UPDATE: Charles Schwab Posts Higher Q4 Profit

The Charles Schwab Corporation (NYSE: SCHW) reported a rise in its profit for the fourth quarter of 2014. The San Francisco, California-based company posted a quarterly profit of $350 million, up 10% compared to $319 million in the year-ago quarter. On a per-share basis, the company's earnings rose to $0.25 from $0.23. The latest quarter and full year results included net litigation proceeds of around $28 million and net losses of $8 million from selling securities totaling around $500 million.Its revenue climbed 8% to $1.55 billion. However, analysts were projecting a profit of $0.24 per share on revenue of $1.53 billion.Charles Schwab ended 2014 with $2.46 trillion in client assets. Active brokerage accounts gained 3% to 9.4 million, while banking accounts increased 8% to 985,000.CFO Joe Martinetto said, “Schwab's 2014 results reflect our financial ‘formula' hitting its stride. As we've mentioned before, as long as economic drivers are stable or improving we should be able to turn client growth into revenue growth, which combined with sustained expense discipline should enable Schwab to build earnings faster than revenues. 2013 was the first year since the financial crisis where the macro environment did not mask our progress and the formula visibly returned to life from the sideways performance of prior periods.”Charles Schwab shares gained 0.11% to $26.70 in pre-market trading.