Gain Capital (Forex.com) announced its Q2 results today, showing a return to profit (albeit a small one) after reporting two condecutive quarters of losses. Gain earned EBITDA of $8.8 million and net income of $4.4 million in Q2.
Continuing to be troubling at Gain, however, is the issue of trading volumes. Despite showing a healthy rise in retail revenues from Q1, those revenues were earned on falling retail volume. Gain Capital’s retail volumes fell to $114 billion per month in Q2 — its lowest retail volumes since Q3-2010, the quarter before its IPO — and institutional volumes were also off slightly from Q1’s levels. Clearly Gain Capital has a problem with growth. This higher-revenues-on-lower-volumes phenomenon also demonstrates the unpredictability of being a market-maker, versus having an agent/ECN model like rival FXCM.
The company certainly is taking steps to try and promote growth — acquiring futures broker Open E Cry from optionsExpress for $12 million, getting regulated and opening in Canada, hiring more institutional brokers — but those efforts have not yet really born fruit, other than on the less-profitable institutional side of the business.
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