(Reuters) – Britain’s biggest retail stockbroker Hargreaves Lansdown reported a 20% drop in half-year profit on Tuesday, hurt by easing market volatility following a year of retail trading frenzy, sending its shares 13.6% lower in early trade.
The British fund supermarket reported net additions of 48,000 clients, compared with 84,000 a year earlier. Still, assets under management rose to 141.2 billion pounds ($191.64 billion) from 120.6 billion pounds.
Trading platforms like Hargreaves signed up many individual online stock traders in a retail trading frenzy during the pandemic. But easing market volatility has hurt client activity and a low interest rate environment for much of last year has hurt the value of its cash balances held for clients.
Hargreaves, the UK’s largest direct-to-investor investment service, which attracted a record number of new clients in 2020 due to pandemic-driven trading, declared an interim dividend of 12.26 pence per share.
The firm reported a pre-tax profit of 151.2 million pounds for the six months ended Dec. 31, compared with a profit of 188.4 million pounds a year earlier.
($1 = 0.7368 pounds)
(Reporting by Sinchita Mitra in Bengaluru; Editing by Rashmi Aich)
