E-Trade to Split Stock Again This Year

Fast-growing companies often split their shares, but twice in one year is a brisk clip, even by Internet stock standards.

E-Trade Group Inc., the third-biggest online brokerage, said Friday that it will split its stock 2-for-1, its second split this year as its shares have risen fourfold.

The move came as Goldman, Sachs & Co. analyst Richard Strauss forecast that Internet stock trading will grow 40% to 50% a year for the next three to five years. He said Net trading has created $60 billion of the $73 billion in market value added to the entire brokerage industry since July.

Palo Alto-based E-Trade’s announcement came a day after Charles Schwab Corp., the biggest online broker, said it will split its stock July 1 for the seventh time since the company went public in 1987. For E-Trade shareholders, a $10,000 investment at the time of the company’s August 1996 initial public offering would now be worth about $200,000.

The split will apply to stockholders of record May 7 and will take place May 21.

E-Trade shares gained $8.06 to close at $104.06 on Nasdaq.