The last report over 2009/2010 files a drop in the net profit with 68% to EUR 18 million. That’s quite reasonable compared with the performance of their former friends at Optiver. The trading revenue have been slightly lower than previous year, but key responsible for the drop in profits appears to be the sharply raised costs.
As all derivative traders are familiar with, there’s a legal battle going on between Optiver and Tibra with respect to intellectual property of their fast trading software. Bhandari and his friend are accused of taking the source code of Optiver’s F1 trading software with them as they walked out the door in Sydney. The only winners are a battalion of lawyers and legal advisors for both parties. Maybe they are responsible for the new loss in the income statement “service fees” amounting 29 million AUD (21 m EUR). Somehow this service fees and the administrative costs (19 m EUR) appear colossal.
More key figures. Total number of employees is 252, with on average 150k EUR income each. Trading revenue dropped with 21% from EUR 154m to 121m. Their high profile founder Dinesh “Danny” Bhandari resigned in May 2010 after four years. But that’s very old news.
Downloadable Tibra’s Financial Statement and Reports, from the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (pdf). More insight on the report can be left in the comments.
Update: Service Fees seem to be an Australian tax item, as a commenter points out (thanks). Hence the firm is a lot more profitable than at first glance. Adjusted the post title – although the truth is somewhere in the middle.