COL Ups Market Share in 2014
Pasig—(PHStocks)—COL Financial Group Inc. (PSE: COL) continued to outperform its peers in 2014 due to the strength of its branding and distribution among Filipino investors.
In 2014, COL’s market share in terms of value turnover in the Philippine Stock Exchange (PSE) improved by 50 basis points to 4.1% from 3.6% in 2013. Market share in terms of local value turnover increased even more significantly to a fresh record high of 8.2% in 2014 from 7.5% in 2013.
Due to its higher market share, COL ended 2014 as the 8th largest stock broker in the PSE, up from its 2013 rank of 9th. The improvement in COL’s market share is largely attributable to the strong growth of its customer base. COL’s customer base finally breached the 100,000 mark in 2014 to end the year at almost 113,000, higher by 36.8% compared to a year earlier. Customer equity also expanded by 18.3% to PhP56.7 billion as of end 2014.
Thanks to the strong growth of its client base, COL’s recurring profits for 2014 fell by only 3.6% to PhP292.7 million, much slower than the 16.3% drop in the PSE’s value turnover. Net income dropped by 13.6% to PhP262.3 Mil largely due to the booking of PhP30.4 million worth of non-recurring expense related to the exercise of stock options.
“COL’s record numbers in terms of customer base and share of value turnover could not have come at a more opportune time as we celebrated our 15th year anniversary in 2014,” said COL President Dino Bate. “However, we are more excited about 2015 as we start with another leg of our business, our fund distribution business. This new service will allow us to address the needs of more Filipino investors, particularly those who either do not have the time to actively manage their investments, are more conservative, or are looking to diversify their portfolios outside of stocks.”
COL has already signed a Memorandum of Agreement with six asset management companies, namely, Sun Life Asset Management, ATR KimEng Asset Management, Philam Asset Management, Philequity Management, BPI Investment Management, and First Metro Asset Management. The six asset management companies together account for 92.1% of the assets under management of the mutual fund industry. All the peso denominate funds of the six asset management companies, namely bond funds, balanced funds, equity funds, and money market funds, will be available for purchase in COL’s website once the fund distribution business is launched later this year.