Shares of online stockbroker The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: SCHW) tumbled 8.8% through 12:55 p.m. EDT Tuesday despite beating analyst forecasts for the second quarter on both the top and bottom lines.
Heading into the quarter, analysts expected Schwab to report a $0.72 per-share profit on sales of $4.68 billion. In fact, Schwab earned $0.73 on sales of $4.69 billion — and with a bigger net-interest margin of 2.03%.
Charles Schwab Q2 earnings
So why is Schwab down on good news? Well, for one thing the news wasn’t quite as good as the above makes it sound. Turns out, Schwab’s “$0.73” profit was only a pro forma number. The company’s earnings as calculated according to generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) were actually only $0.66 per share.
That was still $0.02 better than Schwab earned a year ago, but it’s a lot smaller than the headline figure.
What really seems to have…
