Mathias Hlubek, chief financial officer of Deutsche Börse AG, said: "The third quarter was again very successful for Deutsche Börse and we are profiting from our diversified business model in the international competition. We want to make use of our options next year as well, and continue on our growth course."
The segment reporting shows that Clearstream is again the strongest segment in sales, with sales of 138.3 million euros (Q3/2002: 135.2 million euros). Sales were driven by, among other things, international securities transactions, which rose 13 percent compared with the previous year. Due to the low interest-rate level and a reimbursement of clearing and settlement fees that had been collected in excess from the Xetra segment, EBIT declined from the previous year's figure to 24.6 million (Q3/2002: 38.4 million euros).
During the third quarter of 2003, Eurex recorded another increase in sales, with 103.8 million euros after 97.3 million euros for Q3 last year. The EBIT was at 51.7 million euros after 56.2 million euros for the third quarter last year. Trading in Dutch equity options was increasingly active, in which Eurex achieved an average market share of about 14 percent with 2.2 million contracts traded.
In the Xetra segment, sales increased 11 percent to 59.6 million (Q3/2002: 53.5 million euros), with higher-than-proportionate growth in EBIT, from 1.4 million euros in Q3/2002 to 27.2 million euros in Q3/2003. The reason for this growth is a 7.4 percent increase in the number of transactions on Xetra compared with the previous year's third-quarter figure as well as lower IT-development costs after the launch of the central counterparty (CCP).
The Information Services segment maintained sales revenue at a level of 29.0 million euros, in spite of the overall market slump in business with market data (Q3/2002: 28.6 million euros). Due to the lower costs, the EBIT increased 57 percent to 8.8 million euros.
In Information Technology, external sales declined to 32.2 million euros (Q3/2002: 41.1 million euros). Cost management in this segment resulted in a higher EBIT of 6.5 million euros (Q3/2002: -2.3 million euros) in spite of lower revenue and a 10 million euros write down on goodwill for the acquisition of the subsidiary entory.
With its strong growth over the past years, Deutsche Börse has clearly outperformed the sector in a negative market environment. Due to the diversification of its earnings flows and a large number of growth options, the company is expecting a continuation of this growth trend. In order to realize the growth options, high investments will be needed in the short term in the development of new services and in the expansion of the distribution network. After that, earnings before interest and taxes (EBIT) of more than 440 million euros are also expected for business year 2004.
