Despite MONEX Inc having doubled its brokerage commission revenue compared with the previous financial year, its overall revenues and net income during the initial part of 2014 is the lowest since early 2013.
MONEX Inc, a major wholly-owned subsidiary of Japanese giant MONEX Group, has today released its financial results for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2014, revealing a huge disparity between that and the previous financial year’s fortunes.
The financial year to which the preliminary results relate began on April 1, 2013 and ended on March 31 this year, with the firm’s brokerage commission revenue having doubled during this accounting period, reaching 20,665 million Yen compared to the previous year’s 10,349 million Yen.
With Japan’s domestic market continuing to account for approximately one third of all worldwide retail FX business, the requirement to remain competitive in terms of spread has less affected the national brokerage firms, as rather paradoxically to the consumer behavior outside Japan, customers of Japanese companies are extremely loyal and do not seek to divest should lower spread or apparently better terms become available from an overseas brokerage.
This is a fortunate circumstance for MONEX Inc, as although its commission business has borne fruit, and no doubt contributed to the firm’s significantly increased operating revenue which amounted to 37,513 million Yen during the last financial year compared to 22,894 in the previous accounting period, an important note to consider is that the final quarter of the fiscal year (the first calender quarter of 2014 which ended March 31) has resulted in the lowest revenues and net income since the same time last year.
Indeed, February 2014’s trading activity resulted in a 17% reduction compared with January.
Another cause for concern at MONEX is likely to be that its exchange-traded FX business, which is executed on the Osaka Exchange (OSE-FX), declined during this period to just 130 million Yen compared to the 182 million Yen which was traded during the fiscal year ending March 31, 2013. This is particularly interesting at a time when many Western firms are taking steps toward offering exchange-traded FX.
For the same period, other asset classes provided by MONEX Inc did not suffer the same downward trend, with stocks and ETFs having generated a stratospheric volume compared to that of the previous year, amounting to 19,772 million Yen compared with 9,535 million Yen for the year ended March 31, 2013.
Overall, the entire operations generated a slightly elevated net revenue during the period ended March 31, 2014 when compared to the previous year, however the performance between January and March this year is likely to be a matter for corporate prudence and anticipation.
For MONEX Inc’s full financial results for the period ending March 31, 2014, click here.
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