Aquis has seen another year of strong growth thanks to rising revenues in its data and technology businesses.
Data and technology saw 24% and 22% growth to £3.7 million and £6.3 million respectively, pushing Aquis’ net revenues for the year up 13% to £22.7 million.
The exchanges markets business also saw 7% growth to £10.9 million for the year.
Market share had grown from 4.97% in December last year to 5.46% in February. Aquis attributed the growth in market share to changes to its proprietary trading rule in September.
“We can now get to 10% market share and we can become a top three player. We knew that over time that [lifting the ban on proprietary trading] was the right thing to do and the market share would increase. The way that we operated by having non-client proprietary flow in effect banned from taking the spread meant the proprietary traders were not participating aggressively in our platform,” Haynes told The TRADE.
“That meant the time to execution was slower on us than any other platform. And, it was very clear in talking to the banks specifically that they wanted much quicker time to execution. Interestingly enough, prior to the rule change 18% of our passive flow was provided by the banks. Post-rule change, 41% of our passive flow is bank flow.”
Aquis linked its technology growth to the two new contracts it was awarded last year – the most recent being for the Colombian government bond market. Aquis Technology has nine contracts, seven of which have recognised revenue.
“It is a unique product. There is a total accessible market of about 350 exchanges out there. We’ve done nine contracts, seven of which have revenue recognition,” explains Haynes. “Over the medium term, we should be able to obtain 5-10%, even 20%. When you look at the cash flow as a result of that it materially changes this company.”
“We are literally the only company in the world in this cloud space. Exchanges central banks they want modernised technology and they can’t just leave their data centres right now but they do know over the next 5-10 years that they will almost certainly go to cloud based technology in some way and we could hand hold him in that process.”
The exchange confirmed at the beginning of this month that it was set to begin charging its trading members for non-displayed market data feeds for the first time since its inception almost 11 years ago.
According to a member notice distributed on Friday 1 March, members on both Aquis Exchange and Aquis Exchange Europe will have to pay the same monthly rate as non-members for non-displayed data effective 1 June 2024. Non-display and terminal fees are now applicable to trading members, the notice confirmed.