Financial-services firm LOM made profits of $51,534 in the first half of this year.

The figure compares to a loss of more than $225,700 in the same period last year.

Management and investment advisory fees revenues jumped 17.7 per cent to $1.53 million — up from $1.3 million for the first six months of 2015 and amounting to 44 per cent of total revenue.

LOM had a $665 million in assets under administration at the end of the period, up $30 million on the first six months of last year.

Scott Lines, chairman and chief executive officer of LOM, said: “LOM has continued to see a transition of its business towards a more stable revenue base.

“The asset management revenue grew strongly in the first half, however, we continued to see steep declines in our transactional brokerage revenues.

“All of LOM’s asset management products continued to perform very well with the launch of a new emerging markets fund in January, at a point in time which has, so far, turned out to be the bottom of these markets.

“Since launch, the LOM emerging markets fund has returned a net annualised return of 20 per cent to its investors.”

Broking fee income at the firm fell 29 per cent from $1.11 million to $792,567, 23 per cent of total revenue.

Fees from corporate finance work also dropped, down by more than half — 52 per cent — to $18,000, while the foreign exchange segment went up 43 per cent to $164,156 from the $114,239 recorded for the same period last year.

Mr Lines said: “The most difficult part of our business remains the securities broking business. Revenues from this business are highly volatile and are impacted on a regular basis by recurring bouts of uncertainty and the loss of confidence that surround perceived and real global events.

“The confusion engendered by the Brexit referendum run-up and vote impacted our revenues in this area.”

And he predicted: “We expect that a similar situation could impact us during the second half of the year around the US presidential election.”

But Mr Lines said: “Overall, we are conservatively optimistic for the remainder of the year — we are continuing to win new assets and business has been showing signs of greater activity than normal over the summer and we are reasonably confident that we will see a profit for the full year.”

Revenues overall rose by 5.3 per cent, while total operating costs fell 2.9 per cent and employee compensation went up by 7.3 per cent.

LOM had net equity of $17.3 million at the end of the first six months and no debt.

The company, due to the “modest” net result, will not pay a dividend, but, with the discount the share price trade-to-book value, LOM will continue its share buyback programme.