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Intercontinental Exchange Notches Up Record Volumes in Q1

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Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. (ICE - Free Report) has grossed record average daily volume (ADV) for the first quarter of 2018.  While both total Futures and Commodities ADV rose 4% each, Energy futures ADV increased 3%.

Agriculture & Metals futures ADV shot up 18% year over year in the first quarter, fueled by a record Sugar futures ADV with 17% rise, 20% increase in Cocoa ADV and a 23% expansion in Cotton futures ADV.

Increase of 9% in Interest Rate futures ADV was driven by a record Sterling ADV, rising 20% year over year. While equity ADV gained 9%, equity options surged 62% year over year.

Volumes in the first quarter were driven by better numbers in January and February. Soft volumes in March were a partial offset.

Total Futures and Options volume in March declined 11.3% to 5.9 million contracts. A 1.5% lower Commodities ADV and 19.6% lower Financials ADV were responsible for the downside. Revenues per contract were 13 cents for March, down 38.5% year over year.

Revenues per contract were 13 cents for March 2018, down 38.5% year over year.

Recently, securities exchanges, namely CBOE Holdings Inc. (CBOE - Free Report) , CME Group Inc. (CME - Free Report) and MarketAxess Holdings Ltd. (MKTX - Free Report) also posted respective volumes.

CBOE Global Markets’ March ADV of 8.5 million contracts contracted about 18% year over year while CME Group’s ADV of 20.8 million contracts per day improved 23% year over year. MarketAxess has reported a trading volume of $152.3 billion for March 2018.

Intercontinental Exchange is scheduled to report first-quarter 2018 results before the market opens on May 3. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for quarterly earnings is pegged at 88 cents on revenues of $1.2 billion, reflecting 18.9% and 4.6% year-over-year growth, respectively.

Our proven model does not conclusively show that the company is likely to deliver a positive surprise. This is because although the stock’s favorable Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) increases the predictive power of ESP, its Earnings ESP of -1.36% leaves surprise prediction inconclusive as a company needs a positive ESP to be confident about an earnings surprise.

Shares of Intercontinental Exchange have underperformed the industry  in a year. The stock has gained 3.2%, lagging the industry’s increase of 5.6%.

 

Nonetheless, we believe that the company’s compelling product portfolio, risk management services, prudent acquisitions, timely achievement of cost synergies, strategic initiatives and a solid capital position should drive the shares higher and strengthen its growth profile as well.

You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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