OptionsXpress to acquire futures brokerage Open E Cry for $18 million in cash and stock

June 25, 2008: 09:08 AM EST

NEW YORK (Associated Press) - Online options and futures brokerage optionsXpress Holdings Inc. said Wednesday it will acquire Open E Cry LLC, a futures broker.

OptionsXpress will pay $18 million in cash and stock, plus an additional amount based on future performance.

Of the $18 million, $13 million will be paid in cash with another $5 million paid in stock.

The acquisition will help optionsXpress expand its market presences in the futures market.

Open E Cry's platform is designed for high-volume futures traders.

Open E Cry's founder and president, Rick Tomsic, has signed a multiyear contract to work for optionsXpress.

The deal is expected to close July 1.

CNN Money link here:

OptionsXpress acquires Open E Cry for $18M

Not a bad return on investment after starting the company in 2002.

Guess this helps explain the recent integration of electronic options directly onto the OEC Trader platform.

-fs

More info from the OEC site:

http://www.openecry.com/company/newsevents.cfm

CHICAGO, IL, June 25, 2008 – optionsXpress Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqGS: OXPS) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Open E Cry, LLC, for approximately $18 million, plus additional consideration based upon future performance. The Company anticipates the transaction to close on July 1, 2008. Open E Cry, based in Powell, OH, is an innovative futures broker offering direct access futures trading through its proprietary software platform, OEC Trader. The Open E Cry platform contains a set of complex systems and order routing technology specifically designed to meet the standards of high volume commodities and futures traders. End user access is achieved through a downloadable software interface or through a proprietary API.

“We believe the acquisition of Open E Cry further enhances optionsXpress’ position as the premiere derivatives-focused brokerage,” said David Fisher, Chief Executive Officer of optionsXpress. “We anticipate significant growth in the futures industry, and this acquisition provides us with a world-class platform to expand our market presence by appealing to institutions and highly active traders.”

Open E Cry was formed in 2002 by its president and founder, Rick Tomsic. With an emphasis on speed, reliability and ease of use, Open E Cry has developed a platform that caters to the specific needs of high volume futures traders.

“We think optionsXpress is a great fit for Open E Cry. Bringing our companies together creates a terrific array of tools and products for all types of investors,” commented Mr. Tomsic. “This business combination provides a tremendous opportunity for us to accelerate Open E Cry’s growth by leveraging optionsXpress’ robust infrastructure.”

Transaction Terms:

Open E Cry’s members will receive approximately $13 million of cash consideration and $5 million in stock plus additional consideration based upon future performance. Mr. Tomsic has agreed to a multi-year employment agreement. optionsXpress expects the transaction to have no significant impact on 2008 earnings per share.

Open E Cry Financial and Operating Metrics:

For the twelve months ended December 31, 2007, Open E Cry generated approximately $8 million in revenue and $1 million in pretax income. Year-to-date 2008 revenues have grown over 100% from the same period last year. Key operating metrics for 2007 were:
• Ending open accounts of approximately 2,100
• Daily average revenue trades of approximately 5,500 (DARTs)
• Ending customer assets of $36.8 million

About optionsXpress Holdings, Inc.

optionsXpress Holdings, Inc. provides innovative securities brokerage products and services for investor education, strategy evaluation and trade execution. Through its subsidiaries optionsXpress, Inc., an online brokerage, and brokersXpress LLC, an online broker dealer for investment representatives and advisors, the company offers a wide range of investor tools, outstanding customer service via Live Help chat service and competitive commissions. optionsXpress has been named the top online securities brokerage by Kiplinger's Personal Finance (2006) and by Barron's in its last four annual surveys (2003 to 2006).

More information can be found in the Investor Relations section of optionsXpress' website at http://www.optionsxpress.com/investor.

Safe Harbor

This press release may contain forward-looking statements. These statements relate to future events or our future financial performance and involve known and unknown risks. We urge you to carefully consider these risks in evaluating the information in this press release, including risks related to general economic conditions, regulatory developments, the competitive landscape, the volume of securities trading generally or by our customers specifically and other risks described in our filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In some cases, you can identify forward-looking statements by terminology such as "may," "will," "should," "expects," "intends," "plans," "anticipates," "believes," "estimates," "predicts," "potential," "continue" or the negative of these terms or other comparable terminology. These statements are only predictions. Actual events or results may differ materially. The forward-looking statements made in this press release relate only to events as of the date of this release. We undertake no ongoing obligation to update these statements.

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION:

Investor Inquiries:
Victoria Paris
Ashton Partners
(312) 553-6715

Media Inquiries:
Josh Inglis
Strategics, Inc.
(312) 346-2007

[brownsfan019]

FS - nice find. I tried to post it earlier but didn't work for some reason and then FOMC came.

I am being told that it's 'business as usual' for OEC.

Let's hope so.

How do you like the latest version of OEC Trader (ver 3.2.0.1) ?

[brownsfan019]

Originally Posted by forsearch »

Let's hope so.

How do you like the latest version of OEC Trader (ver 3.2.0.1) ?

Good here. I requested a couple things that should be in the next update.

You need something or missing something?

Originally Posted by brownsfan019 »

Good here. I requested a couple things that should be in the next update.

You need something or missing something?

A few things come to mind, BF - and thanks for asking.

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1. Currently having conflict with the Infinity/Transact AT application, because both OEC and AT share the same name for their executable (Trader.exe).

Since many traders have both AT and OEC setup on their computer, could OEC simply rename their executable to "OECTrader.exe"? Kinda makes sense, doesn't it? I've done it as a work-around on my end and it seems to be fairing OK, but given all the .xml and dll and registry hooks, it might be something that OEC programmers could look into for the next release.

Also, makes it easier to trace issues, the AT dll was looking for Trader.exe and conflicting with OEC that hosed things up for me. Plus folks keep saying that OEC has the same software as AT simply because the executables are named the same (Trader.exe).

2. OEC Charting is vastly improved, but could use a few tweaks here and there.

Pitchforks (aka median lines) could be improved, as the current implementation is rudimentary, at best. Same for Fibonacci lines and projections - would love to see the actual fibs levels shown, and not just raw lines without numbers.

3. Custom price format for quotes is linked to charting; should also be linked to DOM.

Currently, when you set up a custom price format on a given contract on the quotes screen, you can pull up a chart, and the same custom price will be displayed on the Y-axis. You can also place a trade from the same chart as well. However, the DOM that you pull up does NOT currently show the custom price, but only the default. Makes it odd if you use the DOM to place orders, but refer to a chart and quotes with customized prices.

4. Ability to save charts with tabs as preset. Also increasing max charts # to 25.

Not sure, but I can't save a chart that has tabs for specific contract setup. Would be great to do this, and be able to pull it up on demand. (If there's a way to do it currently, I haven't figured it out yet).

Because of the great ability to add contracts as tabs in a chart, this means that if you open 4 charts with 3 contract tabs each, you've exceeded the max of 10 chart subscriptions for your account.

5. Current restriction on opening more than 5 DOMs simultaneously is arbitrarily burdensome; should be 10 instead.

Ten (10) DOMs simultaneously would be a good default limit here, given all the data that has to be streamed. The current threshold of 5 DOMs seems arbitrary, at best, as users with multiple screens probably could (and would) have more than 5 open, especially if they are active traders in multiple markets.

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Hope this helps out, as this might be the last chance to provide user input for awhile

-fs

[That One Guy]

Hey I'd personally love to see smaller time intervals below 1 min.