CMC Markets plc (LON:CMCX) has announced its results for the period ended 30 September 2025
H1 performance ahead of market expectations.
10% upgrade to FY2026 NOI guidance.
Strong start to H2.
Transformational Westpac deal agreed.
Financial Performance
| HY2026 | HY2025 | Change | |
| Net operating income (£m) | 186.2 | 177.4 | 5% |
| EBITDA (£m) | 57.1 | 60.3 | (5%) |
| Profit before tax (£m) | 49.3 | 49.6 | (1%) |
| Profit before tax margin (%) | 26.5% | 27.9% | 1.4ppts |
| Basic earnings per share (pence) | 13.3 | 12.8 | 4% |
| Ordinary dividend per share (pence) | 5.5 | 3.1 | 77% |
Net operating income represents total revenue net of commissions and levies. Profit before tax margin % is calculated as profit before tax as a percentage of net operating income.
Financial Highlights
· Net operating income up 5% to £186.2 million (HY2025: £177.4 million) with increases in net trading and investing revenues
· Record half-year for Australian stockbroking with net operating income of A$65.9 million (HY2025: A$49.4 million), a 34% increase year-on-year and supported by a 14% increase in AuA to approximately A$91 billion
· Total operating expenses were £136.5 million (HY2025: £123.9 million), reflecting a further £5.2 million provision for industry-wide margin netting in Australia, concluding the remediation due on this matter. Excluding this, costs remained well managed and in line with internal expectations
· Profit before tax of £49.3 million (HY2025: £49.6 million) and profit before tax margin of 26.5% (HY2025: 27.9%) remain robust and primarily reflect impact of the Australian remediation charge
· Interim dividend of 5.5 pence per share (HY2025: 3.1 pence), up 77% year-on-year
Strategic & Operational Highlights
· Transformational Westpac partnership agreed, CMC’s largest institutional deal to date, providing fintech infrastructure, technology, and execution services and further cementing our position as Australia’s second-largest stockbroker
· Westpac agreement expected to expand the Australian customer base materially, and lift domestic trading volumes by approximately 45%, with significant opportunity for further upside. Launch will be in approximately 12 months
· Neobank API partnership continues to mature, with exponential account growth and rollout now live in over 30 European countries – many where CMC has no physical presence – extending the Group’s global reach and demonstrating the distribution power of our API technology
· Further partnerships at an advanced stage with a major international bank and UK retailer Currys, reinforcing CMC as the partner of choice and highlighting the diversity and scalability of our technology with blue-chip institutions
· New multi-asset platform set for December launch in the UK, with other regions to follow. This will be followed by the rollout of our “Super App,” designed to unify TradFi and DeFi within a single, scalable platform – marking the start of a three-phase development roadmap
· Robust product pipeline across trading, investing, and B2B platforms, via API connectivity to broaden CMC’s distribution reach, through products and partnerships
· FY2026 operating expenses expected to be marginally ahead of consensus1, predominantly due to the Australian remediation
· Operating expenses include temporary dual-running costs as the Group transitions key operational functions to lower cost jurisdictions, supported by a partnership with a leading global outsourcing provider
· These initiatives are expected to deliver meaningful efficiency gains, with lower overheads and improved profit margins expected to flow through over the next 12 to 18 months
Outlook
· The Group enters the second half with strong momentum across all three verticals, supported by solid client activity and a healthy pipeline of B2B and D2C opportunities
· Third vertical advancing rapidly, with a successful live blockchain-based tokenised share trade, an up to €300 million Commercial Paper Programme, and the assignment of an investment-grade rating by Fitch – all completed post-period end and demonstrating tangible progress in the Group’s digital asset and funding infrastructure
· Momentum has accelerated across the business, with record client cash balances, rising activity levels and stronger performance metrics, particularly seen across the institutional B2B and API space
· As a result – and following a strong start to H2, including the significant growth of our neobank API business – the Group now expects net operating income to be approximately 10% ahead of current market expectations for FY20262
Notes:
1 – Company compiled consensus for FY2026 operating expenses, excluding variable remuneration, of £231.4 million.
2 – Company compiled consensus for FY2026 net operating income of £353.9 million.
CEO Statement
Solid H1 with strong tailwinds for H2
We are pleased to report a solid H1, with net operating income up 5% on HY2025 and strong growth coming through our retail and B2B divisions – both of which have some really exciting opportunities. Retail client cash balances are at record highs and growing exponentially, pointing to strong tailwinds for H2, traditionally the strongest half of our financial year.
Our API partnerships are gaining momentum leading to accelerated account opening, with hundreds of thousands of retail trading accounts being opened over the last year and around 70% of these accounts from European countries where we have no physical presence. These API partnerships demonstrate the distribution power and scale of our API technology without the incremental costs of procuring clients directly, through marketing and onboarding.
We have built a strong, extensive and extensible API platform which is now starting to add real value to the business and will continue to be material over the coming years.
The recent announcement of a major partnership with Australia’s second largest bank, Westpac, is expected to be the biggest partnership deal in our history and similar to the ANZ transaction, we view this partnership as a transformational opportunity, offering significant long-term growth potential and upside.
Our Australian stockbroking business continues to go from strength-to-strength, delivering record performance and firmly establishing CMC as the country’s second-largest stockbroker. The business now exceeds our CFD operations in Australia in terms of income, client accounts and assets under administration, and continues to grow at a significantly faster rate.
Following the Westpac integration, our retail footprint is expected to approach two million accounts within the next year, laying the foundation for a broader wealth and financial services proposition across the Group which will be rolled out in the next 12 months.
In the UK, CMC Invest is at an advanced stage of contracting with a major international bank – a significant milestone that strengthens our growing institutional partnerships and demonstrates continued momentum in our B2B strategy. Alongside this, we are excited to announce a partnership with leading tech retailer Currys. We are working together to bring something unique to the market, and we look forward to sharing more on both partnerships in due course.
The success we are now seeing across all areas of the business is also reflective of the investments we have made, the diversity of the organisation and a strategic restructuring of the Group, undertaken over the past 12 months. We are now beginning to see the benefits of that work coming through.
A key part of this progress has been Project Telstar, the devolution plan I have initiated, giving our regional heads greater autonomy to run their offices more progressively, through more localised marketing and sales control. This has been a major step forward and is without doubt contributing to the success we are seeing today.
Each office can pick what products and platforms they want to offer their clients in the region. Office heads can negotiate with institutions and B2B clients’ commercial terms, within financial and brand metrics. They can set their own marketing budgets based on where they can drive growth. Each office is then rewarded based on their success, profit margins and the value of the business they bring to the Group.
However, the real point here is that each office feels liberated to do their best for the company. It means they can take on local competition and match them in marketing and they can respond quickly to new product launches, or changes in regulations. Finance and Compliance has full transparency over each office to ensure that controls are always in place. It has been liberating for the business, and you can see that in our improved numbers today, and I believe it will deliver strong growth in the coming years.
Web3 and Blockchain – The Third Vertical
As announced at our FY2025 results in June, we are pushing aggressively into Web3 technology because of the pending decentralisation of financial markets (DeFi) through product tokenisation, blockchain, multi-asset wallets and stablecoin clearing and payments.
DeFi is going to redefine the financial markets allowing clients to seamlessly trade thousands of financial products in real time, twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year. Products will not just be limited to cryptocurrencies but all major financial products, including shares, FX, commodities, indices and options.
Settlement and clearing will be via clients’ own multi-asset wallets and trades will self-clear between clients as they trade with each other, real time across blockchain. This is precisely the reason we acquired StrikeX – an important investment in our own DeFi and Web3 infrastructure and capabilities.
Tokenised financial products are very similar to our current CFDs in that they are fractional, off exchange, and multi-asset across one account. For CMC because of our history and experience, tokenisation is effectively what we already do through our CFD platforms. But the clearing, settlement and payment structure will change.
Blockchain, multi-asset wallets, stablecoin payments and clearing is the piece that StrikeX are building for us and already we are making great strides. In October, CMC CapX, in partnership with StrikeX, successfully completed a live test using blockchain technology to move company shares securely between investors – all within existing UK regulations.
The trial proved that digital assets and traditional shares can work together safely and efficiently. Whilst other companies are talking about what they intend to do, we are doing it at CMC.
CMC will continue to expand its footprint into the tokenised finance space and stablecoins are an initial crucial step to being able to move value seamlessly 24/7. At the same time, we are exploring potential partnerships with blockchain companies and crypto exchanges as DeFi evolves. As with all our products and services, it is important to note that tokenised products and our multi-asset wallet will also be available for all our B2B partners via API, or white label.
Stablecoins will play an important role in DeFi. To support our evolution and expansion in this space we are expanding our Treasury Management division through the establishment of an up to €300 million Commercial Paper Programme.
While this initiative strengthens our ability to fund growth across all three verticals, it is not exclusively linked to our DeFi expansion. Rather, it represents a prudent step in diversifying our funding sources and optimising balance sheet flexibility as the Group continues to scale.
We expect to enter the market imminently, with a short bookbuild period preceding the initial round of funding. While the programme provides capacity of up to €300 million, we do not anticipate issuing the full amount at the outset. The overall cost to the Group is expected to be negligible, as a result of our recent investment-grade rating, which is expected to reduce the credit spread on future issuances and our Treasury Management team, which will continue to actively optimise cash balances, ensuring proceeds are deployed efficiently and productively.
In support of this initiative, Fitch Ratings has assigned CMC an investment-grade rating of BBB- (long-term) and F3 (short-term), marking another key milestone for the Group as we continue to strengthen our financial and operational foundations.
We will update the markets at our year end results but, for now, our future is BAU whilst positioning the business for tokenisation, blockchain, DeFi, and getting ourselves ready for the major changes that are happening in the financial markets and the way they will be traded in the future.
When the world goes DeFi, CMC Markets will be ready.
The “Super App” Vision:
The enclosed statement highlights tangible businesses that are already established, and businesses that are being established. But the vision is much broader and powerful when you bring it all together via a “Super App”, which we are launching in three phases.
Phase one will see the release of our multi-asset platform, that we intend to launch imminently. This will encompass traditional finance (TradFi) products, including equities, derivatives, options, SIPPs, ISAs, wealth-solutions and CFDs – all on one platform.
Phase two is where it gets really exciting as we plan the release of our “Super App” which will include TradFi and DeFi products, with SIPPs and ISAs sitting alongside tokenised products, stablecoins and CapX investing.
This is more than just trading products from one account. This is one platform, every asset class – equities, derivatives, tokenised products and wealth-solutions – all delivered via a service-led “Super App”, designed and built for the future.
Phase Three of our “Super App” will include payments and banking products, to create an application that puts every corner of the financial universe at your fingertips.
API and Future State
API connectivity is our platform for growth and expansion, because it is an easy win for banks and brokers to offer our different products whilst we also provide the technology infrastructure. All they have to do is seamlessly connect their platform to ours via our API and access our different product types. API connectivity is scalable and profitable for our partners and for ourselves.
For example, one of our API client’s turnover increased by over 1,000% in a year, and we saw all that flow through the API connection. It was a new business for the bank and new products for their clients and flows we would not ordinarily have seen without our API capability.
The way to expand this business is through extensive, extensible API distribution alongside our “Super App”. Our API connections will continue to be available across all our products and platforms and that includes our future “Super App”.
This is what sets us apart and it is a very scalable way to grow the business. Having laid the foundations over many years, we are now seeing the results.
Lord Cruddas
20 November 2025
Webcast:
An analyst and investor presentation will be available on our website from 9.00am on 20th November:
https://www.cmcmarkets.com/group/investors/results-reports-and-presentations
| Forthcoming announcement dates: | |
| June 2026 | FY2026 Results |
