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Non-Tech : Knight/Trimark Group, Inc. -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gary Korn who wrote (4932)	10/14/1999 12:14:00 AM
From: Herschel Rubin	Respond to of 10027

Dow Jones NITE Article on OPTIONS [As posted before, NITE may be in discussions with Susquehanna Group, a large options specialist firm] October 13, 1999 Dow Jones Newswires Knight/Trimark: Still Plans To Buy Options Business By Gaston F. Ceron NEW YORK -- Knight/Trimark Group Inc. (NITE), the large market-making firm, is still on track with its plans to buy an options business, as the firm looks to expand into trading other securities besides stocks. During a conference call held Wednesday morning to discuss Knight/Trimark's third-quarter results, Chief Executive Kenneth Pasternak said the company still plans to announce an options acquisition by the end of the year. The company also plans to be active on the International Securities Exchange, an electronic options exchange that is slated to begin operating next year. And Pasternak said that Knight/Trimark will likely enter the growing after-hours trading market by early next year. "Personally, I believe the after-hours market is still in a very embryonic stage," Pasternak said. But it could become more important as it matures, he indicated. The earnings themselves weren't much of a surprise because Knight/Trimark issued an earnings warning just two days ago. Indeed, Knight/Trimark's shares, which sold off sharply on Monday, were recently up 3/8, or 1.5%, at 25 1/2. For the quarter, the Jersey City, N.J., company earned $21.8 million, or 19 cents a diluted share, on $137.6 million in revenue. Per-share earnings were one penny ahead of what analysts targeted, but those estimates came down after Knight/Trimark previewed its results on Monday. Prior to that, analysts expected the company would earn 30 cents a share. In the second quarter of 1999, Knight/Trimark earned 43 cents a diluted share on $224 million in revenue; in the year-ago third-quarter, it earned a stock split-adjusted pro forma 13 cents a diluted share on $92.4 million in revenue. During the third quarter, Knight/Trimark's results were affected by a slowdown in Internet stock trading activity and market volatility from the frantic trading seen in the second quarter. Knight/Trimark processes trades for a number of online brokerage firms. But Pasternak stressed that the company's results were still impressive on a year-over-year basis. Among other comments, Pasternak highlighted what he said were Knight/Trimark's strengths against the stock trading systems known as electronic communications networks, or ECNs. For example, he noted that many of the stock trades Knight/Trimark executes are processed on a matching system "that's in many ways identical to an ECN."