SGX loses $21 million to securities

It has been a slow year.

Yield remains decent but the whole of the Singapore Exchange seemed quiet as 1Q14 remains to be unmatched by all the rest of the quarters in terms of volume generated.

A report by OCBC reveals that SGX posted 4QFY14 earnings of $77.4 million, down 12% year on year, giving full year earnings of $320.4 million.

Securities daily average traded value in FY14 fell 23% year on year to $1.14 billion. In terms of total traded value, this declined 22% to $368.8 billion. Overall, securities revenue for the year dropped 18% to $226.9 million, which now accounted for only 33% of group revenue.

However, OCBC says that derivatives somewhat mitigated the decline as revenue rose modestly by 3% to $208.7 million.

Here’s more from OCBC:

Management declared a final dividend of 16 cents, same as last year, giving full year total dividend of 28 cents. The ex-date is 1 Oct 2014 and dividend will be paid out on 13 Oct 2014.

While the mergers and acquisition theme was strong for the past few quarters, the momentum appears to have slowed down as general market and stock valuations move higher. In addition, the IPO market was relatively quiet in 2014. While there were eight IPOs in the first half of 2014, this included only two companies on the Mainboard (OUE Commercial Trust and Pacc Offshore Services Holdings), with the balance listed on Catalist. In terms of expenses, management has guided for tech-related expenses of between S$50-55m, and total operating expenses of S$330-340m for FY15.