CMC Markets plc

Good morning and thank you for joining CMC's half year 2025 results presentation. On the call with me today is our Chief Financial Officer Albert Solomon and Deputy Chief Executive Officer David Feinberg. I will begin this morning's presentation with a brief overview of some of the key highlights from the half year before handing over to Albert and David, who will cover the financial, operational and strategic highlights in more detail. I will then finish with a summary of our strategic outlook before we take your questions. It has been a strong start to the year for the group as our strategic focus on diversification and expansion continues to drive the business forward. Net operating income for the year is up 45% at £177 million, and our profit before tax rose to £49.6 million, with a significant year-on-year increase in our profits before tax margin, which came in at 28%. This strong financial performance is extremely pleasing to see and is early evidence that our diversification strategy and focused efforts to improve margins and profitability are having good effect. This half year has also been characterized by continued technological innovation, which has resulted in high profile partnerships, including those with Revolut, and ASB Bank. Our Revolut partnership has had a successful soft launch and we are now live in three European countries with plans for future phased rollout to additional regions. Over the past year, I have visited all of our overseas offices to engage with potential clients and our global teams, and this includes my recent visit to Auckland to sign the ASB bank transaction, another high-profile client win for the business. Whilst in Auckland, I also met with the CEO of the New Zealand Stock Exchange to confirm our application to become a market participant and member of the exchange, further solidifying our footprint and highlighting our dedication to fostering high value relationships in the region. From a product perspective, it has been another story of progress as we have enhanced our cash equities and options products and we'll be launching cash ISAs in the UK imminently. Finally, as we announced in the previous financial year, CMC has reached the peak of the investment cycle and whilst we continue to invest in the business, we are taking a disciplined approach. Management remains laser focused on further diversification of the business through a balanced investment approach with a view to delivering long-term shareholder value. We have made good progress in the half year, but there's definitely more to do. That's all from me for now, and I'm going to hand over to Albert, who is going to take you through our financial performance.

Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everyone. I would like to begin by turning to slide five, which looks at our group financial metrics. Net operating income was 177.4 million pounds for the half year, which represents an increase of 45%. This was driven by continued growth across the institutional segment and an increase in client trading activity. Our net revenue mix remained broadly consistent with the levels seen through 2023 and 2024, with trading revenue continuing to account for the majority of our income at approximately 87% in GBP terms. Our adjusted profit before tax was £49.6 million, with a profit before tax margin of 28%, reflecting our net operating income performance, strategic cost management, and disciplined approach to investment. Our earnings per share for the half was 12.8 pence up from a loss of 0.8 pence per share at H1 last year. Turning now to look at our trading metrics on the next slide. Trading net revenue for the half was 131 million pounds representing a 50% increase on prior year with strong performance across both retail and institutional segments. Looking at the chart on the right-hand side of the slide, this growth has occurred alongside the ongoing expansion of the B2B segment. As a reminder, this segment consists of partnerships and institutional relationships and remains a major catalyst of our growth. We have also seen an increase in revenue per client, which came in at 2,984 pounds, up 60% on H1 last year, as we continue to attract and retain both institutional and higher net worth individuals. Turning now to look at the investing business. Investing net revenue is 19% higher than in H1 last year at £19.9 million, driven by increased client trading volumes in the Group's Australian broking arm, particularly in international equities. This has resulted in both additional foreign exchange fees and brokerage revenue. Improving levels of revenue have also been supported by an increase in assets under administration, which as you can see from the graph on the right hand side, has increased in the year to over 41 billion pounds. Turning now to the income statement, which is on slide eight. Our strong net operating income performance was driven by a combination of factors, As mentioned on the previous slides, trading net revenue is up 50% year on year and investing net revenue was also up 19% year on year. Interest income was up 46% as the group continued to benefit from elevated global interest rates and our newly established treasury management division. Operating costs for H1 excluding variable remuneration were just over 111 million pounds down 9% as the group maintains a sharp focus on costs and a disciplined approach to investment to deliver robust profit margins going forward. Variable remuneration was up on last year, which is in line with the significantly improved levels of profitability. The result of the above is the profit before tax of 49.6 million pounds and a PBT margin of 28%, both of which I've touched on earlier. Turning now to slide nine, the group's balance sheet and overall regulatory capital remained strong. Capital resources were broadly unchanged at 337 million pounds with increases in retained earnings for the year being offset by the final dividend distribution and certain fixed income investment deductions. The OFR ratio of 433% was up largely due to a reduction in own funds requirement. On liquidity, our total available liquidity was broadly unchanged at 443 million pounds with increases in own funds offsetting a fall in non-segregated client and partner funds. Block cash levels have decreased whilst margin requirements of brokers were down in the year, which has resulted in a robust net available liquidity position as at 30 September of 246.6 million pounds. This is up from 192 million pounds at 31 March, 2024. Finally, turning to the financial outlook on slide 10. Looking ahead to H2, we are confident in delivering on guidance set out at the beginning of the year with net operating income forecast to be in line with market expectations. As a management team, we intend to maintain a pragmatic approach to investment. This means balancing opportunities for growth with our focus on profit margins, as we look to leverage the scale and the size of the business in the years ahead. This financial performance will be achieved on a cost base in line with current guidance of approximately 225 million pounds, which excludes variable remuneration. Our forecast effective tax rate is anticipated to be 28% for the year. This is all from me, and I would like now to hand over to Dave, who's going to talk about our strategic and operational progress.

Thank you, Albert, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to tell you through the strategic and operational update that begins on slide 12 and looks at some of the significant developments we've seen within the half year. From a product perspective, asset class expansion remains key to increasing the engagement with our clients and driving growth. In order to meet our client demands to consolidate their wealth and hold into a CMC, we need to ensure any product gaps are mitigated with investment today, providing growth for the future. During the period, we launched OTC options and spread by options in the UK market, as well as international equities with the expansion of this product into the Middle Eastern markets expected soon. Technology upgrades have been done for our core multi-asset, multi-currency platform across next-gen web and native mobile platform, built on our Connect API and integrated for a new onboarding flow. Cash Isis are also set to launch on Monday, 25th of November in the UK, and we look forward to rolling that product out to our clients in H2. In terms of technology, our global strategy continues to accelerate product delivery across the group, with further expanding our cloud technology and API connectivity, which makes our infrastructure even more accessible to our partners. Our robust and fully integrated support systems also bring further operational efficiencies. And this is critical to how we see the opportunity for margin expansion within the business as we continue to leverage our scale and size to drive the efficient operations. Finally, from a geo and markets perspective, our Revolut partnership provides diversification across markets and geographies. With the number of clients live and actively trading increasing, while our recently announced deal with ASB Bank, cementing our position as one of the leading FinTech providers in the APAC region. During the period, we also successfully launched Opto, further supporting our regional expansion in the US. Opto offers curated solutions for selecting and managing investment portfolios. Its focus on building a differentiated, scalable wealth platform, rich in content, is resulting in a meaningful community in which we can engage with further as more products come online. As you can see, it's been a busy half year with significant progress made, and the second half has more of the same. I'd now like you to take a moment to explore our expanding B2B offering, as well as our recent partnerships with Revolut, and the significant opportunities it presents for CMC. Starting with Revolut, for the full year we committed to providing an update on the exciting partnerships and I'm pleased to report that both parties remain highly engaged and optimistic about its potential. Since the soft launch early this year, progress has been steady and we have seen a gradual increase in the number of clients actively trading. A broader rollout is scheduled for December, with additional countries being onboarded in a continuous stream thereafter. Even with the limited set of countries included in the soft launch, we have already expanded this product suite significantly. Recently, we added over 3,000 equities, more commodities, metals and crypto assets to the Revolut app. What makes this relationship so exciting is the scale of Revolut's presence across Europe. as illustrated on the slide. Already, we have clients trading through the Revolut app in territories where CMC has no direct operations, underscoring the transformative potential of the partnership with a household fintech name like Revolut, who has tens of millions of customers across Europe. The bulk of the technology build for this partnership is now complete. And as we scale, additional costs will be largely incremental and operational in nature. Crucially, the API technology underpinning this partnership is not limited to Revolut. It is designed to be versatile, meaning we can deploy it to other opportunities should another neobank or fintech company wish to connect with our systems. This adaptability opens up significant future potential for similar partnerships and again highlights how there is a significant operational leverage opportunity within the business. This partnership has always been designed with a long-term vision. And while there are no material revenues to report yet, we believe the breadth of our product suite and Revolut's extensive reach will inevitably deliver growth in months and years to come. It is a similar story when it comes to the work we've been doing on our FX spot offering. As a non-bank liquidity provider in a sizeable FX spot market where trillions are traded every single day, we continue to advance our capabilities. We launched our FX spot offering to clients just over a year ago and already is having a positive impact both from revenue and relationship perspective. It is helping us extract greater value from our existing partnerships whilst also opening new doors to new relationships. These include hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, regional banks and many other clients who are now trading with us. What is exciting is that many of these are entirely new businesses, opportunities we wouldn't have been able to pursue before this investment. The success is largely down to the quality of our pricing and liquidity, as well as our connections to ECNs. The technology investment in ultra low latent, robust pricing and liquidity services ensures that we can target growth in a cost efficient manner. While margins are lower, the opportunity is significant. And having invested approximately one million pounds in our FX spot capability, We are forecasting revenues around £6 million this financial year. As you can see from the slide, the trajectory is one way. We reached over $1 billion in average daily volume in September of last year. And similar to Revolut, with the tech bill now largely complete, future costs of our operations are incremental. The group's strategy of diversifying and intensifying its focus on industry clients and the B2B sector continues to gain momentum. And while we're starting to see some tangible results, we view that this is just the beginning. With that, I'm now going to hand you back to Peter to wrap things up.