Intercontinental Exchange’s stock jumped Thursday after swinging to a $1 billion profit last year with the help of a surge in initial public offerings on the New York Stock Exchange and heavy volume on its fast-growing oil trading business.
Shares of the Atlanta company, which operates nearly a dozen securities and commodity exchanges around the globe, closed at $225.85 Thursday, a 5-percent gain that was about four times higher than the Dow Jones Industrial’s percentage gain for the day.
Intercontinental’s revenue more than doubled last year, to $3 billion, with the help of its $11 billion acquisition of NYSE Euronext in 2013. The full impact of the acquisition also helped to nearly quadruple 2014’s annual profit at ICE, as the company is better known in industry circles.
ICE gets most of its revenue from fees earned by operating physical or online marketplaces where investors and companies can buy and sell stocks, bonds and securities tied to the commodity prices and interest rates.
Last year’s financial results were better than industry analysts expected, partly due to growth of ICE’s market data business, higher stock trading and a boom in young firms’ initial stock offerings. ICE also got a boost from the unexpected drop in crude oil prices in recent months, which led to heavy trading in securities used to hedge against big swings in oil prices.
ICE’s wide range of exchanges and products has “consistently delivered growth in earnings regardless of the business cycle,” company CEO Jeffrey Sprecher told investors Thursday in a conference call.
ICE reported a $294 million profit for the fourth quarter, compared to a $170 million loss in the previous year.
