Leucadia Reports Q1 Loss as it Reduced Fair Value of its FXCM Investment

Shortly after the close of trading in New York on Wednesday, Leucadia National Corporation (Leucadia), listed on the NYSE under ticker LUK, announced its financial results for the three-month period ended March 31, 2016, according to an official press release.

Leucadia reported a net loss of $229 million or 60 cents per share on a diluted basis and attributable to common shareholders. The negative result was explained as reflecting Jefferies’ previously reported fiscal first-quarter loss of $245.8 million, along with a $53.2 million reduction to the fair value of Leucadia’s FXCM investment - which reduced its cumulative gains to $438 million from that deal.

In addition, a challenging investment environment was described as being difficult for certain of the company’s asset management platforms, while the company's Q1 results were offset by solid returns from National Beef, and ongoing strong performance from Berkadia and Garcadia, as well as a higher stock price for HRG, according to the update.

Shares of LUK were lower in the after-hours session, following the news. The results comes just days before FXCM's quarterly earnings which are slated to come out this Friday.

Finance Magnates reported weeks earlier that FXCM's institutional business had been driving a large part of its growth, following a recent interview at the firm's headquarters in NY, and as FXCM announced a refresh of its FXCMPro offering.

Commenting about the company’s results, Rich Handler, CEO of Leucadia, along with Brian Friedman, President of Leucadia, added in the press release: "Leucadia's first quarter 2016 results were impacted by the volatile and turbulent period in the capital markets, which primarily impacted Jefferies and our other market sensitive businesses. However, benefiting from improved market conditions, the range of changes we implemented last year and in the first quarter, as well as the continuing hard work of our entire team, Jefferies' performance in March and April has improved significantly. Although we have one month to go, we expect solid results for Jefferies' second fiscal quarter. In addition, we appear to have experienced a meaningful turn in the fortunes of National Beef on the back of the cattle herd rebuilding, and this positive momentum continued throughout April. While we expect the environment to continue to be volatile and our future results may reflect this, we believe Leucadia is currently very well positioned to resume our course of value creation for our stakeholders."

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