COL Financial reported that 2021 was another record year for the company with its net income jumping 38 percent to P581 million, from P422 million in 2020, and higher than its pre-pandemic peak of P513 million in 2018.
In a disclosure to the Philippine Stock Exchange, the stock brokerage said its consolidated revenues rose 22 percent to P1.3 billion last year from P1.1 billion in 2020, largely driven by the jump in commission revenues to a new record high of P1.0 billion.
COL said it benefited from the increase in market activity in the PSE, due to its strategy of focusing on the retail investor base.
As a result, COL ranked as the number one stockbroker in the Philippines for the second year in a row, with a record market share of 8.6 percent.
“While ranking No. 1 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,” said COL Financial President and CEO Dino Bate.
He added that, “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.
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.
Working with its fund partners, COL intends to continue its expansion of global products by adding over 20 global, theme- based equity funds in the first half of 2022.
The company also announced that, given its favorable earnings results, 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 is 30.7 percent higher than its cash dividends from the previous year.
Looking into 2022, COL will continue its adoption of more efficient and scalable technologies, 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,” said Bate.