The merchant banking group, Close Brothers, saw operating profits increase 1% to £128.9m in H1 2022 and reported adjusted operating profits as £129.8m.

The marginal growth came from increased incomes from the banking division and asset management division of 12% and 14% respectively despite being held back by the Winterflood drop in income.

Adrian Sainsbury, group Chief Executive Officer, stated, “we delivered a good performance in the first half of the 2022 financial year, with strong income growth in the Banking division and positive momentum in Asset Management, while Winterflood saw reduced trading opportunities following the exceptional highs experienced during the Covid-19 period.”

The banking division saw an increase of 26% in adjusted operating profit to £120.2m in H1 2022 with demand in their lending business increasing.

The adjusted operating profit increased 18% to £14.5m in H1 2022 in the asset management division with an annualised net inflows of 8% due to increased customer activity.

Loan book growth saw an 8.2% increase with an annualised net interest margin of 7.9%.

Excluding the Novitas’ loan book, their annualised bad debt ratio is 0.2%, however with Novitas included, the bad debt ratio is 1.1%.

Despite the 3.4% decrease in property repayments, asset finance increased by 4.2%, motor finance saw a 4% increase and invoice finance increased by 3.6%, contributing to £7.5bn of the £8.8bn in H1 2022 to the closing loan book and operating lease assets.

Winterflood saw a decrease in business with economies reopening and lockdown retail traders returning to the office. Winterflood operating profits saw a massive decrease from £34.2m in H1 2021 to £8.8m in H1 2022.

The ROE for the firm is 12.2% and CET1 ratio is 15.1%.

The interim dividend increased from 18p to 22p in H1 2022 with the firm recovering to the state prior to the pandemic.

“We are pleased to declare an interim dividend of 22.0p, returning to the pre-pandemic level and reflecting the group’s strong underlying performance and continued confidence in our business model,” said Sainsbury.

“Looking ahead, we are mindful of the highly uncertain external environment, including the impact of increasing geopolitical tensions and rising inflation on our customers and wider financial market conditions.”

“Nevertheless, we remain well placed to continue delivering on our long track record of profitability and disciplined growth.”

Close Brothers shares were trading down 6.6% to 1,128p in broad market sell off on Tuesday.

Virgin Wines, UK’s largest B2C online wine seller, reported a total revenue of £40.6m in H1 2022, just £20,000 more than H1 2021.

The revenue generated from the subscription model of the wine distributors saw an increase of 23% from last year to £26.3m in H1 2022.

The increase in revenue resulted from a 7% subscriber increase to 158,000 during H1 2022 in WineBank and Wine Plan.

The company’s active customer base saw a 9% rise to 185,000 in that period.

The 12 month rolling new customer conversion increased to 56.2% from 51.3% in H1 2021.

The wine company is set out to start BeerSave and SpiritSave subscription schemes in Q2 2022 based on the success of WineBank.

The group aims to generate revenues from their commercial channels with collaborations with big companies in the gifting arena like Moonpig, Virginia Haywood and Arena Flowers.

The company’s EBITDA decreased from £4.5m to £3.7m in H1 2022 from increased operating costs and investments to acquires new clients. Each client acquired cost £13.62 on average.

Pre-tax profit reduced to £3.2m in H1 2022, a loss of £0.2m from H1 2021.

The firm’s net cash increased from £8.4m to £13.6m in H1 2022 is excluding customer deposits from the WineBank subscribers.

Currently, the firm is not paying out an interim dividend.

Jay Wright, Chief Executive Officer, Virgin Wines, said, “as expected, the trading environment has evolved considerably over recent months, and given strong prior year comparatives, we have worked hard to maintain encouraging growth from our core sales channels, whilst maintaining strict discipline around our customer acquisition and our cost control.”

“This result demonstrates the strength of the underlying business model, our discipline in acquiring good quality customers, the reliability of future subscription revenues from a highly engaged customer base and the ability to generate free cashflow as well as our award-winning consumer propositions, the quality of our wines and our outstanding customer service.”

“The second half of the year has started well. We continue to make progress with our strategic initiatives and remain in line with management expectations.”

The TP ICAP Group’s share price fell 6.3% to 122.7p in early morning trading on Tuesday after the company released a significant drop in profit for its 2021 results.

The company reported a revenue of £1,865 million compared to £1,794 million in 2020.

The financial services firm noted a pre-tax profit of £24 million against £129 million in 2020, representing a significant drop.

“Our performance naturally reflects the unusually quiet secondary markets that we experienced in 2021, particularly in the first half of the year. However, as market conditions started to improve in the second half, TP ICAP recovered most of the ground and grew overall market share. We continued to deliver double-digit revenue growth in Data & Analytics.

“We took pre-emptive action to mitigate margin pressure, including greater operational efficiency, and delivered significant overall cost savings of £31 million,” said TP ICAP Group CEO Nicolas Breteau.

“These measures helped to partly offset the impact of market conditions which shifted activity to lower margin asset classes within Global Broking.”

“We are targeting a further £38m of incremental savings from 2022 to 2024.”

The company announced a total dividend per share of 9.5p compared to 6p in 2020.

The Group’s financial highlights included its 8% growth in light of “subdued secondary markets” and disruption due to Covid-19, alongside its programme to save £35 million of annualised costs successfully delivering £19 million of incremental savings over 2021.

The TP ICAP Group was careful to note that it had no immediate predictions for its outlook due to its uncertainty around future market activity.

“Market volatility has continued at more elevated levels in 2022, with the return of inflation and geopolitical uncertainty driving higher volumes across many of our markets.”

“Our revenue in the year to date until 11 March 2022 was approximately 16% higher than the corresponding period in 2021, in constant currency, or 4% higher excluding Liquidnet.”

“While it is too early to judge whether this activity will be sustained, we believe the results of our many actions will show through in improved performance across the group in 2022 and beyond.”

Imperial Brands, formerly known as Imperial Tobacco, has followed in the foot steps of hundreds of other companies and stopped business in Russia and now are in discussions with a domestic company for the temporary transfer of the firm’s Russian assets and operations.

Russia and Ukraine has little impact on the group and contributed about 2% of net revenues and 0.5% of adjusted operating profit in 2021.

Across the two countries, the firm employs around 1,600 workers and have continued to pay them during the halt in business operations.

The company has decided to transfer over the assets to a local company to ensure that the business continues and safeguards their employee’ salaries in Russia and Ukraine.

The group has also been aiding their Ukrainian colleagues with help relocating, transportation and shelter to protect them from consequences of the conflict.

With the analysis of the impact from the business halts and transfers in Russia and Ukraine, the firm revised their full year guidance.

The company expects to have a full-year constant currency net revenue growth between 0-1%. However due to the minimal impact of this region on the groups revenues and profits, the company is not wary of any costs incurred by the business strike.

Imperial’s shares were down 2.1% to 1,517p as the company finds local business to transfer assets to.

Litigation Capital Management saw its share price dip 5.9% to 102.5p in early morning trading on Tuesday after the company reported no dividend payments for 2021.

The company reported a gross profit of A$13.9 million and an adjusted pre-tax profit of A$7.5 million.

The international asset manager also reported no dividend payments for shareholders as they reported a net decrease in cash of $7.9m.

“We have achieved great progress during the period despite disruption as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns and unprecedented restrictions in the areas we operate,” said Litigation Capital Management CEO Patrick Moloney.

“As conditions normalise and with the core executive team now in place in our London office, LCM is now in a stronger position to grow both divisions, enabling us to access greater amounts of capital and facilitate the expansion of our portfolio of investments.”

“The countercyclical nature of our industry suggests that economic and market conditions at present, represent a growing opportunity for the Company which will be realised over the long-term.”

“We look to the second half and beyond with optimism and confidence.”

The Genuit Group saw its share price rise 1% to 513p in early morning trading on Tuesday after the company reported increased profits and dividends for 2021.

The group reported a £594.3 million revenue compared to £398.6 million in 2020.

The company highlighted an operating profit of £67.1 million against £30.4 million in 2020, alongside a pre-tax profit of £62.9 million against £23.8 million in 2020.

Genuit announced a dividend of 12.2p per share, against 4.8p in 2020.

The company attributed its growth to significant increase in demand and three acquisitions completed in 2021.

“I am delighted to have joined Genuit and pleased to report that the Group has delivered another strong performance, toward the higher end of expectations, despite cost inflation and some supply chain constraints,” said Genuit Group CEO Joe Vorih.

“While challenges remain, our team has taken additional measures to improve price and margins as we enter 2022 and we remain in a strong demand environment.” 

“It is also positive that, despite the operating environment, the team completed three strategic acquisitions in the year to broaden the Group’s market offering, and that these are performing well, with Adey already ahead of expectations.”