Spread better IG says confident for full year

The country’s biggest spread-betting company IG Group (IGG.L: Quote, Profile, Research), which relisted in April, said on Thursday it was confident of its trading prospects for the current year.

“In July … we said that the current financial year had begun well and that volumes had been strong. These strong volumes have continued through August and September and we continue to trade well across all areas of the business,” the firm said.

IG allows investors to speculate on currencies, interest rates, shares and indexes.

“The board remains confident of the group’s prospects for the current year,” it said in a statement ahead of its annual general meeting.

The company said its Australian office which opened in 2002 was still growing strongly but it was unlikely to contribute materially to profits during the current year.

Looking ahead, the group said it had plans to open another overseas office based in Singapore in a bid to boost its presence in Asia although the majority of its client base is still in Britain.

“We now have the technology in place to enable us to offer versions of our Web sites in multiple languages and we will continue to roll these out,” it said.

In July the company reported a 40 percent rise in underlying profits to 35.1 million pounds for the year to end-May.

IG was refloated in April at 120p a share in a listing that valued the company at 393 million pounds, having been taken private by its management in 2003 in a 143 million-pound deal backed by private equity firm CVC.

The company, founded in 1974 by businessman Stuart Wheeler, closed at 167p on Wednesday, valuing the business at around 546 million pounds.

It first floated in London in 2000.

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