Russia’s largest Exchange group, the Moscow Exchange, has released its financial report for the first quarter of 2018. The exchange saw reasonable year-on-year growth in its net income.

At the end of the first quarter of 2017, the exchange saw a net income of RUB 5 billion ($81 million). This year that figure increased to RUB 5.19 billion ($84 million), representing 3.8 percent in year-on-year growth.

The increase in net income was largely attributable to the solid growth of trading volumes in the Equities and bond markets. As a result of this growth, income from fees and commissions grew to RUB 5.51 billion ($89 million), representing 12.8 percent in year-on-year growth.

Not all good news

Unfortunately for the exchange, income from interest and other financial services was down by 5.4 percent year-on-year. The company earned approximately RUB 4.58 billion ($74 million) from interest and other financial services in Q1 of 2017 but finished Q1 of this year with RUB 4.33 billion ($70 million).

The Moscow Exchange would likely have seen greater net income had it not been for an increase in operating costs. These were up to RUB 2.69 billion ($43 million), a 4.7 percent increase on 2017 when the exchange finished the first quarter of the year with approximately RUB 2.57 billion ($41 million) in expenses.

Commenting on the release of the quarterly report, Alexander Afanasiev, Moscow Exchange’s CEO, said: “The first quarter set new records for Moscow Exchange’s Bond Market in terms of both primary placements and total trading volumes, as we saw very strong demand among international and domestic investors for Russian government and corporate bonds. We are very happy with the performance of the Equities Market both in terms of growth of the indexes and trading volumes, which were up 17% year-on-year.”