About a-team Marketing Services
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry
The knowledge platform for the financial technology industry

A-Team Insight Blogs

Thomson Reuters, Interactive Data 2009 Results Give Cause for Optimism in 2010

Subscribe to our newsletter

The market and reference data industry’s two largest publicly listed players – Interactive Data and Thomson Reuters – posted 2009 results last week whose resilience gave some cause for optimism. While neither set the world on fire, neither was expected to, given the ongoing weakness in the overall market, whose ‘recovery’ continues to be muted at best.

The larger of the two, Thomson Reuters’ Markets division revenues declined 2% due to negative net sales and what the company described as “a difficult prior year comparison (up 6%).” Not one to mince words, CEO Tom Glocer called 2009 “the worst global operating environment any of us has faced.”

For full-year 2009, Thomson Reuters’ Sales & Trading group saw revenues drop 4%, as a “modest decline in recurring revenues attributable to desktop cancellations” was further impacted by declines in transactions and recoveries. Commodities & Energy and Treasury businesses both achieved revenue growth for the year. Fourth-quarter Sales & Trading revenues decreased 7% due to continued pressure on recoveries revenues and reductions in desktops in the Exchange Traded Instruments and Fixed Income segments.

In the Investment & Advisory group, full-year revenues declined 2%, as Corporate’s growth of 1% was offset by a slight decline in Retail Wealth Management, a 3% decline in Investment Management and a 6% decline in Investment Banking. Fourth-quarter revenues declined 5%, as Investment Banking’s return to growth was offset by cancellations in Investment Management and lower recoveries in Retail Wealth Management.

Enterprise was once again the bright spot in the overall Thomson Reuters Markets picture. Full-year revenues increased 6%, with Enterprise Information, comprising more than half of the segment’s revenues, grew 17%. The Trade and Risk Management business grew 3%. Fourth-quarter revenues increased 1%, despite “an extremely challenging prior-year comparable when revenues grew 13%.” Enterprise Information grew 9% on continued demand for pricing and reference data, and helped offset a 10% decline in outright revenues.

Glocer said the company was off to a strong start in 2010, with positive net sales in Markets. “I am confident that 2009 was the bottom of the sales cycle for us … I expect that we will return to revenue growth in the second half of 2010.”

Interactive Data, meanwhile, was able to report positive growth for 2009, characterised by CEO Ray D’Arcy as presenting “some of the most challenging conditions that our industry has experienced.” For the year, Interactive Data said revenue grew less than 1% to $757.2 million from $750.5 million a year earlier. Net income was down slightly, however, to $141.2 million from $142.6 million.

D’Arcy attributed the company’s organic revenue growth of 2.8% in 2009 to “the resilience of our fixed income evaluations and reference data offerings.” The Pricing and Reference Data business grew organically at 6% for the year.

D’Arcy said that “Market conditions began to show signs of stabilization starting in the third quarter of 2009, and this trend continued through the fourth quarter.” For the fourth quarter, contributions from acquisitions and the positive impact of foreign exchange offset a 3.4% decline in organic revenue, itself attributed to a difficult year-earlier comparison and softness in the active trader and real-time data feed services.

The company didn’t break out full-year results by operating group. But Interactive Data Pricing and Reference Data reported fourth-quarter revenue growth of 2.5%. Interactive Data Real-Time Services’ fourth-quarter revenues were down 4.2%. And Interactive Data Fixed Income Analytics’ revenues were up 1.2%. The Active Trader Services Segment, meanwhile, saw eSignal’s fourth-quarter revenues drop 7.1%.

In terms of the outlook for 2010, D’Arcy said “there is still a degree of uncertainty regarding overall market conditions in 2010. We anticipate that 2010 revenue will range between $810 million and $830 million due to the contribution from recent acquisitions and improved organic revenue performance over the coming quarters.”

Subscribe to our newsletter

Related content

WEBINAR

Recorded Webinar: How to simplify and modernize data architecture to unleash data value and innovation

The data needs of financial institutions are growing at pace as new formats and greater volumes of information are integrated into their systems. With this has come greater complexity in managing and governing that data, amplifying pain points along data pipelines. In response, innovative new streamlined and flexible architectures have emerged that can absorb and...

BLOG

Regulatory Volatility Offers Opportunity to Mine Value from Compliance Data

A new era of regulatory change is presenting institutions with a golden opportunity to prosper from the troves of data they need to comply with reporting obligations. Information required by market overseers has value that goes beyond its obligatory use in disclosures and companies that put it to wider use stand to gain a competitive...

EVENT

TradingTech Briefing New York

Our TradingTech Briefing in New York is aimed at senior-level decision makers in trading technology, electronic execution, trading architecture and offers a day packed with insight from practitioners and from innovative suppliers happy to share their experiences in dealing with the enterprise challenges facing our marketplace.

GUIDE

AI in Capital Markets: Practical Insight for a Transforming Industry – Free Handbook

AI is no longer on the horizon – it’s embedded in the infrastructure of modern capital markets. But separating real impact from inflated promises requires a grounded, practical understanding. The AI in Capital Markets Handbook 2025 provides exactly that. Designed for data-driven professionals across the trade life-cycle, compliance, infrastructure, and strategy, this handbook goes beyond...