Alfa-Forex finishes 2019 in the red

Russian participants in the Forex trading industry continue to report on the financial results of their activities according to the results of last 2019. Another participant in the quartet of the remaining licensed Forex dealers, Alfa-Forex, as part of the Alfa Group consortium, recently published its annual accounting and showed some positive trend in the development and growth of the business.

So, the trading and investment income that the Forex dealer secured for himself during the reporting period amounted to almost 61 million rubles, compared to 5.5 million at the end of 2018. It is worth emphasizing that Alfa-Forex launched its activities on the territory of the Russian Federation only at the end of 2018, which does not allow objective comparison of indicators on an annual basis. Thus, in the bottom line of the report, the Forex dealer reported a net annual loss of almost 7 million rubles, compared with a loss of 24 million rubles accumulated in 2018.

As is customary in the retail brokerage business, the main expense item is personnel. In the case of Alfa-Forex, whose staff has increased over the year from 8 to 15 employees, over the past year the company spent almost 48 million rubles to pay for the work of its employees. Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the customer acquisition model, and accordingly, the structure of Alfa-Forex, are significantly different from their industry colleagues.

Unlike other Russian forex dealers, Alfa-Forex has built and is developing a network of its representatives, which includes both individual entrepreneurs and organizations. For example, an offshore Forex broker Forex Club, as well as an active member of the trade union, analyst Gleb Zadoya, recently joined the Alpha affiliate network.

In his commentary on the financial statements, Alfa-Forex CEO Sergey Nikolyuk noted that at the beginning of 2020, the new coronavirus began to spread very quickly in the world. Management believed that the outbreak was a non-corrective event after the reporting date.

As the situation is still developing, management believes it is practically impracticable to quantify the potential impact on the company.