Raymond James (RJF) reported net income of $67.3 million, or $0.53 a share, for the quarter ended Dec. 30, 2011, vs. $81.7 million, or $0.65 a share, in the year-ago period and $68.9 million, or $0.54 a share, in the previous quarter. These fiscal first-quarter results met analysts' expectations for the company, which recently said it planned to buy the Morgan Keegan brokerage operations from Regions Financial (RF).
Net revenues were $782.8 million in the most recent quarter, down 4% from both the year-ago and most-recent period. The company pointed to private client and other issues as responsible for part of the decline.
"As mentioned previously, we started the quarter with a headwind in both private client group and asset management, as wrap fee assets billed quarterly in advance were 6% lower on Oct.1 than they were July 1, said CEO Paul Reilly (left), in a press release.
"Unfortunately, we were unable to overcome that lower fee level, thus both segments trailed the previous quarter in revenues and pretax profits," Reilly explained. "On a positive note, asset levels were significantly higher on Jan. 1, which augurs well for the March quarter for this particular business segment."
Assets under administration on Dec. 31 were $270 billion, up 3% over last year's first quarter and 5% over the previous quarter. Assets under management totaled $35 billion, a 5% year-over-year increase and a 9% sequential jump.
Private Client, Other Results
