Monday April 17 9:02 AM ET
Schwab Posts Record on Trading Growth
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Charles Schwab Corp. (NYSE:SCH - news), the No. 1 U.S. discount and Internet brokerage, on Monday said quarterly profits nearly doubled to a record, as customers kept pouring money into their accounts to trade stocks.
Schwab, which has 6.9 million customers, said it earned $284 million, or 33 cents per diluted share in the first quarter.
That compared with a $143 million profit, or 17 cents, in the year-ago quarter. Net revenues, or revenues minus interest expense, rose to a record $1.57 billion, up 65 percent from $952 million a year ago.
The results beat Wall Street expectations of 32 cents a share, according to market research firm First Call/Thomson Financial. San Francisco-based Schwab earlier this month forecast it would post record first-quarter results.
Schwab and other Internet brokerages benefited from a surge in stock trading in the first quarter. Investors funneled more than 1 million trades a day through the Web in the quarter, up 50 percent from the fourth quarter, analysts estimate.
Schwab customers put a record $44 billion more into their accounts in the quarter, bringing the brokerage's total client money to $823 billion. They also traded more than ever, and pushed up Schwab's average daily trading volume to a record 310,000, up 90 percent from a year ago. |
