Earnings Labs

StoneX Group Inc. (SNEX)

Q4 2015 Earnings Call· Thu, Dec 10, 2015

$103.42

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Transcript

Operator

Operator

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen and welcome to the INTL FCStone Fourth Quarter Fiscal Year 2015 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. [Operator Instructions] As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I would now like to turn the call over to your host for today’s conference, Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Bill Dunaway. Sir, you may begin.

Bill Dunaway

Analyst

Good morning. My name is Bill Dunaway, CFO of INTL FCStone. Welcome to our earnings conference call for our fiscal fourth quarter and full year ending September 30, 2015. After the market closed yesterday, we issued a press release reporting our results for the fiscal fourth quarter and our full fiscal year. This release is available on our website at www.intlfcstone.com as well as a slide presentation, which we will refer to on this call and our discussions of our quarterly and annual results. You will need to sign on to the live webcast in order to view the presentation. Both the presentation and an archive of the webcast will be available on our website after the call’s conclusion. Before getting underway, we are required to advise you and all participants should note that the following discussion should be taken in conjunction with the most recent financial statements and notes thereto as well as the Form 10-K filed with the SEC. This discussion may contain forward-looking statements within the meanings of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties which are detailed in our filings with the SEC. Although the company believes that its forward-looking statements are based upon reasonable assumptions regarding its business and future market conditions, there can be no assurances that the company’s actual results will not differ materially from any results expressed or implied by the company’s forward-looking statements. The company undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events, or otherwise. Readers are cautioned that any forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance. With that, I will now turn the call over to…

Bill Dunaway

Analyst

Thank you, Sean. I would like to start my discussion with the review of the quarterly results. I will be referring to slides in the information we have made available as part of the webcast. Specifically starting with Slide #3, which represents a bridge between operating revenues for the fourth quarter of last year to the current fiscal fourth quarter. As noted on the slide, fourth quarter revenues were $178.7 million, which represents a 37% increase as compared to the $130.6 million in the prior year. As Sean mentioned in the fourth quarter, we completed the merger of our U.S. based broker dealers in our FCM. As a result of this merger, available-for-sale investments carried into the FCM, both U.S. treasuries and exchange from common stock were transferred into the trading category at fair value in accordance with accounting requirements for broker dealers. This resulted in $5.4 million of pretax unrealized gains not previously recognized in earnings being included in the operating revenues in our corporate unallocated segment in the fourth quarter. Outside of that increase, the most notable change was an $18.3 million or 84% increase in securities segment operating revenues. The largest driver of this increase was in debt trading, which added $11 million in operating revenues versus the prior year primarily as a result of the acquisition of G.X. Clarke at the beginning of our second fiscal quarter. In addition, equity market making revenues increased $5.5 million versus the prior year as transactional volumes increased 36%. The second largest gain in operating revenues was in our global payments segment, which added $9.9 million in incremental revenues to a record $25.3 million. An increase in payments from financial institutions drove transactional volumes, increased 52%, while favorable market conditions drove an 8% increase in our average revenue per trade…

Operator

Operator

Thank you. [Operator Instructions] Our first question is from Jeremy Hellman with Singular Research. Your line is open.

Jeremy Hellman

Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open

Hi guys. Sean O’Connor: Hi, Jeremy.

Jeremy Hellman

Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open

You guys obviously have really impressive report, great year. But as you know, Wall Street can be ruthless and so the question always comes down to what’s next. And along that line with the JOBS Act opening crowdfunding, I was wondering if you have any interest in looking at getting into that line of business, maybe buying one of the many crowdfunding portals out there and building your own? Sean O’Connor: Jeremy, honestly, I don’t think we have any interest in that. I think we have got our plate full. We have got lots of opportunities in our core businesses. And I think that’s what we are really going to be focusing on. We are in a really interesting space in our industry right now. Cross currents of smaller firms struggling, banks pushing out customers, and us having a unique capability to service those clients, and I think that’s where we need to focus our efforts.

Jeremy Hellman

Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open

Okay, it makes sense. And kind of taking that feedback a little bit further then, are you in a position now where you are getting a lot of inbound calls as you put it from monoline providers who might be looking for a platform such as yours where they can leverage their business a little bit better and gain a little bit of safety in numbers maybe? Sean O’Connor: That would be, yes.

Jeremy Hellman

Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open

Alright. Very good to hear. Sean O’Connor: We are receiving calls every week, every month about businesses that are struggling and would like to find a way to partner with us for us to purchase them, some way leverage our platform, so at the moment kind of full-time job just looking through those opportunities. We are very particular we want to make sure that businesses are a fit. We want to be in businesses that solves real problems for real customers. Lot of businesses don’t do that. And then of course, we’ve got to make sure that the businesses create value for our shareholders and a lot of these businesses create value for the employees, but not initially for the shareholders. So, once we go through that kind of filter, very few of those opportunities are attractive. But there are opportunities out there and a lot of them are coming to us.

Jeremy Hellman

Analyst · Singular Research. Your line is open

Alright, great. Well, once again great year guys. I am looking forward to what next year holds. Sean O’Connor: Okay, thank you.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Our next question is from Erick Sönne with Private Capital Management. Your line is open. Erick Sönne: Hi, good morning guys. Sean O’Connor: Hey, Erick. How are you? Erick Sönne: I am doing great. Thank you. I have a question on the global payments business with regards to the higher revenue per trade, what percent – basically how much of that higher spread is actually explained by the high volatility in currency markets relative to any sort of a structural change in terms of the customer base? Sean O’Connor: Well, I think you have got to look at it in two ways. We give pretty clear metrics on both the payments volumes as well as the revenue per trade. And I think the payments volumes and the increases there speak to increased customer engagement, particularly with the larger banks, the addition of new customers, and that’s I think probably the best gauge of the underlying performance of the company. What you did see this quarter was the revenue per trade actually increased. I think we have for many quarters been saying to people that this is our anticipation that, that would probably decrease over time as the business mix change. The delta between the increase and the decrease, I think was largely due to abnormal, but favorable market conditions. The currency markets in some of the markets we do business in are in turmoil or were in turmoil as a result of the change in the dollar, particularly the commodity-based currencies, and that just led to a blowout of the spread. So, obviously, that’s something that’s not repeatable. We like it when it happens and we will take it when it happens. So, I think you should look to the underlying growth in payments as a better long-term…

Bill Dunaway

Analyst

Slide #5. Sean O’Connor: Yes. So, I think what you got to really think about at the moment is we have laddered investments with the weighted duration at the moment of about 19 months. We are earning 60 odd basis points on that portfolio in an entirely static environment. If the interest curve stayed exactly the same and didn’t move, we could probably ratchet that up as we roll our front ends back to the back end of the ladders. Over time, we could probably get to about 100, 110 basis points. And any move beyond that will require the interest rate curve to move upwards. Now, clearly, if interest rate curve moves upwards, we are not going to catch all of that at once, right, because we already have investments, they are laddered, they roll off every quarter. So, we will move into that higher interest rate curve slowly over time. So, I guess you got to take sort of a long-term view on what do you think the sort of 0 to 3-year part of the interest curve is going to look like and give us some time to roll into that scenario if you assume it’s higher. What is interesting is we always keep about 30% of our seg funds in the very short end of the curve. We don’t swap those out. That’s part of our policy just for liquidity purposes. The benchmark right for that part of the portfolio is T bills normally. T bills in the last quarter have moved from about 1 basis point to 22 basis points. So, that’s a pretty big impact for us immediately on the front end, but be the math, we have – we will take between $1.6 billion in seg funds to $2.2 billion at the peak as we move through the cycles. We are currently making about 60 odd basis points. All things being equal we think that could get to 1%, anything beyond that will require interest rates to move in our favor, but that’s the simple math. We also have with G.X. Clarke we do have inventory in that business which is largely treasuries, mortgage backs, asset backs. And clearly, there is on our inventory a funding spread we have on that inventory. And clearly if interest rates go up depending on how the shape of the curve changes, we may see a greater carry on that inventory than previously. And that could also be material. Erick Sönne: Excellent. Thank you for the color. One quick question? Sean O’Connor: Sorry, yes. Go ahead. Erick Sönne: Staying with G.X. Clarke, how much G.X. Clarke actually added to revenues – to the Securities revenues this year? Sean O’Connor: Bill, do you have – firstly, while Bill is getting that number for you, they remind it was only in our numbers for nine months. Of course, that acquisition closed on 1 January. So Bill, what was the nine months revenue add?

Bill Dunaway

Analyst

$31.4 million, Erick. Erick Sönne: Thank you very much. Thank you very much guys for building in great company. Thank you. Sean O’Connor: Okay. Thank you. Alright guys, we don’t see any other calls. Last chance if anyone wants to ask a question.

Operator

Operator

[Operator Instructions] Sean O’Connor: Okay, I think that’s it. Thanks very much for joining us. And we will be speaking to you next time in early February. So thank you.