By Rick Aristotle Munarriz January 28, 2009 | Comments (0)
Recs
0 This should be a big week for E*Trade (Nasdaq: ETFC). Between last night's quarterly earnings report and the latest E*Trade Baby ad installment during this weekend's Super Bowl game, the discount broker is going to be in the news.
Having seen the outtakes the company posted on Google's YouTube last week, I can play spoiler by telling you that the baby is now a little older and joined by a few of his friends. Looking over last night's report, the same can be said about E*Trade itself: It’s a little older, a little wiser, and setting up play dates with far more friends.
Once you get past the reality that E*Trade is still not profitable, it's easy to warm up to the company's performance. Daily average revenue trades clocked in at 216,000, an 18% sequential upgrade. The company closed out the fourth quarter with 4.5 million retail customer accounts, adding 97,000 net new accounts (most of them on the brokerage side).
Shaky market? Well, E*Trade wrapped up the final three months of 2008 with $3.5 billion in net asset inflows.
Yes, E*Trade's stock is in the gutter. Yes, the company is in active consideration to follow banking fat cats Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) and Citigroup (NYSE: C) by tapping the TARP pinata. I didn't say that there wouldn't be any teething pain. However, the company has spent the past year deleveraging its balance sheet and pocketing some serious coin by selling non-core assets, and is coming off its strongest period of organic growth in five years.
E*Trade has a long way to go before following in the profitable footsteps of rivals TD*AMERITRADE (Nasdaq: AMTD) and Charles Schwab (Nasdaq: SCHW), but it's clearly taking steps in the right direction, distancing itself from its near collapse and strengthening with every passing quarter.
News 
Market Data 
Discover 
AI
