Michael Corbat, CEO of Citigroup
Lucy Nicholson | Reuters
Citigroup beat analysts’ expectations for profit and revenue on gains from the initial public offering of electronic bond trading platform Tradeweb.
The bank posted profit of $4.79 billion, or $1.95 per share, compared with the $1.80 estimate of analysts surveyed by Refinitiv. Revenue climbed 2% to $18.76 billion, exceeding the $18.5 billion estimate. Without the gains from the IPO, the bank would have posted $1.83 per share in profit.
Citigroup is the first of the big U.S. banks to report second-quarter results, so investors are keen to see how its banking and trading operations performed during the period.
Last month, CFO Mark Mason said at a conference that trading revenue in the quarter would likely decline by a “mid-single-digit” percentage from a year ago. Investors will also be keen to see if the bank was able to trim expenses while increasing revenue and how the lender’s sprawling non-U.S. operations performed in the quarter.
Shares of the New York-based bank climbed 38% so far this year, compared to the 16% gain of the KBW Bank Index.
Here’s what Wall Street expected:
- Earnings: $1.80 a share, 11% more than a year earlier, according to Refinitiv
- Revenue: $18.5 billion, almost unchanged from a year earlier.
- Trading Revenue: Fixed income: $2.98 billion, Equities: $811 million, according to Factset
- Efficiency ratio: 57.3, according to Factset