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

To: ClearSky who wrote (524)	4/21/1999 11:49:00 PM
From: Joseph F. Hubel	Respond to of 10027

Enjoy...... I particularly like the part about having a price target of $190 in 12 and the potential of a buy out. Better yet as it means $190 after the split. Note, they take in about $9.69 per trade..... Hell that's better than I do. ;) Gotta go... the tax man is at the door. JFH **************************** Knight/Trimark 1st-Qtr Net Up 4-Fold; Stock to Split (Update1) Knight/Trimark 1st-Qtr Net Up 4-Fold; Stock to Split (Update1) (Adds analyst comments, details in 3rd, 8th-12th paragraphs, online brokers stocks in 4th paragraph, industry statistics in 5th paragraph Bloomberg information in last paragraph.) Jersey City, New Jersey, April 21 (Bloomberg) -- Knight/Trimark Group Inc. said first-quarter earnings rose four- fold, beating estimates by 72 percent, as the largest market maker in Nasdaq securities benefited from the surge in online trading. Knight also said it will split its shares 2-for-1 next month. It reported earnings rose to $37.4 million, or 67 cents a share, from a pro forma $8.4 million, or 20 cents, in the first quarter of 1998. The Jersey City, New Jersey-based company, which gets about half its business from online brokerages, was expected to earn 39 cents, the average estimate of nine analysts polled by First Call Corp. ''This is the definition of a great quarter. The whole name of the game is volume and that's what they delivered,'' said Amar Mehta, analyst with CIBC Oppenheimer Inc., who rates the stock a ''strong buy.'' Knight rose 16 15/16, or 20 percent, to 103 11/16 in midmorning trading. The stock has more than quintupled this year. Other online brokers also rose, with ETrade Group Inc. up 13 3/8 to 103 3/16, Charles Schwab Corp. up 98 9/16 to 115 5/16, and Ameritrade Holding Corp. up 18 to 129 1/8. Knight is the latest company to report stronger-than- expected earnings after a quarter when trades made by individuals using PCs rose more than 30 percent, now accounting for more than one of every seven U.S. stock trades. ETrade yesterday reported a smaller-than-expected quarterly loss on a 63 percent rise in customer trades. For Knight, first quarter revenue almost tripled to $182.7 million from $63.5 million as average daily trades executed rose 147 percent to 306,416. The total number of trades executed in the quarter rose 35 percent from the fourth quarter to 18.7 million. Market Makers Market makers continually buy and sell securities to ensure that investors can trade without experiencing large price fluctuations. ''What you saw in the quarter was the benefit of dominating your industry,'' said Don Destino, analyst with Jefferies & Co., who has a 12-month price target of 190 for Knight. Knight had $9.69 in revenue per trade, up about 16 percent from a year ago, and pretax profit of $3.46 per trade, up 77 percent. Knight's share of all Nasdaq trades rose to 15 percent from 9.9 percent a year earlier. The company processed a record 520,000 trades April 19, Destino said. ''The first three weeks of April are as strong as anything during the first three months of the year,'' he said. Knight had to pay brokerages for 17.9 percent of its trade flow, down from 22.5 percent last quarter, Destino said. A large brokerage like Merrill Lynch, which has seen four-year-old Knight cut into its trading revenue, may seek to acquire Knight, which is now worth about $5.5 billion. Knight may also seek to expand by acquiring an off-exchange electronic communications network that matches buy and sell orders, he said. It already owns part of one, Brut LLC. Knight, which has $251 million in cash, may also seek to buy options-trading and international stock-trading firms, said Destino. Year-earlier figures were adjusted to reflect pro forma income taxes. Knight/Trimark was a limited liability partnership before its initial public offering in June 1998. The stock split, for common shareholders as of April 30, will be completed by May 14. Bloomberg LP, the parent of Bloomberg News, owns an electronic trading network, Bloomberg Tradebook. Merrill is a passive minority investor in Bloomberg LP. NYSE/AMEX delayed 20 min. NASDAQ delayed 15 min.

To: ClearSky who wrote (524)	4/25/1999 1:08:00 PM
From: michael r potter	Respond to of 10027

Jeanne, If I have not already done so, let me take a moment to thank you for your response regarding NITE and SWS. Now that I have had a few days to do DD, I still have not found anything of a negative nature-quite to the contrary. Despite general market sell-offs which will cause some considerable downside movement in NITE, the overall trends still appear to be powerfully in their favor. Have been very busy and come to think of it, this may be a duplicate thank you, but hope you don't mind. This is getting very interesting. If you are interested in another idea, Safeguard Scientific SFE $87 is worth checking out. A little complicated and no longer cheap, but have followed them for 10 yrs., first bought in '93 @3.25 and have added on the way up. The management is very competent, long on experience, and absolute integrity. They care about shareholders and their #1 focus is shareholder return. A venture capital incubator that has brought public companies such as Novell, Cambridge Technology, and Coherent Comm. which was bought by TLAB tellabs last year. They offered shareholder rights in Coherent in "94 to buy coherent at $2.50 per share. That is now worth $82.80 in TLAB stock. Have a 26% interest [along with Comcast, Compaq, GE Capital] in Internet Capital Group which will be one of the big IPOs of '99 coming this summer. ICG is composes of app. 26 mostly business to business internet companies, including Vertical Net [VERT] which IPOd already at $16 in Feb. and is now around $115. Good info. on SI SFE thread and on Yhoo SFE thread with top notch analysis by InvestorSeer [a must read if interested-lots of facts, little hype]-most other Yhoo SFE comments are the usual mindless chatter. Like NITE, buying SFE on a pullback, would be best, but we just had a quick one and who knows when the next one will be and from what level on NITE and SFE. Even though SWS has moved up this year, it still seems like a sleeper and may surprise to the upside. All the best. Mike