On Thursday, after the close of trading in New York, brokerage Charles Schwab (SCHW) reported net revenue of $2.4 billion for the second quarter, a 9% drop year over year and short of the $2.47 billion projected by Wall Street analysts.
Non-GAAP adjusted earnings fell 21% for the quarter from the same period of 2019. At 54 cents a share earnings were above the Wall Street consensus of 52 cents.
But key fundamentals of the business remained on track. Schwab doesn’t make the bulk of its revenue from trading–and indeed the company recently went to a $0 commission plan of stocks and ETFs. Instead net interest revenue accounts for 61% of revenue and another 32% comes from asset management and administrative fees. Trading revenue is just 7% of the total. Total client assets rose to $4.11 trillion at the end of June, up 11% from June 2019. Clients are sitting on more than $203 billion in money market holdings, up from $160 billion in June 2019. (Schwab makes money on the difference between what it pays holders of money market accounts and what it makes by investing that money. Which is why they call it “net interest income.” With interest rates so low net interest revenue of $1.7 billion was down from almost $2 billion in the second quarter of 2019.) And this is before the completion of the November 2019 acquisition of TDAmeritrade with its asset base and similar revenue structure.
Shares of Charles Schwab are down 28.93% for 2020 through the close on July 17.
I hold the stock in my 50 Stocks Portfolio for its long-term power as a vacuum sucking up assets (including those from smaller investors through its new plan (well, new to Schwab anyway) that lets investors buy slices of shares.) The position is down 30.72% since I added it to that portfolio on January 21, 2020.
