COL Financial FY23 profit: P426-M (up 76%)

COL Financial [COL 2.38, down 2.1%; 1% avgVol] [link] reported FY23 net income of P426 million, up 76%, on higher revenues and lower operating expenses. Total customer accounts increased by 3.5% from 516,247 to 534,154, and total customer deposits increased by 1.9% from P105 billion to P107 billion. Total revenues increased 30.6% to P1.09 billion driven by the interest income that COL earns off of its customers’ cash deposits. COL’s commission income fell 26.3% to P330 million, while its interest income increased 110% to P708 million thanks to higher yields on bank deposits and fixed-income assets.

MB bottom-line: Just another year of COL’s fundamental business (trading) continuing to stagnate, while getting absolutely rescued by the interest income it earns on our deposits. In the past, I’ve been very critical of COL’s website, mobile app, and generally unbothered response to new entrants into the stock trading business like Maya and GCash. COL has made some minor improvements, but nothing much has really changed, or to put it better, nothing much has stopped COL’s growth slowdown. That’s both good and bad for COL shareholders: good in that doing nothing was ok given that the new market entrants (GCash and Maya) haven’t figured it out yet, bad in that it feels like watching I’m watching a dinosaur preparing for the asteroid to strike. How reasonable would this year’s result look if GCash and Maya were both operating in full swing already? 

---

Merkado Barkada is a free daily newsletter on the PSE, investing and business in the Philippines. You can subscribe to the newsletter or follow on Twitter to receive the full daily updates.