Internet brokerage tables encounter dark horses: the "Three Musketeers" lineup changes to the "Four Strong" competition

With the ongoing release of 2025 annual reports, the latest “performance records” of the “Four Titans” among internet brokerage firms—East Money, iFinD, Dahua Intelligence, and Compass—have been fully unveiled.

With the market running hot, all four companies achieved positive revenue growth, but the gap in profitability is still widening. While the “Four Titans” share the stage, they are already operating in different development quadrants.

One “hegemon”-level leader: East Money leads by a wide margin with attributable net profit of RMB 12.085 billion, equivalent to net inflows of over RMB 33.10 million per day. One “high-profit” runner: iFinD recorded a profit growth rate of 75.79%, accelerating rapidly; under a light-asset model, it achieved net profit of RMB 3.205 billion.

One “dark-horse” breakout: Compass saw a year-on-year surge of 118.74% in net profit, with the highest growth rate among the four. Its securities business expansion helped it make a crucial leap from a software company to an internet brokerage firm. As for Dahua Intelligence, one of the “Three Musketeers” of the past, it still struggles near the breakeven line: it posted a full-year loss of RMB 44 million, but the loss has narrowed by nearly 80%, as it works to get out of its predicament.

Amid this divergence in performance, the business logic of the four companies also differs. The contest between “brokerage firms” and “platformization,” with “pursuers” entering one after another, is well underway in the internet brokerage battle.

And as AI becomes a new variable in industry competition, who can seize the next “decisive factor” first has also become a key focus for the market.

Performance insights: East Money leads; Compass breaks through

In 2025, China’s A-share market saw both price and trading volume rise. On the one hand, the SSE Composite Index hit a new 10-year high; on the other, the average daily trading value across the two markets exceeded RMB 1.7 trillion, up 62% year on year. With the market heating up, investor enthusiasm for entering the market surged, with a total of 27.44 million new A-share accounts opened over the year.

The increase in market activity directly translated into strong demand for services such as trading tools and market information, driving the internet brokerage firms’ performance to show significant growth.

Focusing on the performance in 2025 of the “Four Titans” of internet brokerage firms—East Money, iFinD, Dahua Intelligence, and Compass—overall results show that all four companies seized market opportunities and achieved positive revenue growth, but there are notable differences in profitability.

Specifically, East Money, leveraging its scale advantage, firmly sits at the top. iFinD, through a light-asset model, demonstrates strong profit elasticity. Compass, by integrating and breaking through in its securities business, delivered “dual acceleration” in both revenue and net profit. Meanwhile, although Dahua Intelligence has made some progress in reducing losses, it still cannot avoid the growing gap versus the top three.

In terms of operating revenue, the four companies show a clearly tiered structure by size. East Money’s full-year operating revenue of RMB 16.068 billion ranks first. This figure is 2.6 times that of iFinD (RMB 6.029 billion), 7.5 times that of Compass (RMB 2.146 billion), and more than 19 times that of Dahua Intelligence (RMB 0.827 billion).

From the perspective of revenue growth rates, iFinD leads with 44% growth. Compass follows closely with 40.39% growth. East Money’s growth rate is slightly lower than the first two, but it still achieved 38.46% growth given its revenue scale of over RMB 10 billion. Dahua Intelligence, by contrast, recorded only 7.23% growth, and its gap with the other three companies continued to widen.

With revenue rising across the board, the four companies’ profit performance also has its own highlights.

East Money leads far ahead with attributable net profit of RMB 12.085 billion. This number exceeds the sum of the other three companies’ net profits by more than three times, and represents a 25.75% year-on-year increase. Its scale advantage is formidable. iFinD shows the typical traits of a “small but beautiful” model: its attributable net profit is RMB 3.205 billion, but its year-on-year growth rate of 75.79% far exceeds its revenue growth rate, fully releasing profit elasticity under the light-asset model. Compass’s performance is also impressive: it generated attributable net profit of RMB 228 million for the full year, a year-on-year surge of 118.74%, becoming the company with the fastest profit growth among the four.

By comparison, Dahua Intelligence is still struggling near the breakeven line. It posted a full-year loss of RMB 44 million, but the loss amount has narrowed sharply by 78.13% versus the same period last year—its loss-reduction efforts have been effective.

A view of daily profitability may be even more intuitive. In total, the four internet brokerage firms achieved combined net profit of RMB 15.474 billion in 2025, equivalent to earning about RMB 42.39 million per day. Among them, East Money, iFinD, and Compass absorbed about RMB 33.10 million, RMB 8.78 million, and RMB 0.62 million per day, respectively, while Dahua Intelligence had a daily loss of about RMB 0.12 million.

Top-of-the-table showdown: divergence in the paths of “brokerage firms” vs. “platformization”

Under the differentiated performance in scale and growth, differences in revenue composition reflect the fundamental differences in each company’s underlying business logic.

For these two industry “giants,” East Money and iFinD, this difference is most clearly manifested. Both started as financial information service platforms, yet they have diverged into two distinct paths: “brokerage firms” and “platformization.”

With full securities licenses in hand, East Money’s business model has distinct brokerage-firm characteristics. In 2025, its securities services business contributed revenue of RMB 12.535 billion, accounting for 78.02% of total revenue. This means that for every RMB 100 it earns, RMB 78 comes from its securities business. Viewed this way, it is essentially closer to a brokerage firm that uses the internet as a channel.

Breaking it down, brokerage business is its absolute “mainstay.” In 2025, East Money achieved net revenue from its securities brokerage business of RMB 7.724 billion, up 50.30% year on year; net interest income such as margin financing and securities lending interest was RMB 3.435 billion, up 44.27% year on year. These two businesses, which are highly correlated with market transaction volumes, form the “stabilizing weight” in East Money’s revenue under a bull market.

Fund distribution is East Money’s second-largest business. Worth noting is that against the backdrop of lower fund sales fee rates, this business’s “gold content” is facing weakening in the near term. In 2025, East Money’s financial e-commerce service (fund distribution) generated revenue of RMB 3.182 billion, accounting for 19.80% of total revenue, up 11.99% year on year. However, it clearly lagged behind the 38.51% growth rate in fund sales value in the same period. At the same time, competition in fund distribution channels is intensifying. According to analyst Sun Ting of Soochow Securities’ non-institutional sector, the market share of equity fund assets under management for East Money’s 天天基金 (Tian Tian Fund) declined in the second half of 2025, while the market shares of Ant Fund and China Merchants Bank increased in the same period.

In contrast, although its financial data services business is still small in scale, its growth rate is promising. In 2025, East Money’s financial data services generated revenue of RMB 240 million, with a revenue share below 1.50%, yet it achieved 25.18% growth. This business mainly uses data from intelligent financial data terminals such as Choice data and provides data services to institutions and individual users.

Different from East Money’s “brokerage-firm” path, iFinD—being the top “traffic factory”—has a more pronounced “platformization” attribute, displaying clear light-asset and high-gross-margin characteristics.

Advertising and internet promotion services are iFinD’s largest source of revenue. In 2025, this business generated revenue of RMB 3.462 billion, up 70.98% year on year, accounting for 57.43% of total revenue, with a gross margin as high as 96.09%.

Meanwhile, its value-added telecom services and software sales segments generated revenue of RMB 1.951 billion and RMB 399 million, respectively, with growth rates of 20.71% and 12.12%, respectively. Gross margins for both exceeded 85%, providing stable profitability support. These two businesses are relatively similar to East Money’s “financial data services”: revenue mainly includes paid tools such as Level-2 quotes, and financial information terminals such as iFind.

Behind the “high gross margin” is iFinD’s business logic of “making money with technology” and “monetizing traffic.” In 2025, iFinD’s average monthly active users (MAUs) for its app were 35.4991 million, maintaining the top position among securities-related apps. It also created a scale gap versus the second and third-place East Money (17.4277 million) and Dahua Intelligence (12.0955 million). This large user base motivates financial institutions to pay iFinD promotion fees to gain user attention; meanwhile, keeping users engaged for the long term depends on the platform continuously building a technological “moat.”

The race of the “pursuers”: Who is the “next East Money”?

If East Money and iFinD represent the divergence between the “brokerage-firm” and “platformization” paths, then on the “brokerage-firm” road, Compass and Dahua Intelligence are also entering one after another in the role of pursuers. However, the former has already stepped on the gas pedal, while the latter is still waiting for the “green light.”

After acquiring Macao Securities in 2022, Compass completed its acquisition of Pioneer Fund in 2025, further improving its financial ecosystem. In terms of revenue composition, Compass’s business is still “70% software and 30% securities.” But as Macao Securities continues to expand its operations, its transition from a software company to an internet brokerage firm is stepping onto the express track.

“Software” remains the company’s fundamental earnings base. In 2025, Compass’s financial information services business (formerly software sales) generated full-year revenue of RMB 1.509 billion, up 27.50% year on year, accounting for about 70.32% of total revenue. This segment maintains a high gross margin of 87.22%. It is both the revenue pillar and an important source of traffic for other businesses.

Securities services is the fastest-growing segment for Compass. In 2025, Compass’s securities services revenue rose to RMB 607 million, up 91.19% year on year, accounting for 28.27% of total revenue. Focusing on its subsidiary Macao Securities, full-year revenue reached RMB 757 million, up 55.61%. As of the end of 2025, Macao Securities’s customer assets under custody (funds for brokered securities transactions as agent) exceeded RMB 10 billion, reaching RMB 10.115 billion, up 52.72% from the end of the previous year. Customer asset scale is being accumulated rapidly.

Unlike Compass’s “smooth turn,” Dahua Intelligence, which was once among the “Three Musketeers” of internet brokerage firms, is still exploring and repairing its business model.

In terms of revenue composition, Dahua Intelligence’s core business still consists of financial information and data PC terminal service systems. In 2025 it generated revenue of RMB 422 million, with revenue share of more than half, up 7.71% year on year, and a gross margin of 59.86%.

The most profitable business is advertising and internet promotion services. Full-year revenue was RMB 122 million, up 14.7% year on year, with a gross margin as high as 98.97%, but it accounts for less than 15% of revenue.

The fastest-growing is the mobile-end business. In 2025, revenue from the financial information and data mobile terminal service system was RMB 35.4151 million, up 38.57% year on year, but its scale is still small and cannot drive overall growth.

In fact, the narrowing of Dahua Intelligence’s losses is more about “cutting costs” rather than “increasing sources of income.” In 2025, its period expenses fell 8.55% year on year, showing relatively clear cost-reduction and efficiency-improvement effects, but its revenue growth rate still is not enough to fully cover costs.

With growth lackluster, the market has pinned hopes on an acquisition-and-merger of Dahua Intelligence by Xiangcai Co., expecting that this could connect the closed loop from information to transactions and lead it onto a path similar to East Money and Compass. However, their “marriage” can be described as fate-filled: in March of this year, this deal was halted because the valuation data in the application documents had expired; it will be resumed after the data is updated and resubmitted.

In addition, even if the merger is completed, Dahua Intelligence will face a common issue with Compass: when East Money transitioned, its traffic entry points were already quite mature; while Dahua Intelligence and Compass still have a considerable gap versus East Money in terms of their current traffic foundation and monetization capability. Therefore, how to find and run on their own rhythm remains the core challenge for the pursuers.

AI sprint: finding the “next decisive factor”

Although business models differ, as internet brokerage firms, technical capability is always the shared underlying foundation.

In terms of R&D investment, East Money and iFinD are relatively close in scale. In 2025, both R&D investments exceeded RMB 1 billion: RMB 1.067 billion and RMB 1.145 billion, respectively. However, in terms of R&D expense ratios, iFinD’s R&D expense ratio is 18.99%, far higher than East Money’s 6.64% in the same period, indicating that iFinD is devoting a higher proportion of spending to technology.

Compass and Dahua Intelligence have R&D investment scales below RMB 200 million: RMB 164 million and RMB 185 million, respectively. It is worth noting that Compass is the only one among the four whose R&D expenses are still increasing—up 1.17% year on year—and its R&D expense ratio is 7.66%. Dahua Intelligence, while working hard to reduce losses, cut its R&D expenses by 16.20%, but its R&D expense ratio is still as high as 22.40%.

As for the purposes of R&D investment, AI is undoubtedly the “greatest common denominator.” Amid the AI wave, how to empower investment research and decision-making is the mandatory question every internet brokerage firm must answer. However, the four companies have different approaches to solving it.

On the technology side, iFinD is the most willing to bet big. It was among the first to explore “All in AI,” and in recent years has continuously added to its related deployments. In 2025, iFinD upgraded the “Wen Cai HithinkGPT” large model into an agent, evolving from a single inference model into an autonomous planning-and-inference intelligent agent. Entering 2026, iFinD also launched the “Tongce HiAlpha platform,” further supporting “agent-based stock trading.”

Reporters also noticed that in the recruitment positions iFinD has recently opened, roles such as “robot mechanical design engineer” and “algorithm engineer—embodied intelligence direction” appear. The job descriptions specify that “closely collaborate with teams such as mechanical, perception, and AI, participate in optimizing robot full-machine performance and productization deployment, and promote efficient deployment of algorithms in real-world scenarios.” Although iFinD has not yet released any robot-related products, these hiring updates may also reveal its “next step” exploration posture.

East Money’s AI strategy is tightly centered on its “information—community—trading—wealth management” ecosystem closed loop, and when it comes to developing and deploying AI products, it places more emphasis on deep integration with core business scenarios. In 2025, East Money officially opened the “Miaoxiang” large model to all users, and empowered its own businesses—for example, embedding East Money website and 天天基金 (Tian Tian Fund) platforms at the C-end to provide intelligent investment advisory features; and at the B-end, launching the “Miaoxiang investment research assistant” service to meet the investment research needs of institutions.

When answering investors’ questions about the “impact of Miaoxiang AI investment,” East Money stated that Miaoxiang AI capabilities are comprehensively integrated into empowering each product and business line of the company, rapidly building and improving an intelligent internet wealth management ecosystem, channeling Miaoxiang AI capabilities into the entire East Money ecosystem, and continuously improving the construction of the internet wealth management ecosystem.

Compared with the two “giants” with plenty of resources, Compass and Dahua Intelligence’s current AI layout still focuses more on breaking through via “small entry points”—using AI mainly as an auxiliary tool to enhance existing product functions and operational efficiency, while still exploring R&D for ecosystem-level products.

In 2025, Dahua Intelligence launched an AI quantitative strategy feature called “Hui Wen,” and its Morning Star AI investment research system continues to be updated. Compass, meanwhile, rolled out a “smart customer service system” that supports intelligent investment research.

In the battle for dominance among internet brokerages, AI is becoming the core variable in the next round of competition and increasingly is becoming a consensus in the industry.

Under this consensus, industry insiders point out that the winner and loser in this race depends not only on the amount of technical investment, but also on whether AI can create resonance with each company’s business logic. The company that can first convert AI capabilities into tangible user stickiness and revenue growth will seize the initiative in the next cycle.