BUX Closes Above 100,000 Points, a Historic Record

The Budapest Stock Exchange (BÉT) leading stock index, the BUX, exceeded the 100,000-point closing value for the first time, reaching a new historic milestone for the domestic stock exchange.

The index, which started at 1,000 points in 1991 and has since grown a hundredfold, tracks changes in the prices of domestic stocks with the largest market capitalization and turnover, and is also the most important indicator of the performance of the Hungarian capital market.

The new high reflects both the strengthening of investor confidence and the profitability of Hungarian listed companies. Anyone who invested in the stock index in 1991, the year following the reestablishment of the Budapest Stock Exchange, has seen their investment grow more than a hundredfold to date. The rise of the BUX is remarkable both internationally and regionally, and with a performance of 26% so far in 2025, it is among the world's leaders.

Key milestones and indicators of the BUX index:

• Since 1991, investors who have invested in the BUX index from the outset have achieved a total return of 100 times their investment, corresponding to an average annual return of 14%.
• The index's most successful 10-year period was between 1995 and 2005, with a 1468% increase, i.e. more than a fourteenfold increase.

Key milestones of the BUX index:

The index has been in existence for 34 full years, of which it has performed positively in 24 years, with double-digit returns in 17 years; it achieved its highest annual return in 1996 (170%).

• In 1991, the first BUX basket consisted of 6 members, while the index currently contains 16 stocks.
• Since 1991, the index has had a total of 64 different members.
• Richter shares have been an uninterrupted member of the index for more than 30 years, since 1994, with the other blue chips joining the basket in the following order: OTP in 1995, MOL in 1996 and Telekom in 1998.
• Currently, 13 of the 16 index members have been continuously and uninterruptedly included in the index since the date of their inclusion in the index basket.
• Since 2023, the BUX index has been one of the best performing indices in international comparison, with a 220% increase.

At the same time, as a result of new share issues and rising share prices, the size (capitalization) of the domestic stock market has now exceeded HUF 20,000 billion, and in recent years, around 40 new issuers have appeared on the domestic stock exchange. According to data from the Hungarian National Bank, by the end of 2024, Hungarian households' domestic share holdings exceeded HUF 2,000 billion, which is more than five times the amount ten years ago.