Regulatory-induced disruption for financial advisers, coupled with increased volatility within equity markets, resulted in a 15 per cent decline in net inflows for Nucleus Financial (NUC) during the first half. Founder and chief executive David Ferguson says he expects "softer" inflows during the remainder of the year. Nevertheless, wrap platform Nucleus – which began trading on Aim in July – grew assets under management 16 per cent to £14.3bn.
The number of active advisers using the platform rose by 7 per cent to 1,357 leading to a 5 per cent increase in end-customers to almost 91,000. However, the blended revenue yield declined 1.8 percentage points to 31.5 per cent, reflecting last year’s fee price cut and higher average client portfolio size. Management has developed a new client portal, due for launch later this year, and extended the API service functionality to accept over 500,000 queries a month. The adjusted cash profit margin – which more than doubled to 22.4 per cent – was also helped by a lower external software spend.
Analysts at house broker Shore Capital expect adjusted pre-tax profit of £7.3m and EPS of 7.7p for the 12 months to December 2018, rising to £7.5m and 7.8p the following year.
| NUCLEUS FINANCIAL GROUP (NUC) | ||||
| ORD PRICE: | 206p | MARKET VALUE: | £158m | |
| TOUCH: | 204-208p | 12-MONTH HIGH: | 241p | LOW: 206p |
| DIVIDEND YIELD: | 0.7% | PE RATIO: | 30 | |
| NET ASSET VALUE: | 21p | NET CASH: | £17m | |
| Half-year to 30 Jun | Turnover (£m) | Pre-tax profit (£m) | Earnings per share (p) | Dividend per share (p) |
| 2017* | 19.5 | 1.4 | 1.4 | nil |
| 2018 | 21.6 | 3.1 | 2.8 | 1.4 |
| % change | +11 | +118 | +100 | - |
| Ex-div: | 20 Sep | |||
| Payment: | 19 Oct | |||
| *Pre-IPO figures | ||||
