LS Securities more than doubled its net income in the first half of this year from a year earlier, helped by higher brokerage fee revenue and strong performance in the institutional sector of proprietary trading. In particular, brokerage revenue jumped in the second quarter, widening the improvement in results.
On Aug. 14, the Financial Supervisory Service's DART filing system showed LS Securities' first-half net income under consolidation at 73.89119 billion won, up 116.3% from a year earlier. Operating income rose 125.3% to 97.29547 billion won, and income before tax increased 117.2% to 98.11563 billion won. Operating revenue expanded 371.2% to 3.9359 trillion won.
The improvement in second-quarter results stood out. Second-quarter net income under consolidation was 43.573 billion won, up 101% from the same period last year. Operating income rose about 120% to 58.075 billion won, and operating revenue increased 388% to 2.2994 trillion won.
Brokerage fee revenue growth underpinned the results. Second-quarter fee revenue was 67.99339 billion won, up 108% from a year earlier. On a first-half cumulative basis, it came to 123.37179 billion won, up 91.7% from the same period last year.
By institutional sector, first-half operating revenue from proprietary trading was 2.87421 trillion won, with operating income of 73.338 billion won. Brokerage recorded operating revenue of 1.001236 trillion won and operating income of 64.094 billion won. In contrast, the headquarters institutional sector posted an operating loss of 36.775 billion won.
On a separate basis, the improvement in results continued. First-half operating income was 100.657 billion won, up 127.6% from a year earlier, and net income rose 120.8% to 76.255 billion won. Return on equity (ROE) was 16.56%, up 8.8 percentage points from a year earlier.
However, transaction market share declined on some measures. First-half stock order value share was 2.57% overall and 1.71% for retail, down from 2.65% and 1.87%, respectively, last year. Futures order value share also fell to 2.79% from 3.13%. In contrast, options order value share rose to 9.44% from 7.90%.