Interactive Brokers' March Metrics Rise, DARTs Up Y/Y - Analyst Blog
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc.’s IBKR Electronic Brokerage segment reported an overall improvement in its brokerage metrics for Mar 2015. The segment deals with clearance and settling of trades for both individual and institutional clients on a global basis.
Total customer Daily Average Revenue Trades ("DARTs") were 636,000, almost stable from Feb 2015-level and up 9% from Mar 2014. Total customer accounts were 296,400, up 2% from the preceding month and 18% from the prior-year month.
Interactive Brokers recorded Cleared Client DARTs of 579,000, relatively stable as compared with Feb 2015-level and up 10% from Mar 2014. However, on an annualized basis, Cleared Average DARTs per customer account of 496,000 fell 2% from the preceding month and 6% from the comparable prior-year month levels.
Interactive Brokers’ total option contracts came in at 23.1 million, up 7% from Feb 2015 but down 2% from Mar 2014. Future contracts of 10.4 million grew 22% from Feb 2015 and 15% from Mar 2014.
Interactive Brokers also provides data related to period-end statistics for customer equity, credit balances and margin loan balances. For the period ended Mar 2015, customer equity was $61.2 billion, rising 1% sequentially and 25% year over year.
Also, Interactive Brokers recorded customer credit balances of $31.8 billion in the reported month, up 1% from Feb 2015 and 19% from Mar 2014. The company’s customer margin loan balance of $17.3 billion rose 4% from the prior month and 20% from the year-ago month.
We believe that Interactive Brokers’ current performance was considerably affected by volatile equity markets. Further, the company is expected to benefit from increased trading activities on part of customers, which in turn, will accelerate top-line growth.
Currently, Interactive Brokers carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). Better-ranked investment brokers include Cowen Group, Inc. COWN and JMP Group Inc. JMP, each sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy); while E*TRADE Financial Corporation ETFC holds a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).
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