SIX Group reported record first-half earnings, with EBITDA excluding transformation costs up 40.2% at constant exchange rates to CHF 367.6 million. Net operating income reached CHF 806.6 million, a 10% increase on the same basis, the Zurich-based market infrastructure operator said.
Roughly a third of that earnings increase came from spending less rather than earning more. Operating expenses excluding transformation costs fell 7.7% to CHF 438.9 million at reported rates, and headcount was down 1.1% to 4,279 at the end of June.
Markus Habbel, chief financial officer at SIX, said all four business units contributed to the strongest EBITDA result in the history of SIX. The interim figures are unaudited.
Aquis, the London venue SIX bought in a deal valued at about £207 million and completed in July 2025, turned over EUR 459.8 billion in the half, up 22.9% year on year. Its share of the markets it trades did not move, with SIX putting the market share of Aquis markets at 5.7%, exactly where it stood a year earlier.
The two domestic franchises went the other way. SIX Swiss Exchange lifted its share of SLI trading to 65.2% from 64.6%, and BME Exchange took 55.5% of IBEX 35 volume against 52.3%. Combined turnover at the two venues rose 15.3% to CHF 969.3 billion.
The Exchanges unit lifted net operating income 20.3% to CHF 219.2 million, though the year-ago comparison predates the Aquis completion, and SIX did not break out how much of the gain came from consolidating the London business.
Rivals reported their own records in the same week. Deutsche Börse published second-quarter and half-year figures, with net revenue rising 7% to EUR 1.62 billion and EBITDA excluding the treasury result climbing 13% to EUR 775 million.
Cboe, which runs Europe’s largest equities venue by value traded, posted $2.4 billion of revenue for 2025 and guided to mid-single-digit organic growth for this year. Cboe also called the first quarter of 2026 a record for European equities, with industry-wide addressable average daily value traded up 23% year over year to EUR 94.4 billion.
SIX’s performance is comparable to that of its peers, with the company’s EBITDA margin excluding transformation costs reaching 45.6%, above the target set in its transformation program Scale Up 2027.
Derivatives was the only revenue line inside Exchanges to fall.
SIX said in December it would stretch the derivatives trading day to nearly 14 hours, joining exchanges and brokers pushing into longer sessions.
Transformation costs fell to CHF 19.7 million from CHF 31.0 million. The company also folded its digital exchange entities, including SIX Digital Exchange, into central securities depository SIX SIS during the period, a merger completed on April 30 after FINMA sign-off.
SIX is not listed, so there is no share price to read the numbers against. It is owned by around 120 Swiss and international financial institutions, and the group paid them an ordinary dividend of CHF 5.30 per share for 2025, approved at the May 6 annual meeting and worth CHF 100.2 million in total.
Markus Habbel noted that the company’s performance was driven by its ability to trade commission-free, which has been a key factor in its success.
The company’s growth has also been supported by its ability to secure funding, with companies like Alpaca securing new funding to drive innovation in the industry.