Toronto Stock Exchange operator TMX misses estimates

TORONTO (Reuters) - TMX Group Ltd (Toronto:X.TO - News), the operator of the Toronto Stock Exchange, reported a lower-than-expected quarterly profit, hurt by a drop in revenue at its issuer services and cash markets trading businesses.

TMX, which has a dominant grip on market activity in Canada, has suffered along with its many resource-based issuers on the sharp decline in commodity prices. It also faces competition from the new Aequitas Neo exchange, although the new entrant's inroads have so far been minimal.

TMX has shuffled businesses and executives recently, selling its investor relations and financial communications arm Equicom and launching an online cattle exchange.

Along with the main exchange based in Toronto, TMX also operates a derivatives market in Montreal, a small-cap index in Vancouver, clearing and other services.

The Toronto-based company said it had earned net profit attributable to shareholders of C$27.6 million, or 51 Canadian cents per share, in the quarter, compared with a loss of C$26.4 million, or 49 Canadian cents per share, a year earlier.

The company took a C$128.4 million pre-tax non-cash impairment charge related to its Box U.S. options business and other costs last year.

Excluding one-time items, the company earned 93 Canadian cents per share. On that basis, analysts on average expected TMX to earn 97 Canadian cents a share, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

Revenue fell marginally to C$178.7 million.

The company's shares, which have fallen more than 12 percent in the past year, closed at C$49.93 on the Toronto Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Alastair Sharp in Toronto and Anannya Pramanick in Bengaluru; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)