BGC Partners (BGCP) Reports In-Line Q4 EPS

BGC Partners (NASDAQ: BGCP) reported Q4 EPS of $0.18, in-line with the analyst estimate of $0.18. Revenue for the quarter came in at $515.5 million versus the consensus estimate of $509.5 million.

"

BGC’s fourth quarter post-tax distributable earnings increased by approximately 50 percent year-over-year to $61 million, which made it the second record quarter in a row for the Company’s overall profits,” said Howard W. Lutnick, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of BGC.“This best-ever quarter reflected pre-tax distributable earnings growing by 79 percent for our high margin fully electronic businesses, as we continued to see tremendous success from our strategy of converting voice and hybrid Financial Services desks to much more profitable fully electronic trading.

“Our overall Financial Services business also improved as volatility picked up during the quarter across many asset classes.Our Real Estate Services[3] business, which generated nearly half of BGC’s revenues during the quarter, continued to benefit from robust real estate industry trends.We are confident that the combination of positive industry dynamics, our ability to profitably hire and make accretive acquisitions, and our operational outperformance across both segments will lead to strong growth for the overall Company in 2015.

“Our liquidity is in excess of $825 million, and in addition to this, we expect to receive about $625 million in NASDAQ OMX stock[4] over time, which provides us with significant amount of capital to pay dividends, profitably hire, and make accretive acquisitions, all while maintaining our investment grade rating. Our most recently announced acquisitions include Apartment Realty Advisers (“ARA”), R.P. Martin, and our current tender offer for the shares of GFI Group Inc.[5]

“We are very excited that, including the 17.1 million shares BGC owns and the 37.9 million tendered, stockholders representing approximately 43.3% of GFI shares supported our transaction as of the most recently announced tender offer results.We implore those stockholders who have not yet tendered to do so in order to receive the value to which they are entitled.We remain confident that our proposed transaction will provide substantial benefits to GFI’s customers, counterparties, regulators, brokers, and other employees, all of whom should prefer GFI being part of a larger, faster growing, and more diversified investment grade company.

“Following the successful completion of our tender offer, we expect to generate increased productivity per front-office employee and to reduce annual expenses by at least $40 million in the first year.We also expect to free up tens of millions of dollars of duplicative capital currently set aside by GFI for regulatory and clearing purposes. We therefore believe we can create considerable earnings accretion and stronger cash flow for BGC on a consolidated basis, all while maintaining our investment grade rating.”

Mr. Lutnick concluded:“Our board declared a 12 cent qualified dividend for the fourth quarter, which at yesterday’s closing stock price translates into a 5.5 percent annualized yield.Given our record performance over the last two quarters and our strong outlook, we expect to increase the dividend next quarter.”

For earnings history and earnings-related data on BGC Partners (BGCP) click here.

You May Also Be Interested In

• Nomura/Instinet Upgrades Genting Singapore (GENS:SP) (GIGNY) to Neutral
• Eikon Therapeutics, Inc. (EIKN) Misses Q2 EPS by 163c
• Stardust Power (SDST) Tops Q2 EPS by 1c