CME GROUP PROFIT INCREASES ON ILLINOIS STATE TAX BENEFIT
- By Matthew Leising
CME Group Inc. (CME), owner of the world's largest futures market, said fourth-quarter profit rose because of an Illinois tax benefit.
Net income climbed to $746 million, or $11.25 a share, from $196 million, or $2.93 a share, a year earlier, Chicago-based CME said today in a statement distributed by PR Newswire. Excluding the tax benefit and other items, profit was $236 million, or $3.55 a share, trailing the average estimate of $3.64 in a Bloomberg survey of 20 analysts. Daily futures and options volume in the quarter averaged 11.7 million contracts, down 2 percent from a year earlier, CME said in a Jan. 4 statement.
Futures contracts based on indexes such as the Standard & Poor's 500 Index or the Dow Jones Industrial Average traded on average 3.1 million times a day in the quarter, up from 2.5 million in the year-ago period, CME Group said last month. Interest-rate contracts, the largest category of futures at the exchange, fell 15 percent to an average 4.7 million a day.
Volume for the CME's ClearPort service, which guarantees swap contracts with its clearinghouse and generates the company's highest fees per contract, jumped 20 percent in the quarter.
Revenue fell 3.5 percent to $737 million in the three months ended Dec. 31, from $763 million a year earlier, the company said.
CME Group shares have fallen 22 percent over the past year through yesterday. They rose $5.97, or 2.5 percent, to $245.48 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading.
