CMC Markets (CMCX) surged more than 17% on 4 June after posting what chief executive Lord Cruddas called “another year of exceptional delivery,” with net operating income climbing 15% to £392.6m, profit before tax rising 20% to £101.3m and basic earnings per share jumping 22% to 27.5p – FY26 marking its best financial performance on record outside the Covid-impacted FY2021 period.
The results were driven by elevated market volatility, record performance in its Australian stockbroking business and continued momentum from its institutional and B2B partnerships, which contributed a growing share of group revenue, with the Australian stockbroking business delivering net operating income up 32% to AUD $140.3m as client activity and assets under administration grew strongly through the year.
That performance reflects both the structural shift CMC has made toward institutional and partner-driven revenues and the benefit of operating in a market with a growing appetite for self-directed investing, supported by Tier 1 banking relationships with ANZ, Westpac and ASB Bank that give it access to millions of end clients through embedded platforms rather than expensive direct-to-consumer acquisition.
FY27 guidance forces a reset
The FY27 guidance is what really moved the shares, with CMC telling the market to expect net operating income of between £460m and £480m – at least 17% ahead of FY26 and roughly 22% above the company-compiled analyst consensus of £385.5m at the time.
Jefferies noted that guidance at that level would require a substantial upward revision to broker profit before tax estimates for FY27, which explains the scale of the market’s reaction.
That reaction, though, is where caution is warranted. Before the results, the shares had already risen 37% since the start of the year and more than doubled from their November 2025 low of around 203p, meaning a significant amount of recovery was already in the price before the firm released the results.
At around 454p following the post-results rally, the shares trade well above where analysts had positioned their targets, with RBC Capital Markets reiterating an Outperform rating while maintaining its 460p target, and Jefferies upgrading to Buy with a new target of around 500p – itself a substantial revision from the roughly 275p it had held just days prior.
Sitting within the otherwise strong FY26 figures, the £101.3m pre-tax profit fell short of analyst forecasts of £106m due to a £5.2m remediation charge following an Australian regulatory review – a one-off in nature, but a reminder that CMC’s growing presence in Australia brings regulatory complexity alongside its revenue opportunity.
What is structural, what is just the cycle
Over a longer horizon, the risk is that some portion of FY26’s performance reflects cyclical conditions – elevated market volatility, surging gold prices and geopolitical-driven trading activity – rather than purely structural gains, and longer-range forecasts point to earnings declining at roughly 7% per year over a three-year horizon.
That said, the structural shift toward bank partnerships and embedded institutional distribution provides a more durable revenue base than CMC’s previous retail-dependent model, and the FY27 guidance suggests management sees momentum continuing regardless of whether volatility remains elevated.
The dividend increase to 13.8p per share, up 21% and in line with the company’s policy of returning 50% of after-tax profit to shareholders, provides some income support, but a yield of around 3% at current prices is modest for a stock that carries meaningful earnings cyclicality.
CMC has genuinely transformed over the past two years, moving from a retail CFD business exposed to client acquisition costs and regulatory headwinds into a scalable platform embedded within global financial ecosystems – and the FY26 results confirm that transformation is delivering real financial results, with the FY27 guidance signalling genuine confidence from management rather than optimism for its own sake.
Less room for disappointment
The shares, though, have moved a long way in a short time, and with the pre-results consensus needing to be torn up and rewritten simply to catch up with where the stock trades today, the margin for disappointment has narrowed considerably. A transformed business is not in question – the price you are paying for that transformation is.