The FCA regulated retail forex, CFD and spread betting brokerage house, London Capital Group Holdings Plc (NEX: LCG) has spectacularly narrowed down its losses in the full year 2017. The improved performance has been on account of better performance in second half of 2017 and investments and restructuring efforts that are done in 2016.
For the full year of 2017, LCG earned a total revenue of £26.5 million, an increase of 14 percent from 2016, of which £14.5 million came in second half of the year. Increased revenue failed to shore up the group’s profitability during the year. LCG posted an EBITDA loss of £1.9 million and a Pre-tax loss of £3.0 million in 2017. Loss per share during the period reduced to 0.008 pence from 0.035p, a year before.
The monthly average trading volume during 2017, came in at £25 billion (USD $33 billion), an increase of 26 percent year-over-year from 2016’s £19 billion. Earlier this year, the group delisted its share from London Stock Exchange and then listed it to NEX Exchange, with a motive to go private in the long term and will be controlled by privately by Mr Sabet and investors. The move to go private has been approved by shareholders and is awaiting clearance from financial regulator FCA, which they expect will come by the end of July 2018.
In another announcement, CEO, Charles-Henri Sabet has resigned from the company and will relieve all his executive and board roles effective immediately. Mr Sabet has led the company from 2014 takeover and 2016 recapitalization of LCG and has acted as a CEO since then. Replacing him in the position of CEO will be Mukid Chowdhury, who is the company’s CFO and was considered as a right hand of Sabet since joining LCG in 2016 from GAIN Capital.
Mr Mukid Chowdhury will be CEO for both publicly traded London Capital Group Holding Plc and FCA regulated operating subsidiary LCG. Charles-Henry Sabet has purchased 40 percent stake of London Capital Group (Cyprus) Ltd in December.
Post the announcement, the shares of LCG cracked over 8.6 percent was trading at 0.8 pence.
