Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Leonteq Half Year 2024 Results Conference Call and live webcast. I am Dobbin, the Chorus Call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in the listen-only mode, and conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it is my pleasure to hand this conference over to Mr. Dominik Ruggli, Head, Investor Relations, Communications and Marketing of Leonteq. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the press conference call of Leonteq's half year 2024 results. The presentation material, the Half Year Report 2024, can be found in the Investor Relations section of our website. In the same section, we have also provided you a time series data Excel file and a comparison of the analyst consensus versus our actual reported results. Here with me today are our Chief Executive Officer, Lukas Ruflin, our Chief Financial Officer, Hans Widler. We will start the presentation with the highlights and the business update for the first half. For the same period, we will then also further discuss the financial performance, and Lukas finally will take you through a broader overview of the company's development during this more than six years as a CEO. With that, I hand over to you, Lukas.
Thank you, Dominik. Good morning, and welcome to you, dear shareholders, analysts, and media representatives. I believe you have seen today's announcement of my intention to step down as CEO and return to the board once my successor has been appointed. In this context, I would like to use today's occasion to take a step back and look at the progress and challenges during my tenure a bit later in today's presentation. For now, let's focus on the highlights and business update for the first half of 2024 on page 4 of the slide deck. In the first half of 2024, we experienced similar market trends in terms of volatility, interest rate levels, and competitive landscape as in 2023. First, the decline in market volatility that we saw in 2023 continued into 2024 and remains at historic lows.
Second, interest rates that were raised by the central banks to combat elevated inflation levels in 2023 have leveled but remain high. Third, the Swiss franc remains strong against U.S. dollar and euro, while it is trading slightly lower compared to 2023. Finally, on the fixed income side, we saw relatively stable credit spreads, which continue to help our investment portfolio. Despite this overall challenging market environment, we continue to see strong client activity. Let's now take a closer look at our franchise on page 5. Leonteq issued 24,000 products and recorded 146,000 transactions on our platform in the first half of 2024. This demonstrates not only a strong development compared to the first and the second half of 2023, but are both record numbers in the historic context of the firm.
Also, our turnover recorded significant growth with a 66% growth rate compared to the second half of 2023. It was also in part driven by exceptional transactions in Leonteq products, with a very high notional of CHF 1.7 billion. These numbers combined are clearly very strong and are testimony to the solidity of our client franchise. I invite you now to look at page 6, where we see that we delivered solid performance in the first half of 2024, and our costs remained under control. We achieved a solid result with better earnings quality that was driven by strong momentum from new business initiatives. This includes strong performance in our fund derivatives business, in our balance sheet light business, and in our treasury activities, which all recorded double-digit growth rates or more compared to both the first half and the second half of 2023.
We also focused on several measures to optimize our cost base, allowing us to better adapt to rapidly changing market conditions. The number of products initiated via our in-house proprietary technology platform, LynQs, increased by 67% to more than 5,100 products compared to the second half of 2023. This brings the click-and-trade ratio, whereby clients directly execute through our technology platform, to 22%, compared to 17% in the second half of 2023, and 7% in the first half of 2023. Again, testimony to the very strong growth rates in this area. We have maintained our strong capital bases at more than CHF 870 million. This is 4% higher than at year-end 2023, where we reported a capital basis of around CHF 838 million.
Our profitability has been restored with group net profit of CHF 15.7 million in the first half of 2024, compared to a net loss of CHF 8.2 million in the second half of 2023. We are confident that we are well-positioned as interest rate outlook improves, and the markets for structured products are set to recover. We therefore reiterate our clear ambition to grow our profits for the full year 2024 compared to the full year 2023. With that, I hand over to our CFO, Hans Widler.
Thank you very much, Lukas. A very warm welcome to all, also from my side. I'm pleased to present to you the financial results of Leonteq for the first half of 2024. As mentioned by Lukas, we experienced similar market trends in 2024, as we have since the beginning of 2023. In this challenging environment, we managed to increase our total operating income by +18% to CHF 133.4 million, compared to the second half of 2023, as you can see from the chart on the left side. Yet, total operating income is down compared to the first half of 2023, where we had a higher net trading result and also benefited from some extraordinary large ticket transactions. From the chart in the middle, you can see that we managed to keep our cost base flat.
Total operating expenses increased by 1% to CHF 120.5 million, compared to the second half of 2023. On the chart on the right-hand side, you can see that we reported a group net profit of CHF 15.7 million in the first half of 2024. Therefore, we returned to profitability following a net loss of CHF -8.2 million in the second half of last year. Let's now look closer on our top-line drivers on page 9. Compared to the second half of 2023, our turnover grew by +66% or by +34% compared to the first half of 2023 to CHF 15.8 billion. This was, however, partially driven by exceptional transactions highlighted beforehand, with a high notional of CHF 1.7 billion, which we considered to be one-off in nature.
As mentioned earlier, the competition remains high, which, together with the exceptional transactions, led to a further reduction in net fee income margin to 67 basis points from 82 basis points in the second half of 2023. Adjusted for these exceptional transactions, the net fee margin was 75 basis points. As a result, and visualized on the chart on the left-hand side, our net fee income increased to CHF 118 million, which is 32% higher than in the second half of 2023. All of our regions contributed to this increase. In particular in Europe, we saw a very strong increase in net fee income of +52% compared to the second half of last year. What you can also see is that compared to the first half of 2023, net fee income was down by 5% or CHF 6 million.
This decrease was in part driven by higher contribution of large ticket transactions, totaling CHF 22 million or 18% of the group's net fee income in the first half of last year, while we achieved CHF 11 million or 9% of the group net fee income in the first half of 2024 from such transactions. Looking now at our net trading results, you can see from the second chart on the slide that we generated CHF 11.2 million. This is approximately CHF 7 million lower compared to the two previous semesters. The reason for this decrease is mainly the continued low level of market volatility, highlighted by Lukas earlier. However, we saw both our hedging and treasury activities to contribute positively to the results. On page ten, you can see more details to the drivers behind our cost base.
As communicated with our full year 2023 results, we have diligently reviewed our cost structure and took actions to optimize the allocation of our resources. In the first half year of 2024, we applied a stricter approach to new hires and replacements, and used natural fluctuations as well as selective performance management to lower our headcounts to 573 FTEs. This compares to 591 FTEs at the end of 2023, and compared to 608 FTEs a year ago, reflecting a year-on-year decrease of 6%. We also reduced, during the same time period, the number of consultants to below 100, leading to a decrease of 16% year-on-year. Now, we want to give you more clarity of what that means for next year's cost base, since certain cost measures will only materialize in the future.
We expect to save an additional CHF 2 million due to the reduction in the staff base and contractors, some of which will happen in the course of the third quarter of 2024 as well. Second, we expect to have a reduction in costs by approximately CHF 3 million, due to the effects of lower variable compensations, following two record years in 2021 and 2022, and resulting lower variable compensations in 2023 and 2024. Lastly, we recognized certain one-off costs totaling CHF 6 million in the first half of 2024. These include provisions for legal and regulatory cases, as well as professional fees for remediation of certain improvement opportunities. These three items together result in expected cost benefits of approximately CHF 11 million for the first half of 2025.
This obviously assumes a similar market environment, a comparable revenue development, and comparable investments in initiatives. Allow me to continue on page 11, to look closer at our highly liquid balance sheet. We reported a 15% increase in our total balance sheet of CHF 1.4 billion to CHF 10.6 billion at the end of the first half year, 2024. Most changes in the balance sheet are, in fact, directly a consequence of the higher volumes we recorded on our platform in the first half of 2024, compared to last year. On the back of the higher client activity, our hedging volumes increased, which directly resulted in higher cash and receivable positions, which are up by CHF 322 million to CHF 1.2 billion.
Trading financial assets and derivatives grew on the back of a rise in outstanding volumes with platform partners, as well as due to the growth in Leonteq's own fund derivatives business. Financial assets investments correspond to our high quality investment portfolio, which remains stable at CHF 2.8 billion. We also continue to apply a conservative investment approach to our investment portfolio. As of 30 June 2024, the credit quality of this portfolio remained high, with an average credit rating of AA-. Short-term credits and liabilities also grew on the back of higher hedging volumes by CHF 617 million to CHF 2.2 billion. Leonteq issued products, which we recognize as financial liabilities designated at fair value, remained roughly unchanged at CHF 4.7 billion. Lastly, our shareholders' equity increased to CHF 814 million, which I comment further on the next page.
At the end of December 2023, our shareholders' equity amounted to CHF 780 million, as you can see from the bar on the left-hand side. At our annual general meeting, end of March, shareholders approved the proposal to distribute around Swiss franc dividends per share in dividends. The distribution to shareholders for 2023 represents a payout ratio of 87% of the 2023 group net profit. This resulted in total distributions to shareholders of approximately CHF 18 million, which was offset by the retained earnings from the first half of 2024 of CHF 15.7 million. In addition, currency translation adjustments positively impacted the equity balance by CHF 22 million, primarily stemming from our US dollar structural financing position. We also recognized CHF 8 million in unrealized income related to our investment portfolio.
Overall, our shareholders' equity increased by 4% to a total of CHF 814.4 million as of 30 June 2024. Together, with an unchanged level of deferred fee income of CHF 57 million, Leonteq's capital base grew to CHF 871 million, compared to CHF 837.9 million at the end of last year. With that, I would like to return over back to Lukas.
Thank you very much, Hans. As you have seen in today's press release, I've informed the board that I intend to step down as CEO once a successor has been appointed. This will be determined by means of a search process led by our chairman. The board of directors has also decided to propose thereafter my election as a new member to the board at the next shareholders meeting. It has been a privilege to lead Leonteq as CEO over the last more than six years. As you might recall, in 2018, the board approached me to take on the CEO role at, back then, a difficult point in time for the company. Following a discussion with the board, I felt it was the right thing at the time, and I agreed to take on the role for approximately five years.
When stepping into this new function, I did so with a clear plan, which was to transform Leonteq into a more independent, more diversified business. I would therefore like to spend the rest of today's conference by giving you an overview of the company's transformation since 2018. I will also give you my reflection on some of the challenges we faced and some of the challenges we continue to face, and the resulting short- to medium-term decisions we have taken to address those. With that, let's please turn to page 14, the capital side of matters. Maybe, and possibly many regard for these reasons, the biggest importance to focus on was the capital side of the business. Clearly, progress there has been quite stellar. We continued since 2018 to continuously strengthening our shareholders' equities through a range of measures.
It started in July 2018, when we announced and subsequently executed a capital increase by way of a rights issue in the amount of CHF fund of 20 million. And then it was followed by a sequence of profitable years, which have resulted in accumulated net profits of more than CHF 500 million over the period. This allowed us from 2019 to 2023, to distribute more than CHF 180 million to our shareholders, which includes dividends of CHF 168 million and a CHF 18 million share buyback, which we launched and completed last year. We have communicated to you our capital return policy in February 2024, which is that we target a payout ratio of more than 50% of annual group net profits going forward, which includes both dividends and share buybacks.
It being understood that share buybacks would be undertaken if results permit. Due to this comfortable and strong capital basis, we strongly enhanced the financial solidity of Leonteq, and of course, it gave us the breathing space to continue to invest in growth opportunities the business has. Let's now look at page 15. In 2018, Leonteq's business had a historic franchise that was centered on structured investment products with equity, i.e., shares as underlyings. We identified in 2018 that our business would move more towards volume-driven business reality, likely accompanied by margin pressure and overall intensified competitive landscape. Our answer to this challenge was a multi-year investment program to diversify our income streams through six key initiatives. I'd like to expand on those six now. The first one was the beginning in 2018 of our AMC business.
Actively Managed Certificates, for which AMC stands, are an innovative solution of the industry for index sponsors to customize and implement proprietary investment strategies. They provide greater adjustability and operational efficiency compared to traditional funds. We have invested heavily in this area to provide our clients a broad range of asset classes to invest in. We have developed a dedicated digital solution, which we have named the AMC Gateway, which allows index sponsors to access and manage their AMCs through digital means, if wished so. Today, we have approximately CHF 2.2 billion outstanding in AMCs, and we are generating recurring management fee on these volumes. Second, we expanded our offering to new asset classes with crypto assets. Leonteq has traditionally been a pioneer in offering structured products on crypto assets by issuing tracker certificates on the main crypto underlying since 2017 in Switzerland.
Today, we have a leading position in offering crypto assets in a securitized form, providing investors access to one of the largest available universe, with a total of 30 underlying crypto tokens. Third, we introduced our balance sheet light business model with a view to reduce market risk. For that, we developed our Smart Hedging Issuance Platform, which we labeled SHIP as a short abbreviation, which went live in 2019. Through SHIP, we are reducing our hedging exposures by outsourcing option components to external counterparties on a fully automated basis. Under the same initiative, we also significantly expanded our third-party issuer network by providing our clients access to products manufactured directly from 25 additional issuers.
Today, I'm pleased to report that the balance sheet light turnover comprises 20% of our group turnover, and for those of you who remember the discussions we had in 2019, it's actually spot on with the ambitious level, the high ambitious level guidance I gave you, which was that we could, over time, reach a 20% share of turnover. Fourth, we have set up a dedicated fund derivatives desk, through which we are able to deliver capital protection, leveraged exposure, and dynamic allocation on mutual funds as underlyings. In parallel, Leonteq has also obtained the recognition as a third country benchmark administrator under the EU Benchmark Regulation, in short, BMR. This accreditation enabled us to offer products that reference a wide range of indices, which we manage through our newly developed proprietary index platform.
Today, we have a diverse portfolio of more than 230 mutual funds and more than 200 proprietary indices. Fifth, we also launched a direct-to-consumer model with innovative 3a savings products in the Swiss market. As part of our cooperation with Raiffeisen Kantonalbank, we launched Bench, the first 3a pension savings solutions that offers guaranteed payoff with additional capital market upside, which was launched in spring of this year. The initiatives reflect a purely digital savings product that, as just mentioned, combines a guarantee and upside potential. So far, we are not yet entirely satisfied with the traction we saw, but it will not surprise you, we are working to change this. And finally, as number six, under the so-called retail flow business initiative, we have built up a team of more than a dozen dedicated experts in trading and sales.
This initiative has been the single biggest investment we have made in recent years, and in the context of this initiative, Leonteq acquired a minority stake in BX Swiss of 10% in fall 2023. Since April 2024, we have implemented a phased approach to gradually assume the role as exclusive market maker for equity, securities, and ETFs on BX Swiss. We are very pleased to report that transaction volumes recorded on BX Swiss have almost more than doubled since Leonteq took over the market-making role in April 2024. As part of this initiative, we have also made good progress in developing our core platform that is required when we will start issuing and market-making a large number of flow products. Accordingly, we expect to launch the leverage product spectrum in Switzerland in the second half of 2024.
As a result of these various offerings to diversify our business, today, we generate 58%, by more than half of our revenues, from businesses that basically did not exist or were just in their infancy six years ago. Going forward, we expect the competitive market environment to continue. The core traditional structured product market is expected to continue to show tendency of developing versus a volume-driven business characterized by a higher amount of transactions with smaller average ticket sizes. And logically, therefore, our diversification strategy has not ended, but will most likely continue. We are therefore currently assessing additional new strategic initiatives to further increase our recurring revenue streams, as well as to address the fact that through increase of revenue and diversification of revenue, we will lower the earnings volatility of the business.
We are in particular looking at self-directed investors in a D2C business model format, i.e. initiatives along the ones that I laid out with the cooperation with Raiffeisen Kantonalbank, the context of 3a pension saving products. Moving on to page 16, let's talk for a moment about our white-label business, and more broadly, the issuer universe in our original core business. In 2018, we had our two historic partners, EFG and Raiffeisen, which accounted for approximately 60% of our total turnover. In addition, we had a handful of additional white-label partners that contributed 9% to turnover.
As a first priority, and very much going along with the fact that we focused on the strengthening of our core capital basis, we focused on improving Leonteq's standalone profile as an issuer of structured products and counterparty to many other financial institutions, be it on the client or on the hedging side. We achieved this, as mentioned, first by focusing on capital and thereafter going through a rating process with Fitch, which resulted in an inaugural credit rating of triple B minus, positive outlook in 2018. This rating was subsequently changed and eventually increased to triple B, stable outlook in the fall of 2023. In addition, we obtained a triple B plus stable outlook from JCR shortly thereafter.
We also, in this context, not just focused on our credit rating, but also on our ESG rating, where we saw very significant progress in improving our ESG rating score by MSCI from a single B level to a double A rating, subsequently. As a result of all of this effort, I'm pleased to report that Leonteq is today our most important issuer on our platform, very much by design. Of course, we plan to expand our own issuance as it continues to provide an attractive alternative to our client bases when it comes to the issuance of structured products. But in line and in coordination, cooperation with our various partner issuers, a network which we expanded through various new agreements with new cooperation partners in the last few years.
Again, we went strategically about this by first changing the way we onboard partners from the outset. Starting with identification of prospects and up to institutionalizing the efforts and establishing fully-fledged cooperation agreements. Overall, we onboarded six new white-labeling partners, which include, as examples, Banque Internationale à Luxembourg, Basler Kantonalbank, and PostFinance. As a result of all these efforts, today, 18% of the group's turnover is generated by the distribution of products issued by the new partners. Furthermore, we developed a new standardized issuance model for banks, which allows them to easily transform from an intermediary to a producer structured product. To bring this new business model to life, StructuringHUB SA was established in Luxembourg, an entity independent from Leonteq. Going forward, we expect to add additional partners as part of this new onboarding concept.
Now, let's for a second turn back to our historic partners, EFG and Raiffeisen Switzerland. With EFG, we are connected since inception of the company, not surprisingly, as we were born within EFG as EFG Financial Products. At the outset, EFG was obviously also our largest and majority shareholder. This changed with our IPO in 2012, and subsequently, EFG reduced its majority stake to 20% and became our first white-labeling partner. Since then, we have continued our successful collaboration with EFG, and EFG continues to be a dear partner and issuer on our platform still today. In 2013, EFG sold its remaining 20% stake in then still called EFG Financial Products to Raiffeisen. That was the opportune time for us to change our name, and we renamed ourselves into Leonteq.
In the context of this transaction between EFG and Raiffeisen, key commitments towards Leonteq that EFG had given before were transferred, including a sizable credit facility and counterparty guarantees. That was pretty much the outset in 2018, i.e., situation unchanged, and together with Raiffeisen, Leonteq started working proactively on changing this reality in the subsequent years. Accordingly, in 2020 and 2021, the credit facility agreement between Raiffeisen and Leonteq was canceled, and guarantees issued by Raiffeisen towards around 100 counterparties were terminated. In the last few years, Raiffeisen and Leonteq also adjusted their existing cooperation framework, leading to a successful conclusion of a new technology connection between our platform and the new Raiffeisen platform in March 2024. On the back of this, Raiffeisen and Leonteq agreed to extend the existing cooperation until 2030.
The adjusted framework of the cooperation demonstrates how far Leonteq has come since we, we began partnering with Raiffeisen in 2013. It underscores our position today as an established and independent service and technology provider. We are grateful to Raiffeisen and to EFG for their support along the way, and we look forward to continuing our cooperation and close partnership with them. Another focus we put was obviously on client diversification and target markets. Since 2018, here I refer to page 17 of the slide deck, we improved client diversification, which historically was concentrated on independent asset managers, family offices, and brokers, to new client groups, such as banks and institutional investors. Over the past years, we have also focused on expanding our public distribution activities in Switzerland, and invested in our brand awareness.
Today, Leonteq, together with its platform partners, is the third largest issuer of structured products, with a market share of 16%, when looking at the SIX Swiss Exchange listed market turnover. Also, we continue to expand our market share to 35% in our core segment of yield enhancement products, where we maintain the leading issuer position since more than a decade. We further established a new office in Milan with a strong focus on public distribution. Here, our efforts are measurable in terms of market share, but also recognition, as evidenced by a number of awards we have won since entering the Italian market. More recently, we also started to increase our reach to institutional clients directly, both through our fund derivative offering and investments into new product classes, in particular, on the fixed income and rate side.
If we move on to page 18, you can also see that the enhancement of our platform scalability and the investments we have made led to concrete digital solutions. In 2018, we implemented an agile approach to how we manage our projects and initiatives under the so-called Product Organization . Many of today's Leonteq's key offerings and achievements are a direct result of the Product Organization framework. One good example for this is our client-facing digital interface, which we name LynQs. We have developed LynQs in a modular way, with a focus on the true needs of wealth managers when investing in and managing structured products. Today, LynQs is externally recognized as one of the leading structured products platform. We have more than 1,000 financial intermediaries, with more than 3,000 users connected to the platform.
This is quite remarkable, today, 22% of our 24,000 issued products are directly initiated and executed through LynQs. Overall, and thanks to significant technology investments made in the last years, we were able to process a large volume growth over the years, which clearly demonstrates the scalability of our platform. Concretely, today, we create more than 3 million documents a month. We manage 26,000 life-cycle events every month, and we process 24,000 client transactions every month. Just to put this in context, this corresponds to a compound annual growth rate of around 16% since 2018. Turning to page 19. We, of course, have also worked on a cultural transformation of Leonteq and on strengthening our front office risk control and compliance functions over the last six years.
At board level, Leonteq has entirely renewed its board composition, with all board members since 2017 being new, in an effort to strengthen the independent skills and diversity of the board. As an illustration of this, we have improved the female gender quota of the board of directors from 0% in 2018 to approximately 30% today. In the period since 2017, we have also made significant changes to the executive committee, with all positions, except the Chief Operating Officer, having been changed. Concretely, we split the CFO and CRO roles into two positions in 2017, and created a new role of Chief People Officer at the executive committee level in 2020. We appointed a new Head of Investment Solutions in 2021, and merged our former IWPS unit into it in 2022.
We also announce today the appointment of Dr. Jasmin Koelbl-Vogt as our new general counsel, starting as of first of October this year. Jasmin Koelbl-Vogt brings comprehensive experience, both as a lawyer and as a leader at Citigroup Global Markets Europe. She will succeed Ingrid Silveri, who I would like to thank at this place for her great commitment and valuable contributions over many years. We also established new standing committees of the executive committee to strengthen governance oversight on a number of key aspects of the company. This includes a Treasury Committee established in 2018, the Index Committee established in 2021, and the Sustainability Committee established in 2022. Furthermore, we have made changes at the revenue trade generating business unit level.
Over the years, we have hired several experienced front office professionals that are contributing industry-leading expertise to our front office functions. In particular, market knowledge, managerial skills, as well as understanding of the applicable regulatory frameworks are some of the key assets these new hires brought. In this context, we reorganized our Sales Asia and Sales Europe management teams, and strengthened our general managers and branch manager functions across Europe and Asia. Leonteq has also remained fully committed to invest adequately in its control framework to support the business growth. The number of compliance officers have more than doubled since 2018 across the group. We introduced a global compliance organization in 2022, and we improved our ICS and compliance monitoring, and have enhanced existing as well as introduced new group-wide policies to further strengthen our control framework.
Looking at our third line, our internal audit, we are focused in the past years on additional governance enhancements in the form of the rotation of the internal auditor. This led us to the election of KPMG as our new internal auditor as of this year, which operates furthermore on a notably increased mandate scope. Now, despite all these efforts I've just highlighted to you, Leonteq has been faced with certain allegations reported by media. Allegations that Leonteq took very seriously at all times. We looked into them in-depth several times, and with the support also of independent third parties. These reviews, conducted in 2022 and 2023, revealed no evidence that Leonteq intentionally participated in any potential tax fraud, money laundering, or other criminal misconduct related to the transactions mentioned in the media articles. But we have found shortcomings, topics that were sometimes unfortunately neglected in the face of growth.
These findings were addressed with highest priorities, and remediation where needed, is, of course, ongoing. Overall, we have made many changes to improve our organization, risk management, and control framework during the last several years. Of course, this journey is not just over at the given date, and we will continue to diligently working to address question marks and concerns that were raised by our stakeholders in this context. Let me now turn to page 20 and look at the remaining topic I would like to cover, which is our share price. To state the obvious, the share price performance is disappointing. Of course, as one of Leonteq's larger shareholders, I'm the first one to admit this. As one of the factors that might explain particular recent share price performance, we fully acknowledge that our 2023 financial results have left much to be desired.
But as we have consistently told our shareholders, earnings volatility is and will continue to be inherent to, to our business model to a certain degree, until such time that new business initiatives bring additional and further revenue diversification. This can, on the flip side, also be seen in the exceptionally strong results we achieved in other years, such as the two years before, 2021 and 2022. And of course, whilst 2023 was disappointing, it should be stressed that the year overall was still profitable. As mentioned, we have taken measures to counter our earnings volatility while strengthening and further advancing our competitive advantages.
We diversified our offering into interesting new areas, and of course, and here I refer in particular to the investments we made over the last two years, we expect some of the most recent initiatives to start showing on the revenue side in the upcoming months and periods. But it will take a little bit of patience for the results to become effective. From today's basis, Leonteq has a range of attractive options for its next development stage, and the new CEO will undertake this. I'm very optimistic for Leonteq, and will continue to support the company as a long-term shareholder. What I know is that to the extent we continue, one, to focus on our technology platform. Two, retain and attract key talent and industry experts. And three, continue to increase both share of wallet and number of clients who value our services and products each day.
The share price will eventually come closer to reflect the value that I believe is inherent in the Leonteq platform. With this, I would like to thank you for your attention, and hand back over to you, Dominik.
... Thank you, Lukas and Hans, for the presentation. We are now happy to start with the Q&A session, and we'll take the first question from Mr. Regli.
Good morning, Mr. Ruflin, and everybody else. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions. Obviously, first, some more numbers questions, and then let's say some more personal question to Lukas Ruflin. First, can you maybe give us some more color on the new business initiatives in H1, and which ones exactly contributed more or developed well, and which ones developed less or below your expectations? Then secondly, on the net trading result, where obviously the treasury result was contributing positively, I wondered how sustainable this should be, or what should we expect from the coming semesters in terms of treasury result? And then, the third point is on this CHF 8.2 million changes to provision.
Can you maybe elaborate a bit for what exactly you're making provisions, or why do these provisions occur now in H1 2024? And then, as promised, obviously, I'm sad to hear that you're leaving, Lukas, and I'm a bit surprised about the timing. Obviously, I understand that when you were appointed that the talk was about 5 years or so. Now you're in charge for 6 years plus, but I still wonder why now? I mean, you have achieved a lot, but still there are several, let's call it construction sites, within the organization, a lot of change, and you have only a couple of months ago exchanged the CFO. So what has led you to decide that now is the moment to step down? Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel. I start with answering actually the first three questions, and then we'll pass on to Lukas accordingly to the question addressed to him. With regards to the new business activities, where we experienced substantial growth, the major driver was really the balance sheet light business, specifically the brokerage, which was very strong in the first half of 2024. The fund derivatives activities, which actually further unfolded as expected. What continues to be also beneficial is obviously the asset management, like slash, the AMC business activities, which remained really a key driver on our side, specifically given the fact that we want to continuously focus on the B2 B2 C, as well on the direct to customer activities, whether that's LynQs or whether that's Bench that we launched accordingly.
With regards to the treasury result, as highlighted by Lukas, the market environment was very challenging on the volatility side, but actually beneficial looking at the development of the credit spreads, which benefited our treasury result twofold. On one side, in the positions that we hold and hence increased our equity. On the other side, actually, we also materialized part of the respective positions by selling the respective bonds, which obviously contributed more than average to the treasury result shown. With regards to the provisions made of CHF 8.2 million, this is, as highlighted by Lukas, really on the back of really the regulatory shortfalls, but also on the back of the legal proceedings and that we have in place and hence provide for.
Whenever actually anything unfolds, we fully provide for anticipated remediation costs that will come in the future.
I guess that's the time to meet and answer your question, Daniel, and thank you for your kind words, and, you don't need to be said, I, I'm not leaving. I'm moving to the, to the board, obviously, provided regulatory approval and shareholder, vote for, for, for that eventual change. In the meantime, I continue to be fully committed as CEO, and we will have the time to conduct next CEO search under the leadership of our chairman. On the question of timing, the, the, the key point I said is that I committed for five years. Five years were absolutely sufficient to get Leonteq on a completely different standing from a solidity point of view.
You will remember, Daniel, that we achieved on time, maybe even a little bit ahead of time, our capital target of CHF 800 million by the time the five years had gone by. And if I look at the numbers of growth rate we have seen on the client side, this first half year, and I just repeat some key statistics: turnover by issuer category, up by 66%, number of client transaction, up by 48%, and number of issuer products, up by 30% as compared to the second half last year. Then you see that the franchise is very strong and thriving. In the context of long-term planning, and also taking some wisdom from market research that, it's helpful and beneficial for businesses to have CEO changes, I would say 5-7 years periods coming.
This was the right time. Maybe the only question I can answer more specifically, if it was planned and it's the right time, then not what, then after five years, but now after six years. The short answer to that is, in the meantime, we had, of course, the COVID period, which delayed some of our investment plans for a while. And in particular, the retail flow business activity was launched a bit later than I had personally planned for. I was already considering that in 2018, and it was very important to me that we get that activity and investment fully completed on the, I would say, machine building side, we are almost there, and we will, in the not too far distance, be able to launch the offering and to get this new technology offering out to our client base.
So it was, for all of these reasons, a very logical time. Of course, I admit that, a business that is in development and in build-out, and Leonteq has been on that journey since its foundation, 17 years. We'll always have some construction sites open, but I would call it at this stage, a lot of interior design construction sites and not at all fundamental structural building sites. The house is in good order and is strong, and, the next CEO will be able, with a very strong management team around, him or her, to take the next developments on.
Thank you very much for this, elaboration. Can I ask one short follow-up on Hans words, particularly on the balance sheet light business? I noticed that the volume in balance sheet light or balance sheet light turnover is up quite significantly. Can you give some kind of guidance on whether revenues have developed in line with the turnover, or whether revenue increase was somewhat lower compared to the turnover increase in balance sheet light?
Yes, of course, Daniel. Per se, the driver on the balance sheet light was really the brokerage part, but it is correct to say that the revenue contribution is slightly lower compared actually to the turnover itself, given the fact that those larger turnover transactions stated earlier are actually part of the respective balance sheet light activity.
Okay. Very clear. Thank you so much. No further questions from my side at the moment.
Okay, we have, Sylvain, please.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have a question regarding your retail flow business and the launch of leveraged products supplying in Switzerland for H2. I was wondering if you could give us details on the process going on and maybe a few details on the fee income we could expect in the future from this initiative. Thank you.
Yes, I think again, what's more important to understand, it's not just a new insurance activity we start here, but it's the culmination when we go live of a very extensive investment program, which was necessary in order to build up a new technology platform. Whereas today we would issue, I would say on average, maybe 200 client products a day. Under the retail flow product platform, you could issue up to 100,000 products in one technology batch release at any given point in time. And of course, that then also puts an entire different onus on the firm for doing the market making liquidity provision, secondary trading, hedging activity, et cetera. And that platform investment you have very much seen, not in explicit terms, but in financial terms, in our cost basis over the last two years.
We will, to some extent, continue that cost base as we go live on the revenue side. It's a bit difficult to forecast per se, revenues, and as you know, we are not guiding on single business activities. But what I can tell you is that the annual costs, I would say 2023, 2024, and going forward, is probably somewhere around, CHF 10 million level, maybe a bit higher. And on the back of this investment, we obviously have midterm revenue targets, which not just are supposed to cover costs, but also, supposed to make this an attractive, risk return payoff for shareholders. That gives you an idea of our midterm ambition, but it's very difficult, particularly short term, to be more precise.
Short term, we will also not want to launch too early because I said it's an activity which needs to be fully functioning on day one. And as an illustration, we have now started market making at BX Swiss. We are market making 3,000 either shares or ETFs or other underlying securities on BX Swiss, and of course, we have some full-fledged obligations to be compliant with all stock exchange requirements in that regard. So again, an illustration that this is very much also a technology play and not just a mere addition of our current client offering.
Okay, thank you.
Very good. That brings us to the end of the conference.
Well, if there are no further questions, I would like to thank you all very much for attending today's press conference of Leonteq. We are looking forward to stay in touch with you individually to the extent you have follow-up questions. Thank you again.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.