LPL Financial (LPLA) reported Wednesday morning that its net income fell about 4.4% from a year ago to $43.09 million in second-quarter 2014 — mostly related to unforeseen regulatory costs that increased expenses.
Earnings per share remained flat year-over-year at $0.42 per diluted share, or adjusted earnings of $0.61 per share, for the quarter. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report profit per share of $0.61 for the quarter.
Earnings per share benefited from a net revenue increase of 7.2%, reporting $1.09 billion in second quarter 2014 compared to $1.01 billion in second quarter 2013.
"We are focused on creating a smarter, simpler more personal LPL to drive productivity and efficiency in our expense structure," LPL Financial's chief financial officer, Dan Arnold, stated in a press release. "This quarter we continued to make progress implementing this strategy despite the sequential increase in core [general and administrative] expense primarily related to the resolution of regulatory issues. For the year we remain positioned to lower our overall expense growth rate compared to the prior two years while investing in the company."
The independent broker-dealer's core general and administrative expenses were $106 million for second quarter 2014, up 26.4% year over year.
Roughly 80% of the regulatory fines were rounding errors in transactions that primarily use paper-based products, said Chairman and CEO Mark Casady during the firm's earnings call Wednesday morning. In an effort to mitigate future regulatory costs, Casady added that the company has grown its legal and compliance department by 41%.
Advisor Results
Advisory and brokerage assets rose 17.3% year-over-year to a record $465.4 billion, which Casady said in a press release was a result of "positive trends in advisor productivity and asset accumulation."
"In addition, our higher-margin advisory business continued to attract retail assets under custody and expand at a faster pace than our brokerage business, increasing 26% year over year to $167 billion," added Casady in a press release. "We believe we are strategically positioned to capitalize on the ongoing shift toward fee-based business with our unique fully integrated platform to drive outsized growth."
