Jefferies Financial Group reports Q1 adjusted EPS 87c, consensus 75c

Reports Q1 net revenue $1.74B, two estimates $1.52B. “Our Q1 results reflect solid performance across our businesses and our Investment Banking pipeline continues to strengthen, which leads us to believe a more robust market is developing. Our strong results in Capital Markets has continued into the current quarter. We are pleased that, adjusting for the impact of the net loss on Weiss, we generated an annualized return on adjusted tangible equity from continuing operations of 12.0% and net earnings from continuing operations of $0.87 per diluted common share. This bodes well for the balance of 2024, especially as we expect our recent significant hires to increasingly contribute to our results. Investment Banking net revenues for the quarter were $740 million, up 28.2% from the prior quarter and 31.4% from the same quarter last year, primarily due to improved mergers and acquisitions and equity underwriting activity reflecting our market share gains against modest improvement in the market. Capital Markets continued its strong performance, with net revenues of $712 million, up 47.9% from the prior quarter and 8.8% versus the same quarter last year. We expect our Investment Banking momentum to continue, and the market share gains we have achieved compared to the prior quarter and prior year quarter across Advisory, Equity underwriting and Leveraged finance to continue, as the investments we have made in our business further mature. Furthermore, we are extremely pleased with our alliance with SMBC, which continues to gain traction and is additive to our business model and prospects. We believe we will further expand our cooperation to additional regions and further areas of mutual opportunity. Asset Management also performed well, as we are seeing improved performance from our diversified platform of offerings. We are disappointed in the outcome at Weiss Multi-Strategy, but we are pleased that the shutdown was orderly and investors protected. Our loss is a result of support we provided the platform that was incremental to our separately managed account,” said Richard Handler, CEO.