Stock broker COL Financial Group Inc. on Monday said its net income in 2021 rose 38 percent to a record P582 million from the previous year’s P424.31 million on increased activity in the country’s equities market.
Consolidated revenues rose P1.32 billion, 22 percent higher than the previous P1.08 billion, mainly as a result of the jump in commission revenues to a new record high of P1 billion.
COL said it benefited from the increase in market activity in the Philippine Stock Exchange, due to its strategy of focusing on its retail investor base. As a result, COL ranked as the top stockbroker in the Philippines for the second year in a row, with a record market share of 8.6 percent.
“While ranking number one is not the benchmark that we measure our success on, we believe that this is the natural result of our strategy to focus on serving our customers,” COL President and CEO Conrado Bate said.
“By giving our self-directed investors the tools and knowledge that they need to invest wisely, this group of investors continues to become a bigger and more influential part of the country’s investing landscape.”
COL’s client base continued to grow, hitting almost half a million investors by the end of 2021. Meanwhile, client assets reached a record high of P112 billion as the company saw P6.7 billion in net new flows, it said.
On the fund distribution side, the company started offering access to global funds through its platform. For the first time, COL clients were able to invest in a global multi-asset fund, resulting in a strong take-up from customers looking for investments outside of the local stock market.
COL said it intends to continue its expansion of global products by adding over 20 global, theme-based equity funds in the first half this year.
The company also announced during its annual stockholders’ meeting that it would pay out P0.085 per share in cash dividends to its shareholders.
These cash dividends are equivalent to 65 percent of the company’s profits last year, and are 30 percent higher than its cash dividends in the previous year.
COL said it will continue to adopt more efficient and scalable technologies this year, in addition to increasing its product offerings to address the different needs of its existing and prospective customers.
“While the current market conditions are more challenging than last year’s, we believe that we’ll be able to weather different market environments as long as we stick to our long-term strategy of putting our clients first at all times,” Bate said.