Half Year 2022 Aquis Exchange PLC Earnings Call (Pre-recorded) Sep 22, 2022 (Thomson StreetEvents) -- Edited Transcript of Aquis Exchange PLC earnings conference call or presentation Thursday, September 22, 2022 at 10:59:00am GMT TEXT version of Transcript ================================================================================ Corporate Participants ================================================================================ * Alasdair Frederick Seton Haynes Aquis Exchange PLC - Founder, CEO & Director ================================================================================ Conference Call Participants ================================================================================ * Rosie Riall ================================================================================ Presentation -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosie Riall, [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Today, I welcome Alasdair Haynes, the Chief Executive Officer of Aquis Exchange. Alasdair, great to have you with us. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alasdair Frederick Seton Haynes, Aquis Exchange PLC - Founder, CEO & Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Great to be here. ================================================================================ Questions and Answers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosie Riall, [1] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alasdair, your half year results are out this morning. We've seen strong momentum and growth across the principal divisions. What are your key results highlights? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alasdair Frederick Seton Haynes, Aquis Exchange PLC - Founder, CEO & Director [2] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I am delighted to report a strong set of interim results for Aquis Exchange PLC. We grew our net revenue by 21%, and we actually saw a net profit of GBP 700,000. That's slightly down from the GBP 1 million that we saw last year, but that is because we increased our costs because we invested deliberately into our technology business. We're already starting to see the rewards from that, because we've signed one contract at the end of last year, one contract during this period, and actually, since this period, we've signed yet another contract. And we, of course, will be taking that revenue when they are accepted, having signed these contracts under the accounting standards. I'm delighted to say that the decline we had seen in market share has now gone back to 5.2% for the period, and that is an increase from the low point of 4.4%, which we saw earlier on this year. Part of the reason for this market share increase is, of course, because we've integrated the AMP, which is the Aquis Matching Pool, the UBS MTF business assets that we purchased earlier on this year, and we've integrated that, put it onto our own technology. We expect around or have seen around about 0.5% market share as a result of that. And having gone live now earlier this month in September, for the European markets, we anticipate to see further growth in that market. I'm delighted to say that all 3 divisions of Aquis Group are now profitable. That means for the first time that Aquis Stock Exchange has had profits for the last 6 months, and we anticipate all 3 groups to be profitable for the remainder of this year. Aquis Stock Exchange has done 12 IPOs so far this year, and it has an incredibly strong sales funnel, and we remain very optimistic about how we can build the primary market for the Aquis Group. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosie Riall, [3] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- No, fine, Alasdair. With the continued macroeconomic uncertainty, what's the outlook for the company over the short and medium term? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alasdair Frederick Seton Haynes, Aquis Exchange PLC - Founder, CEO & Director [4] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It has been a strong start for H2 for Aquis Exchange despite the fact that this is clearly a very difficult economic environment for most of the participants in the marketplace. The diversification that we've seen by empowering and strengthening our technologies business, alongside the growth into profitability for the Aquis Stock Exchange, complements the core business that we've had, which is the exchange trading business for the large-cap and mid-caps across Europe. This diversified business has become more resilient and now allows our shareholders to gain greater opportunity from the growth that we see in the coming years. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Rosie Riall, [5] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Alasdair, thank you.