London-listed broker IG Group published record revenues for a half-year period on Thursday morning.

The company said that sales for the period totalled £522.5m. Net income for the six months ending 30/11/2024 was £201.2m, up 30% year on year.

Interestingly, the number of active clients (142.8k) in OTC products was 3% down on the equivalent period in 2023. IG Group attributed the increased revenue to market conditions.

The brokerage group also saw a fairly dramatic cut in headcount on a year on year basis. The number of employees at the firm at the end of the period was 2,440, 11% lower than at the end of November 2023 when the headcount was 2,747

A couple of other points in the report were interesting.

One is that IG appears to be putting more focus on CFDs and spread betting products. Under prior CEO June Felix, these products seemed to be sidelined a bit, with more focus on ETDs and cash equities.

The other was a point about the Freetrade acquisition. In its slide deck covering the results, IG said that the acquisition gives them “optionality on new product and market entry”. Does this mean they’ll add ETDs and CFDs to the Freetrade app? We’ll have to wait and find out.