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E*Trade Australia revenue doubles in quarter

As Aussies pile onto the Net to trade stocks, the E*Trade Group subsidiary reaps the benefits.

E*Trade Australia, an Internet stockbroker, said revenue in March was double that of December as more investors used the company's services to trade Australian stocks.

E*Trade, a subsidiary of online broker E*Trade Group said its market participation rate had risen to 2 percent of all daily trades on the Australian Stock Exchange, an average of 4.6 million trades a day in March.

"Our client numbers are growing at over 1 percent each business day and total client assets are around half a billion (Australian) dollars,'' said Kerry Roxburgh, E*Trade's group chief executive.

Australia is the sixth-largest Internet market by users, although research firm International Data Corporation ranked it second behind Singapore, using a new system that weighs countries by size. Australia's Internet users doubled to 1.7 million in 1998.

E*Trade Australia has opened 13,000 accounts, more than doubling its number of customers.

The company said it will soon complete the sale of 15 percent of its shares to Computershare an Australian securities exchange computer-software developer.

E*Trade shares rose 50 cents, or 6.5 percent, to A8.05 on trading that was 62 percent higher than the average trading volume of the stock this year.

Its shares rose as high as A11 April 15, from as low as 71 cents in October. Copyright 1999, Bloomberg L.P. All Rights Reserved.