Aquis: Challenger London stock market reports ‘meaningful progress’
Aquis Exchange has reported increased revenue across the majority of its divisions in the first half of 2024 as the fledgling London bourse battles a “challenging market backdrop”.
Aquis, which is a challenger to the London Stock Exchange, posted a pretax profit of £1.1m for the six months, roughly £93,000 from the same period last year.
Meanwhile, its earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) fell 6.5 per cent to £1.6m, which Aquis said reflected its reinvestment of profits “in personnel and technological resources to maintain the business’s growth momentum”.
The firm’s net revenue came in at £10m, up 3.5 per cent from £9.7m in the first half of 2023.
Aquis said its flagship stock exchange enjoyed a 44 per cent increase in the value of trading on the prior year and £87m of funds raised despite a “challenging market backdrop”.
Injecting more life into Britain’s stock market has been a key focus for the government and regulators over the last year, amid a dearth of IPO activity and a string of big names ditching their London listings for better returns overseas.
The number of Aquis Stock Exchange trades rose 10 per cent, while the total value of further issues jumped 88 per cent in the first half of 2024. It said the division is profitable.
Aquis makes the bulk of its revenue from its markets division, which enables pan-European secondary equities trading across 16 locations. It said the unit’s market share grew to 5.2 per cent from 4.85 per cent over the six months.
The firm cited the “positive impact” from changes to its proprietary trading rule late last year.
Chief executive Alasdair Haynes, who founded Aquis in 2012, said: “We have made meaningful progress across all of our divisions, the majority of which have increased revenues and maintained stable [pretax profit], reflecting the investment plans we communicated last year.
“There is real momentum across the business. Our pipeline in the technologies division has increased materially since last year and now stands at record levels, with notable growth in the quality of the pipeline as well.”
Aquis said current trading was in line with its expectations.