IG Group, the UK’s leading online financial spreadbetting and CFDs broker, announced today more details from its first half results, and they looked good. (The company had already given us a peak into 1H revenues on November 29, after which IG Group’s shares traded up 9%). Note that IG Group has a May 30 year-end, so that technically these were results for the first half year of fiscal 2012, ending November 30, 2011.
In brief:
- Revenues were up 25% over 1H-2011 (would have been 28% if not for IG Group’s discontinued Sports spread betting business Extrabet). All areas (except Japan – see below) grew nicely: UK by 23%, Australia 43%, Europe (ex-UK) 41% and Rest-of-World 54%.
- Second quarter (Sep-Oct-Nov) revenues (£96.0M) were actually down 4% as compared to Q1 (£99.6M), but that was mainly due to a blowout month of August (part of fiscal Q1), which saw high levels of volatility after S&P downgraded the U.S.
- IG Group still does more than half its revenue in the UK – 52%, to be precise.
- IG Group’s business in Japan – FXOnline Japan KK, one of the top 10 online Forex brokers in Japan – as well as apparently the entire Japanese Forex market, continues to suffer following further leverage restrictions implemented in August. Japan revenues were down 25%, reflecting a drop in revenues-per-client of 19%, as well as an 8% drop in number-of-active-clients. We believe these types of dropoffs are typical of the Japanese Forex market, which has lost its #1 Forex market position to Europe over the past two years.
To download IG Group’s first half results release click here.