ITG Sees Higher Q3 Earnings, To Buy Back Additional 4 Mln Shares

(RTTNews) - Independent execution and research broker Investment Technology Group Inc. (ITG) on Wednesday forecast higher earnings for the third quarter compared to last year, and said its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of an additional 4 million shares.

For the third quarter, New York-based ITG forecast earnings in a range of $0.31 to $0.33 per share, including a net income tax benefit of $2.4 million or $0.07 per share, from resolving a contingency in the U.S. This compares to earnings of $0.20 per share in the year-ago period.

On average, five analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect the company to earn $0.25 per share for the third quarter. Analysts' estimates typically exclude special items.

Bob Gasser, Chief Executive Officer and President of ITG, said, "Our third quarter 2014 results show the benefits of our strategy of geographic diversification. Our international operations performed well, offsetting the continued weak volume environment in North America."

The company noted that the additional share repurchase of 4 million brings the total number of shares that is currently available for repurchase to 5.4 million shares.

Since ITG resumed its share repurchase activity in the first quarter of 2010, it has repurchased 12.6 million shares for $177.0 million, including 520,000 shares in the third quarter for $9.1 million.

At September 30, 2014, ITG had 34.8 million shares outstanding, more than 20 percent lower than the amount of shares outstanding at the end of 2009.

In a separate press release, ITG announced the launch of the POSIT Marketplace 3.0 algorithm, which combines technology and proprietary analytics to increase fill rates in non-displayed venues while filtering out potentially toxic liquidity.

POSIT Marketplace 3.0 can be accessed via ITG's Triton execution management system and also via FIX connection to ITG from third-party trading systems.

POSIT MP 3.0 is fully integrated with ITG Prism for Algorithms, which provides real-time transparency throughout the life of an order including fill details, and the location, type and price of every open child order.

Ben Polidore, Managing Director, Algorithmic Trading at ITG said, "POSIT Marketplace 3.0 represents a major advancement in dark trading capability. Built on a low-latency platform with direct connectivity to POSIT Alert and more than 25 execution venues, POSIT MP 3.0 employs machine learning techniques and ITG's proprietary liquidity filter to source high-quality flow from nearly any dark pool, all while minimizing information leakage."

ITG closed Tuesday's trading at $14.90, down $0.07 on a volume of 355,900 shares.