Under the terms of the agreement, Tix has expanded its Board of Directors from five to eight directors and has appointed three designees selected by Baker Street (Vadim Perelman, Kenneth H. Traub and Mark D. Stolper) to the Board. The size of the Board will not exceed eight directors prior to the 2015 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Tix has agreed to nominate and recommend the same three designees for election to the Board at the 2011 Annual Meeting of Stockholders. Baker Street has withdrawn its separate nomination of five candidates for election to the Board of Directors, but will have a right to designate up to three nominees for election to the Board at each of the 2012, 2013 and 2014 Annual Meetings of Stockholders, provided it maintains certain minimum stock ownership levels.

Investors apparently hope that the rejiggered board will spur better results.  The last quarterly results, posted in May, were uninspiring.

First quarter 2011 revenues decreased 12% to $6.4 million, compared with $7.3 million for the same period in 2010. Our Ticketing Services segment reported increased revenues which were offset by a decline in revenues from our Exhibit Merchandising segment in the first quarter of 2011 compared to the same period in 2010.

First quarter 2011 income from continuing operations decreased to $118,000 or $0.00 per diluted common share compared to $244,000 or $0.01 per diluted common share for the same period in 2010. The decline in income from continuing operations was due to our 12% decline in revenues, an increase in direct costs as a percentage of revenues offset by an improvement in our consolidated selling, general and administrative expenses of $569,000 as compared to the same period in 2010. Included in the cost savings of $569,000 is a reduction in corporate expenses, excluding stock based compensation expense, of approximately $450,000 related to cost savings on governance and regulatory costs associated with moving our stock listing to the OTCQX exchange, deregistering our common stock under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, and other expense reduction efforts.

DISCLOSURE: No position

That’s why I have always preferred a forex broker that places my trades on an ECN and charges a small commission.  For years I have used MB Trading (among others).  MB Trading has much smaller spreads, and charges a $2.95 commission.

A few weeks ago, MB Trading added a new twist.  Trades that took liquidity — in other words any market order, or immediately-fillable limit order — still are charged the $2.95 commission.  But if you add liquidity, then MB Trading will pay you $1.95 per 100k traded.  You are not going to get rich off of it.  A heavy day of trading might get you negative rebates of $40-50.  And for those of you ready to whip out your MetaTrader and start running scalp-oriented expert advisor (EA) “robots,” good luck.  I’m sure I’m not the only one who thought of running a high volume computer trading model aimed at breaking even on the trades and racking up the commission rebates (similar to the rake-back programs many pokerbots are optimized for).  But after trading the markets manually for a few weeks, I don’t think the liquidity is there yet for that kind of model to work.

Still, over the course of a trading year the small rebates will add up, especially with the leverage forex permits.  More importantly, the liquidity incentives add a dynamism that permit you to move in and out of the popular currency pairs in most markets without giving up a spread.  That is not the case with many forex brokers, for which limit orders are not a practical option.

Right now MB Trading is an outlier.  I expect another trader-oriented shop to follow suit, perhaps either TradeStation Forex or InteractiveBrokers.  Its getting better for retail forex traders.  Stay tuned.

Home BancShares, Inc., parent company of Centennial Bank, today announced second quarter earnings of $13.5 million, or $0.45 diluted earnings per common share, compared to $9.0 million, or $0.29 diluted earnings per common share for the same quarter in 2010. The Company increased its second quarter net income by $4.6 million or 51.2% for the three months ended June 30, 2011 compared to the same period of the previous year.

Because acquisitions are growth and capital management strategies, earnings excluding amortization of intangibles after-tax are useful in evaluating the Company. Diluted earnings per common share excluding intangible amortization for the second quarter of 2011 was $0.46 compared to $0.30 diluted earnings per common share excluding intangible amortization for the same period in 2010.

“The second quarter of 2011 is the most profitable quarter in the history of the Company,” said John Allison, Chairman. “In addition, we have continued to show consistency in our strong reserves as well as keeping our capital levels considerably above the regulators’ capital requirements. This leaves us well positioned to take advantage of opportunistic FDIC deals as they become available.”

“During the second quarter,” said Randy Sims, Chief Executive Officer, “not only did we see our net interest margin improve 39 basis points over the second quarter of 2010 but also reported considerable improvements in the non-performing non-covered loans and non-performing non-covered assets when compared to those during 2010. Our continued success in the second quarter of 2011 is an exciting time for our Company.”

DISCLOSURE: no position