E*Trade's Report Will Cap Busy Quarter

NEW YORK -- (The Street) -- E*Trade (ETFC Quote) is set to report its third-quarter results after Tuesday's closing bell, and the numbers will cap a busy quarter for the heavily traded online broker.

In the three months spanning from the end of June through September, the company has completed a multi-billion dollar debt exchange offer; announced its top executive is stepping down at the end of the year, and raised roughly $147 million through an at-the-market common stock offering. It's also seen its largest shareholder, Citadel Investment Group, trim its position slightly, although the hedge fund's ownership remains significant.

The current average estimate of analysts polled by Thomson Reuters is for a loss of 8 cents a share from the company in the September quarter on revenue of $202.5 million.

A year ago, E*Trade lost $50.5 million, or 9 cents a share, in its fiscal third quarter. On a continuing operations basis, excluding the impact of special items such as gains from the sale of certain non-core assets, the company lost 60 cents a share in the year-earlier equivalent period, much wider than Wall Street's then-consensus view of 28 cents a share. Revenue totaled $378 million for the quarter, while daily average revenue trades, or DARTs, were 184,000.

In the second quarter ended in June, E*Trade lost 22 cents a share on revenue of $216.4 million, but the performance was ahead of Wall Street's consensus estimate on both counts, and the beat on the bottom line -- more than 20% better than the analysts' view for a loss of 29 cents -- was the company's first upside surprise in two years. DARTs came in at 221,000.