LeapRate Exclusive… LeapRate has learned via regulatory filings that GMO-Z.com Trade UK Limited, the FCA regulated arm of Japan Retail FX giant GMO Internet Inc. (TYO: 9449), has more than tripled its Revenues in its first full year of operation in the UK.
Still small by UK and its own standards as business still ramps up, Z.com Trade UK brought in £1.4 million (USD $1.9 million) of Revenues in calendar 2017 (actually, just the nine months ended December 31, 2017, as the company changed to a calendar year end from a March 31 fiscal year-end), up from £407,000 in 2016. The company sustained a loss of £438,000 in 2017, as UK start-up costs continued.
GMO has big plans for its UK arm, having invested a total of £11 million of capital so far in the business, including £2 million invested by financial arm GMO Financial Holdings (TYO:7177) into Z.com Trade after year-end, as was also exclusively reported by LeapRate.
Masahiro Funada, CEO of GMO-Z.com Trade UK Limited stated to LeapRate:
During this past year we have invested in upgrading our technology and internal capacity to enable us to expand our services across the European and global market, and better leverage the resources we have access to from the world’s largest retail forex provider, GMO CLICK. We have seen a lot of interest in particular on the institutional side of the business, and look forward to expanding GMO CLICK liquidity to a wider global audience, from our liquidity hubs in London and Tokyo.
As we previously reported, the company recently added Neteller and Trustly payment options, upped leverage on major FX pairs trading to 200x, added deposits via China UnionPay Mobile Banking, and upgraded its execution engine, adding CFDs. GMO paid $6.8 million to purchase the z.com domain name in 2014, rebranding its global retail forex operation to the rare one-letter domain while launching an FCA-regulated London-based operation at around the time.
Z.com Trade is the first European subsidiary of GMO Financial Holdings, the world’s largest retail forex broker by volume, serving over 500,000 traders.
Z.com Trade UK’s income statement for 2017 (nine months) follows:
