Charles Schwab Q4 Profit Up 57%, Results Beat View

(RTTNews) - Brokerage and investment manager Charles Schwab Corp. (SCHW) on Thursday reported a 57 percent increase in profit for the fourth quarter from last year, boosted by higher revenues and growth in new brokerage accounts. Both revenue and earnings per share beat analysts' expectations.

San Francisco, California-based Charles Schwab's net interest revenue for the quarter increased 23 percent from last year to $532 million. Revenue from asset management and administration fees grew 13 percent from the year-ago period to $608 million, while trading revenue rose 14 percent to $231 million.

Clients' daily average revenue trades in the quarter rose 12 percent last year to 297 thousand, while average revenue per revenue trade declined 1 percent to $12.33. Charles Schwab ended the fourth quarter with $2.25 trillion in total client assets, up 15 percent year-over-year.

New brokerage accounts at the end of the fourth quarter rose 4 percent from the year-ago period to 250,000. The company's client base grew 3 percent to 9.09 million active brokerage accounts, while banking accounts increased 6 percent to 916,000.

Charles Schwab's fourth-quarter net income available to common stockholders was $297 million or $0.23 per share, up from $189 million or $0.15 per share in the same quarter last year.

On average, twenty one analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report earnings of $0.21 per share for the quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Total net revenues for the quarter grew 18 percent to $1.44 billion from $1.22 billion in the prior-year quarter. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $1.40 billion for the quarter.

For fiscal 2013, Charles Schwab's net income rose to $1.01 billion or $0.78 per share from $883 million or $0.69 per share in the prior year. Net revenue for the year rose 11 percent to $5.44 billion from $4.88 billion in the previous year.

Analysts expected the company to report earnings of $0.76 per share for the year on revenues of $5.40 billion.

Walt Bettinger, CEO of Charles Schwab said, "Our contemporary full-service investing model helped drive further expansion of our client base, leading to $5.4 billion in net revenues and net income that exceeded $1 billion for the first time since 2008."

In Thursday's regular session, SCHW is trading at $26.48, up $0.45 or 1.73 percent on a volume of 2.79 million shares.