Monex Inc. Profit Rises to $15.6 Million

Japanese financial services firm, Monex Group Inc., reported strong earnings on Thursday. These results were generated by its brokerage arm Monex Inc. for the fiscal year ending on March 31.

The company revealed that its wholly-owned subsidiary generated a profit of ¥1.66 billion ($15.6 million). It ended considerably higher than 2019’s ¥688 million.

The forex retail broker’s operating revenue, on the other hand, fell by 3.5% on a yearly basis to ¥27.99 billion. Net operating revenue was also down by 5.1% to ¥24.7 billion. Meanwhile, operating profit and ordinary income posted losses of 3% and 4.9% respectively.

Revenues from its brokerage commissions, stocks, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) brought in ¥10.1 billion in commissions for the fiscal year of 2020, versus the ¥10.5 billion achieved last year.

Still, Monex’s brokerage commissions from options and futures surged by 18.4% to ¥367 million, compared with the ¥310 million recorded in 2019.

Monex Finds Support on COVID-19 Pandemic

In addition to releasing data for its brokerage arm, the Tokyo-based parent company also disclosed its own numbers for the fiscal year of 2020. It registered a total revenue of ¥53.38 billion.

The group stated that a spike in volatility combined with more time to trade at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic drove higher market transactions of online brokers.

Trading volumes hit their highest level since 2013 at Monex Securities. It reached a new record in DARTs at TradeStation Group Inc. This is a US broker that the Japanese firm acquired in 2011 for $411 million.

The number of DARTs at TradeStation stood at 148,929 in February to post a monthly increase of 27.7%. This beat January’s 116,645 DARTs. The figure also marked a solid year-on-year rise of 49.5%. This is in comparison with the 99,588 booked in the same month last year.

Monex Group aimed to grow its client and volume by employing TradeStation’s trading tools and technology on a range of financial markets around the world.

Near the end of 2016, the company put up the TradeStation platform for its clients in Japan to facilitate volume and revenues.