Broking houses delay Q4 results

Tell BSE that audited results will be published within 3 months.

At least four top brokerages "" Religare Enterprise, Edelweiss Capital, Emkay Shares and Stocks and Modern Securities "" have delayed their fourth quarter results.

FEAR FACTOR

While the law allows companies to postpone their Q4 results and directly announce audited annual results, investment adviser S P Tulsian considers any such move as a tactic to delay the shock

With the market crashing by nearly 6,000 points in this calendar year, the value of small and mid-cap stocks has eroded by over 50 per cent

In a communique to the Bombay Stock Exchange, the broking houses said that they would publish the audited results within three months on or before June 30.

While the law allows companies to postpone their Q4 results and directly announce audited annual results, investment adviser S P Tulsian considers any such move as a tactic to delay the shock.

"The recent loss provisioning by Prime Securities and a substantial decline in the sequential profits of Geojit Financial Services clearly shows that broking houses would suffer a major hit in this quarter. Brokerage houses are facing tough times as the trading volumes on the bourses have declined by 50 per cent and the clients have suffered huge losses in the market crash.

"Hence, they (brokerages) are just bargaining for time to try and recover their bad debts and clean up the mess arising from client funding," he said. With the market crashing by nearly 6,000 points in this calendar year, the value of small and mid-cap stocks has eroded by over 50 per cent.

And since clients avail margin funding on the basis of such stocks, there have been reports of defaults on their part. The bad debts have forced the stock brokers to attach the moveable and immovable properties of clients.

Geojit and Prime announced a provisioning of Rs 4 crore and Rs 6 crore respectively on account of mark-to-market losses.

Rashesh Shah, managing director of Edelweiss Capital, one of the largest Mumbai-based stock broking company by market capitalisation, defended the decision on annual results as a company policy. "We have suffered no losses and we are making no provisioning," he said.

Tulsian reckons that brokers trading on their proprietary books would take the maximum beating and have to make huge provisions.

"Edelweiss runs one of the biggest proprietary books among the listed financial services companies. It is surprising that Edelweiss would raise another Rs 200 crore through debt placement after having garnered Rs 700 crore through its initial public offer a mere six months ago," he said.

Talking about the raising additional money, Shah said, "With a balance sheet of Rs 2,000 crore, we have to issue structured products. Raising money through debt placement is in accordance with our structured product plan."

He also sought to allay fears about proprietary losses by claiming that the brokerage largely resorted to arbitrage transactions where the risk of loss was minimal.

Religare Enterprise, which is mainly active in the retail segment and client funding, stated that its decision on publishing the audited result was in line with its corporate governance code.

"We are consolidating our subsidiaries and would declare the results in the next three months," said a senior company executive. He also declared that Religare does not have a prop book trading account.

Declining to comment on the matter of provisioning or losses, Krishna Kumar Karva, managing director of Emkay Shares said his company would declare results in accordance with the law.

Meanwhile, Motilal Oswal Financial Services and Reliance Capital are likely to announce their results in the last week of April. Motilal Oswal had earlier announced a provisioning of nearly Rs 5 crore for losses arising out of the market crash.