SINGAPORE, July 27 (Xinhua) -- Singapore Exchange reported a net profit of 291.8 million Singapore dollars (233.4 million U.S. dollars) for the financial year ended June 30, 2012, down 1 percent year on year, the bourse said on Friday.
This is mainly due to weaker trading in the securities market, as the securities daily average traded value shrank from 1.6 billion Singapore dollars to 1.3 billion Singapore dollars.
The fall in full-year net profit was also partly due to a foreign exchange rate-related writedown of 11 million Singapore dollars from its investment in the Bombay Storck Exchange. For the quarter ended June 30, the bourse's net profit was down 23 percent year on year at 61.1 million Singapore dollars.
The full-year underlying profit was down 2.5 percent at 303.9 million Singapore dollars.
The full-year revenue was down from 660.7 million Singapore dollars in the financial year 2011 to 647.9 million Singapore dollars in the financial year 2012, as securities and issuer services revenues fell by 14 percent to 305.7 million Singapore dollars.
Non-securities revenues from derivatives, depository, market data and member services and connectivity, however, rose by 12 percent to 341 million Singapore dollars. The bourse's derivatives daily average volume grew by 16 percent to 308,312 contracts, with new products such as Indian Nifty futures, Chinese A50 futures, Nikkei options and the MSCI Indonesian futures continuing to gain momentum.
The volume of Chinese A50 futures more than tripled to 5.62 million contracts.
The bourse's chief executive officer Magnus Bocker said market conditions were "challenging" during the past financial year. The number of primary listings fell to 23. He said the bourse has a stable pipeline of IPOs (initial public offerings) that are waiting for stable market conditions.
"I wish I could say we promise to deliver a lot of IPOs. We are not really controlling that," he said.
The Singapore Exchange announced moves over the past year to increase its connectivity with other exchanges and launched new products to drive organic growth. It also launched one of the world's fastest trading engines. The bourse was not in merger talks with the London Stock Exchange Group, Bocker said.
"We strengthened our Asian Gateway position with the Reach initiative, added new capabilities in our securities market, and introduced new derivatives products. We also grew non-securities revenues by 12 percent year-on-year and maintained cost discipline, " he said.
The ongoing macroeconomic uncertainties in Asia, Europe and the United States will continue to affect markets, and SGX will focus on growing its customer base and product offerings, while "pacing investments in line with opportunities," he said. (1 Singapore dollar = 0.8 U.S. dollar)
