Returns tell the same story. ROE and ROCE consistently sit above 20%, with management citing ROAE of over 43% in FY24. These numbers suggest that Angel is not just growing fast it is converting growth into returns with remarkable efficiency.

The Balance-Sheet Turn: Profits With Complexity

But this transformation comes with trade-offs.

As Angel leans into client funding, its balance sheet has become more central to the business model. The client funding book expanded from ~₹1,150 crore in FY23 to over ₹5,300 crore by Q2 FY25. This has supercharged interest income and ROE—but it has also made cash flows more volatile and the business more sensitive to funding costs, market shocks, and regulation.

Operating cash flows, once straightforward, now fluctuate as capital gets deployed into lending. Angel increasingly resembles a broker-lender hybrid, where liquidity management and risk controls matter as much as user growth.

Industry Context: Growth Meets Regulation

Angel operates in a structurally attractive industry. India has over 150 million demat accounts, rising financialisation of savings, and a young, app-native investor base entering markets earlier than ever before. The long-term direction more retail participation, more market-linked investing remains intact.

However, the competitive and regulatory environment is unforgiving. Discount brokers compete aggressively on price and UX, while regulators are actively tightening norms around derivatives, leverage, and retail participation. The era of unchecked F&O growth is giving way to calibrated expansion.

This environment favours players with scale, diversified revenues, and compliance muscle but it also punishes over-reliance on any single profit pool.

The Big Picture

Angel One today is no longer a question of survival or product-market fit. That chapter is closed.

The real question is whether it can sustain growth while managing complexity:

• Can it grow wealth and AMC revenues fast enough to reduce cyclicality?

• Can it scale client funding without taking disproportionate balance-sheet risk?

• Can it defend margins as regulation tightens and competition intensifies?

If Angel succeeds, it evolves into a durable, cash-generating financial franchise. If it stumbles, the same leverage that boosts returns could magnify downside.

That tension between scale and stability, profit and prudence is what defines Angel One’s story today.