WH Ireland Group PLC on Friday said it swung to a half-year loss due to ‘very testing’ market conditions.

The London-based broker and wealth manager said pretax loss for the six months that ended September 30 was £384,000 swinging from a profit of £325,000 a year ago

First half revenue was £14.3 million, falling 16% from £17.0 million the year prior, which was ‘driven both by the fall in markets, which impacted revenue for both divisions, and by the widely reported drop off in transactions on AIM, which particularly affected Capital Markets,’ WH Ireland said.

No interim dividend was declared by the company, unchanged from a year ago.

WH Ireland booked a net loss on investments for the first half of £1.5 million, swinging from a net gain of £503,000 the year prior. Administrative expenses were reduced by 13% to £14.6 million from £16.8 million a year ago, the company said.

Chief Executive Officer Phillip Wale said: ‘Our first half was impacted as expected by the fall in markets and drop off in transactions on AIM. In the circumstances, we reported a relatively resilient performance and continued to develop the group through selective recruitment and complementary new services, such as our debt capital markets team who completed another transaction this week.’

The challenging market environment has continued, WH Ireland said, with the company expecting a ‘small loss for the year as a whole’ with tightened control over costs.

‘With a continued focus on operational efficiencies, and the further development of our new and existing offerings, I believe we are well placed to take advantage of a market recovery,’ Wale said.

WH Ireland shares were trading down 16% at 23 pence per share on Friday afternoon in London.

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