The Latest: Online brokerage Futu Holdings Ltd. (FUTU.US) on Thursday reported its fourth-quarter net profit fell 8.4% year-on-year to HK$878 million ($112 million), though its full-year profit rose 46.2% to HK$4.28 billion.
Looking Up: The company’s paying customer base increased by 15% year-on-year to 1.71 million users in the latest quarter, and its total number of users also rose 10.5% to 21.6 million.
Take Note: Analysts were expecting the company to report fourth-quarter revenue of HK$2.5 billion, but the actual figure came in below that at HK$2.37 billion, which was up 4.1% year-on-year.
Digging Deeper: Futu was founded in 2007 and listed on the Nasdaq in 2019, with Tencent as a key investor. Continued weakness in the Hong Kong stock market led to a 12.8% quarter-on-quarter decline in trading volume for that exchange over Futu’s platform in the fourth quarter. Futu recently entered Japan and is preparing to offer trading services for Japanese stocks to local customers, with plans to offer similar services to its Singaporean and Hong Kong customers in the second quarter.
Market Reaction: Futu shares tumbled when U.S. markets opened on Thursday and closed at $56.40, down nearly 14%. The stock now trades in the middle of its 52-week range.
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