NUC.L Share News (NUC)

LONDON (Alliance News) - Financial services platform Nucleus Financial Group PLC on Tuesday reported a "strong" financial performance in its first results since listing on London's AIM market in July.

In the six months ended June, the company doubled its pretax profit to GBP2.2 million from GBP1.1 million a year before.

Revenue in the period increased 11% to GBP21.6 million from GBP19.5 million.

Assets under administration at the end of the period increased 16% to GBP14.34 billion from GBP12.40 billion. Net inflows, however, decreased 15% to GBP726 million from GBP850 million.

Nucleus said "volatile markets" and regulatory changes - namely the implementation across Europe of financial instruments directive MiFID II and of general data protection regulation - "impacted financial advisers and customer sentiment" and led to the decrease in inflows.

The company's number of active advisers increased 7.2% to 1,357 from 1,266, with customer numbers increasing 5.9% to 90,650.

Nucleus declared an interim dividend of 1.4 pence per share.

Looking ahead, the company expects inflows to remain "slightly soft" in the short-term as MiFID II and GDPR processes "mature".

Nucleus also expects an "acceleration" in the number of firms using its platform "partially due to service constraints arising as a result of re-platforming experiences elsewhere".

Nucleus said its interim results were in line with its expectations and it remains focused on investing in the company.

Founder & Chief Executive Officer David Ferguson said: "In these, our inaugural set of interim results presented as a quoted company, I am very pleased to report strong results for the first half of the year.

"The growth in AUA and the number of active advisers, two of our key performance indicators, show that our adviser users continue to share our ambition of promoting transparency and improving customer outcomes."

"We are greatly appreciative of the support we have received since our successful IPO in July. It was an exciting moment and an important milestone for Nucleus and we welcome our new investors to the share register. We continue to be confident in our ability to deliver on our ambitions for the business for the remainder of the year and beyond."

Shares in Nucleus Financial closed down 2.6% Tuesday at 204.00 pence each.