Deutsche Börse closed Q3/2006 with a new record result for a third quarter. At €432.0 million, sales revenue were up by 3 percent compared to Q3/2005 (€417.8 million). Deutsche Börse earned an additional €36.6 million in net interest income from banking business (Q3/2005: €28.6 million). EBITA totaled €255.0 million in Q3 including an exceptional gain of some €24 million relating to the sale of 70 percent and deconsolidation of Eurex US. This represents a year-on-year EBITA increase of 42 percent (Q3/2005: €179.9 million). Earnings per share climbed to €1.76 for an average of 99.2 million shares outstanding (Q3/2005: €1.05 for 105.4 million shares).
Chief Financial Officer Mathias Hlubek was very pleased with the company’s business performance in the first nine months of 2006: “Strong revenue growth of 14 percent in the first nine months paired with continued cost discipline across the Group translated into €803.4 million in EBITA for the first three quarters, exceeding the €710.9 million in EBITA for the entire year 2005 by 13 percent.” Hlubek is also optimistic for fiscal year 2007: “Structural growth drivers and new products should further reduce the Group’s dependency on cyclical influences, while continued cost discipline serves as the basis for working towards another record year in 2007. Despite our plans to further increase investments in the breadth and depth of our product and technology base, we target overall costs in 2007 to grow only moderately against our cost target for 2006, due to a combination of unavoidable inflationary and technical effects such as the consolidation of our joint venture with SWX Group for structured products in 2007,” said Hlubek.
Segment reporting for the third quarter once again shows Clearstream as the strongest segment in terms of revenue. Total revenue (sales revenue including net interest income from banking business) rose by 7 percent to €204.2 million (Q3/2005: €190.2 million). The main drivers were international custody and settlement. Custody volume rose by 9 percent year-on-year to €9.3 trillion (Q3/2005: €8.6 trillion) and settlement instructions decreased by 3 percent to 13.1 million instructions (Q3/2005: 13.5 million instructions). EBITA in this segment rose by 37 percent to €78.3 million in the third quarter (Q3/2005: €57.3 million).
The Eurex segment accounted for sales revenue of €139.0 million in the third quarter – a rise of 12 percent year-on-year (Q3/2005: €124.2 million). This growth was due to the 16 percent higher contract volume. Equity and index products accounted for 51 percent of the overall contract volume in the third quarter - interest rate products for the other 49 percent. EBITA climbed by 78 percent to €111.9 million (Q3/2005: €62.9 million), including an exceptional gain of some €24 million relating to the sale of 70 percent and deconsolidation of Eurex US, and including a reimbursement of non-recoverable input tax of some €8 million.
Sales revenue in the Xetra segment increased by 3 percent to €68.4 million in Q3 (Q3/2005: €66.2 million), mainly as a result of greater trading activity on the Xetra trading platform. The number of transactions on Xetra was up 13 percent to 24.6 million (Q3/2005: 21.8 million transactions). EBITA climbed 12 percent to €35.8 million (Q3/2005: €31.9 million).
Sales revenue in the Market Data & Analytics segment increased by 11 percent to €36.7 million (Q3/2005: €33.0 million). This was driven by increased demand for real-time trading data. EBITA climbed 36 percent to €15.1 million (Q3/2005: €11.1 million).
Sales revenue in the Information Technology segment was €20.3 million in the third quarter (Q3/2005: €32.8 million). The decrease is attributable to the deconsolidation of the subsidiary entory, which was sold to Softlab GmbH on 1 October 2005. EBITA in this segment decreased 10 percent year-on-year to €18.8 million (Q3/2005: €20.9 million).