ASX Limited (ASX) today reports its results for the full financial year ended 30 June 2010 (FY10).
Financial highlights
FY10 summary v FY09 prior corresponding period. Based on ASX’s pro-forma income statement.- Underlying net profit after tax (excluding significant items) of $332.6 million, up 6.1%.
- Statutory net profit after tax (including significant items) of $328.1 million, up 4.6%.
- Operating revenue (excluding interest and dividends) of $588.2 million, up 9.2%.
- Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $454.0 million, up 13.5 %.
- Net interest and dividend revenue of $37.4 million, down 37.2%.
- Cash operating expenses of $134.2 million, down 3.0%.
- Final dividend of 84.0 cents per share (cps), fully franked, up 12.8%, making FY10 dividend total of 173.1 cps, up 5.0%. ASX has also announced today that the Dividend Reinvestment Plan will apply to the final dividend of FY10.
Operational and strategic highlights
- Listings activity was dominated by robust secondary capital issuance of $65.1 billion (albeit down on the record $88.1 billion in FY09) and IPOs rebounded with 93 new listings (compared to 45 in FY09) as business confidence levels improved.
- Trade execution activity levels in both equities and derivatives markets recovered strongly in FY10 (up 24.0% and 17.7% respectively), particularly in the June quarter.
- Near 100% availability levels of ASX’s trade execution, clearing and settlement infrastructure, and smooth functioning of ASX’s market operations and risk management activities, notwithstanding more volatile market conditions in May and June of 2010.
- New transaction fee and rebate schedule announced in June 2010, including the almost halving of the headline equity market trade execution fee (from 0.28 to 0.15 basis points), to lower the direct cost of trading for ASX participants.
- New trade execution services and functionality for the equity market introduced in late June 2010, including VolumeMatch (large order matching) and Centre Point Order, with others scheduled for FY11, such as PureMatch (high frequency trading) and ASX Best (smart order routing for a multi-market environment), all designed to minimise the market impact costs of trading on ASX markets.
- Upgraded trade execution platforms for both the equities (ASX Trade) and futures (ASX Trade 24) markets announced in February 2010, offering next generation high capacity and low latency performance, anticipated to be implemented in late calendar year 2010.
- Commitment to build a new state-of-the-art data centre to allow ASX to expand its co-location hosting services and provide co-location benefits to both cash equities and futures markets participants, and to upgrade its business continuity requirements for the medium to long-term. Scheduled to be operational in late calendar year 2011.
- On 1 August 2010 ASX Group became the overarching brand name for a new organisation structure. The structure better reflects the range of ASX activities with the common goal of providing infrastructure necessary for a globally competitive capital market and a vibrant Australian economy. The rebranding coincided with ASX Markets Supervision being renamed ASX Compliance to more accurately describe the subsidiary’s role to monitor and enforce compliance with ASX Group operating rules, following the transfer of real-time surveillance responsibilities from ASX to ASIC.
ASX Managing Director and CEO, Robert Elstone said:
“The ASX Group of companies achieved resilient financial, operational and compliance performance in FY10, in a market environment that remained challenging despite improved conditions following the global financial crisis of the prior year. ASX’s sound result was achieved in parallel with the heavy organisational demands associated with the transfer of real-time participant surveillance activities to ASIC.
“The keys to ASX’s growth are its competitive positioning and human resources, and both are in good shape. ASX is well-prepared to meet the upcoming market and regulatory complexity challenges and to grow next year and beyond, given the scalability of its infrastructure, diversity of its business model and focus of its executive management team.”
Complete full-year result materials will be available on the ASX Media Centre page: www.asx.com.au/media. A webcast of the 9.30am (AEST) presentation to analysts and ASX’s 2010 Annual Report will be available here: www.asx.com.au/shareholder.
