Tradition’s revenue numbers surprisingly decline in all areas but in Japan to open up 2013.
Compagnie Financière Tradition (or “Tradition”), a leading interdealer broker which also owns stakes in retail FX firms FXDD (a member of LeapRate’s Approved List of global regulated FX brokers) and Gaitame of Japan, reported their Q1 revenue results today, which were surprisingly down. Revenue was down 11.3 percent from Q1-2012, to CHF 235 million (about $250 million). Interestingly, revenue fell in all regions except Japan (up 8.4%).
That Japan revenues were up shouldn’t be surprising — as we’ve reported, FX volumes in Japan have hit record levels in Q1. However we were somewhat surprised with Tradition’s overall declining numbers — outside Japan as well, 2013 has seen a strong start to the year volume-wise in both the FX and equities trading worlds. Perhaps margins are under pressure in the brokerage business, as competition heats up. We should know more as in the coming weeks as more brokerages and ECNs report their quarterly numbers.
As per the one-year price chart above, Tradition stock has been under pressure the past year, with its shares steadily declining by about 30%. One of Tradition’s main projects the past few months, as we recently reported, has been their new ParFX ECN trading platform, which went live just a week ago. We will have to wait and see whether ParFX will actually begin to contribute to the bottom line at Tradition. Stay tuned…
For the complete Tradtion press release click here.
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