Net income was $39.4 million for Q4, marking a turnaround from a year earlier when it made a net loss of $116.6 million, driven by charges related to the company's initial public offering, according to its results. 

For the full year, net income was $170.4 million, having increased by $227.2 million from a net loss of $56.9 million for 2010. The prior year net loss was driven by the fourth quarter IPO charges.

Full year net revenue increased 11.8 per cent, to $3.5 billion, with commission revenue growing by 8.2 per cent from the prior year, with approximately 80 per cent of this driven by sales growth and the rest down to market movement. Advisory revenue, meanwhile, shot up by 19.4 per cent compared to 2010, bolstered by strong net new advisory asset flows and overall improving market levels.

Total advisory and brokerage assets ended the year at $330.3 billion, compared to $315.6 billion a year earlier, registering growth of 4.7 per cent over the period. Key drivers of this trend included a 9.2 per cent increase in assets on the firm’s fee-based advisory platform, to $101.6 billion at year-end, LPL said.

Over the year, the company added 549 net new advisors, excluding the attrition of 146 advisors resulting from the conversion of institution relationships and related client accounts from the UVEST platform to LPL Financial's self-clearing platform.

Meanwhile, assets under custody in the LPL Financial RIA platform, which provides fee- and commission-based capabilities for independent advisors, grew 68.1 per cent to $22.7 billion as of 31 December 2011. This encompassed 146 RIA firms at the end of 2011, compared to $13.5 billion assets and 114 firms a year earlier.

“ continue to invest in the growth of the business while closely managing expenses. Most recently, we announced the pending acquisition of Fortigent, which we believe will accelerate our growth in the high-net-worth RIA market. In addition, we anticipate benefiting from our continued investment in technology and gaining efficiencies and savings in our operations through our service value commitment program,” said Mark Casady, LPL Financial chairman and chief executive.