[1]Morgan Stanley [2] closed a solid first quarter driven by strong equity sales and investments, according to a financial statement [3] the company released Monday.
The financial firm reported $9.9 billion in net revenues overall in Q1, which is up from the $9 billion Morgan Stanley posted a year ago. Income from continuing operations amounted to $2.4 billion, compared to $1.5 billion for the same period a year ago.
The firm credited solid investment in institutional securities and equity sales as major factors in its Q1 performance. Net revenues from institutional securities (excluding debt value adjustment) were $5.3 billion. Equity sales and trading net revenues were $2.3 billion, up from $1.7 billion a year ago. The company said this was due to “strong performance across products and regions on higher levels of client activity.”
Net revenues from the firm’s wealth management sector were $3.8 billion overall, up from $3.6 billion a year ago. The firm also reported net revenues of $669 million with assets under management of $406 billion. This was down from $752 million the prior year, an aftereffect of lower gains on investments in the merchant banking and real estate investing sectors, the report stated. Total assets under Morgan Stanley’s control in the quarter were $2 trillion.
The firm also repurchased approximately 7 million shares‒‒worth about $250 million‒‒of its common stock in the quarter. According to the statement, Morgan Stanley stock leapt from 74 cents per share to $1.18 between the first quarters of 2014 and 2015. The firm plans to repurchase as much as $3.1 billion of common stock through the end of Q2 2016.
Morgan Stanley also reported a net discrete tax benefit of $564 million that it attributed to the repatriation of non-U.S. earnings “at a cost lower than originally estimated due to an internal restructuring to simplify its legal entity organization in the U.K.”
James Gorman, chairman and CEO of Morgan Stanley, called Q1 “our strongest quarter in many years, with improved performance across most areas of the firm.”