Profits from day traders betting on the financial markets cooled at broker and spread-betting firm IG, but more income from the US and rising interest rates helped annual revenue break over £1 billion today.
The pioneering trading platform boomed during the pandemic, when lockdowns prompted people to try trading stocks, bonds and commodities. Total Net trading revenue for the year to May 31 fell 3% to £941 million and adjusted profit before tax slipped 1% to £490.5 million.
That came amid much more challenging conditions on the markets. IG’s technology allows around 360,000 clients to trade a range of financial instruments, about 19,000 in total, including stock indices and currencies.
Charlie Rozes, acting CEO of IG, told the Standard that equities were “not as popular with our traders in the past year,” while “foreign exchange continued to be popular … more so in the first half of the year.”
He said that IG’s clients “are people for whom trading is a daily activity,” adding: “They spend lots of time on it. They attend webinars. They develop trading philosophies. They want to learn how to trade oil, learn how to trade natural gas.
“But in the main, they’re trading the bigger stuff.”
The £1 billion milestone – a 5% rise – came with the London-based firm’s US business on the up. Transatlantic revenue was up by almost half to over £191 million. Income from rising interest rates surpassed £80 million.
