(Alliance News) - Shares in ADVFN PLC rose on Thursday after it posted a swing to profit for the first half of its current financial year, crediting the improvement to change in its strategy as a result of the pandemic as well as market volatility.
Shares in the investing website operator were trading 12% higher at 39.60 pence each on Thursday morning in London.
For the six months ended December 31, ADVFN posted pretax profit of GBP261,000, swinging from a loss of GBP399,000 the year prior. This was as revenue rose 11% to GBP4.2 million from GBP3.8 million and administrative expenses fell 7.5% to GBP3.7 million from GBP4.0 million.
"People become more engaged with their investments when the future looks difficult and the rolling confinements and the new work-from-home environments have provided impetus to our audience's desire to trade and invest. Market volatility has also helped. At the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, a sudden and unexpected drop in advertising sales, coupled with a lack of subscription growth, caused us to re-evaluate our processes we decided to become a fully 'WFH' enterprise with a new, much reduced cost base and re-engineered business processes," said Chief Executive Clem Chambers.
Looking ahead, the Essex-based company stated it expects to see growth at a similar pace in the second half and expressed optimism about its future prospects.
"While we expect growth at a similar pace in the coming half, our strategy is to be very conservative and we will expend our energies growing our platform's capacity rather than looking to broaden our audience. We are very optimistic about our near and medium-term prospects, but it seems foolish to contemplate anything but a conservative risk profile to at least the year end," Chambers added.
By Ife Taiwo; ifetaiwo@alliancenews.com
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ADVFN (AFN)