Interactive Brokers Group NASDAQ: IBKR reported record pre-tax income in the third quarter of 2026, supported by continued customer-account growth, higher margin balances and expanding net interest income. The company also raised its annual dividend to $0.60 from $0.35, citing confidence in its business model, growth outlook and capital position.
Director of Investor Relations Nancy Stuebe, presenting remarks from President and CEO Milan Galik, said the company recorded more than 30% account growth across institutional and individual clients and in all regions. Its pre-tax margin reached 78%, marking the eighth straight quarter above 70%.
The company said investor interest remained concentrated in global technology stocks during the period, while overnight trading continued to grow. Overnight trading rose to more than 10 million trades in the third quarter, compared with 3.5 million in the year-earlier period.
Revenue Growth Driven by Commissions and Interest Income
CFO Paul Brody said commissions increased 12% from the prior-year quarter to $602 million, the third consecutive quarter in which commission revenue exceeded $600 million. Net interest income rose 19% to more than $1.1 billion, driven mainly by larger customer balances and growth in margin borrowing.
Other fees and services climbed 33% to $88 million, primarily reflecting higher risk-exposure fees, increased market-data fees and stronger options-related payments from exchange-mandated order-flow programs, Brody said.
Total customer daily average revenue trades, or DARTs, increased 18% year over year to 4.3 million per day. Futures-contract activity was up 13%, while options volume declined slightly and stock-share volume fell 24%. Brody attributed the reduction in stock-share volume largely to less activity in lower-priced stocks, noting that clients gravitated toward larger, higher-quality names.
Commission per cleared commissionable order was $2.59, down 4% from a year earlier due to smaller order sizes across product categories.
Execution, clearing and distribution costs increased 46% year over year to $134 million. Brody said the increase primarily resulted from the return of SEC regulatory fees, which had been zero in the third quarter of the prior year and totaled $30 million during the latest quarter. Because those charges are largely passed through to customers, they increase both commission revenue and execution costs without affecting profitability, he said.
Interactive Brokers reported total assets of $243 billion, up 21% from the prior year. Firm equity rose 19% to $23.3 billion, while the company continued to report no long-term debt.
Dividend Increase and Capital Allocation
The company raised its annual dividend to $0.60, or $0.15 quarterly. Founder and Chairman Thomas Peterffy said the company generally seeks to pay dividends representing between 0.5% and 1% of its market value and had “fallen somewhat behind” that range.
Peterffy said he did not anticipate a scenario in which the company would reduce its dividend. Brody said the company’s financial performance and balance-sheet strength enabled it to return more capital to shareholders while retaining ample capital to support the current business and future opportunities.
Product Expansion Includes AI, Prediction Markets and Japan
Interactive Brokers introduced or expanded several products during the quarter. The company added access to the Bucharest Stock Exchange, the Texas Stock Exchange and a new options exchange intended to support liquidity for larger options orders. In Brazil, it launched B3 futures trading on financial indexes, cryptocurrencies and commodities.
The company also began a limited cryptocurrency-staking rollout and expanded offerings for Japanese clients, including margin lending, fully paid securities lending and its Gaika+ product for earning interest on eligible non-yen cash balances.
For prediction markets, Interactive Brokers added short-duration event contracts with hourly and 15-minute expirations in cryptocurrency, metals and energy. Peterffy said the company now offers access to ForecastEx, Kalshi and CME prediction-market platforms and is working to integrate Polymarket.
“The integrations are delivering the results that we were hoping for,” Peterffy said, adding that the additional venues have expanded overall volume and given customers a broader product range, deeper liquidity and better execution prices.
The company is also preparing to offer potential single-stock key performance indicator contracts from Cboe when available. Peterffy said those contracts would be displayed through the company’s existing prediction-market interface and also made available on standard options screens.
Interactive Brokers continued to build out its AI Connector, adding Perplexity as an official partner and expanding compatibility to AI tools using the Model Context Protocol. The company added account-level profit-and-loss information, alerts, watchlists and two-leg options strategies to the product.
It also started a limited rollout of autonomous AI trading, allowing eligible customers to authorize compatible AI agents to trade in dedicated account partitions. Peterffy said about 3,000 customers who had used the human-in-the-loop AI Connector had been invited initially, with broader eligibility planned over the following weeks.
Peterffy said the company expects AI adoption to increase trading activity over time as investors use AI to process more information, monitor more companies and implement strategies more efficiently.
RIA and Introducing Broker Opportunities
The company is targeting growth among registered investment advisors through tax-aware long-short strategies. Peterffy said assets in those strategies totaled about $300 million at the end of the quarter.
Interactive Brokers has three tax-aware strategy providers onboarded, including AQR, and expects to add more. Peterffy said the strategies are suited to larger accounts and align with the company’s existing capabilities in margin financing, short selling and securities lending.
The company is also working to simplify RIA onboarding and improve integrations with multi-custodial platforms. Peterffy said these efforts could help advisors that currently use competing custodians bring business to Interactive Brokers.
He also said the company sees an opportunity to attract smaller RIAs following a competitor’s planned minimum-asset threshold, describing Interactive Brokers as an “obvious choice” for advisors seeking another platform.
In the introducing-broker business, Peterffy said the pipeline remained broadly consistent with recent quarters, with numerous integrations in progress and some already live. During the quarter, South Korean brokerage Daol Investment & Securities launched a global securities trading platform powered by Interactive Brokers technology and trading infrastructure.
Looking ahead, management said it did not see concerns from the moderation in client activity compared with the second quarter. Peterffy cited delayed IPO activity and said the company expects volatility could rise approaching the midterm elections, which historically tends to increase customer trading activity.
About Interactive Brokers Group (NASDAQ:IBKR)
Interactive Brokers Group, Inc is a global electronic brokerage company that provides trading, investment and custody services to individual investors, financial advisors, hedge funds, proprietary trading firms, family offices and other institutional clients. The company offers access to a broad range of markets and financial instruments, including stocks, options, futures, currencies, bonds, exchange-traded funds and mutual funds.
Interactive Brokers provides its services through digital platforms such as Trader Workstation, IBKR Mobile and Client Portal, along with application programming interfaces for clients seeking automated or integrated trading capabilities.
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