Citigroup Inc (NYSE:C) shares were down 0.27% to $44.33 even as the company’s earnings per share topped expectations. The company has a market cap of $129.75 billion at 2.93 billion shares outstanding. Shares have been trading in a 52-week range of $34.52 to $60.95.
Citigroup is a financial services holding company whose businesses provide consumers, corporations, governments and institutions with a range of financial products and services, including consumer banking and credit, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, trade and securities services and wealth management.
The company reported Q2 earnings per share of $1.24, higher than the consensus estimate of $1.18. Revenue for the quarter came in at $17.5 billion versus the consensus estimate of $17.87 billion.
These results demonstrate our ability to generate solid earnings in a challenging and volatile environment, again highlighting the resilience of our institution,” said Citigroup CEO Michael Corbat.
He added that nearly all of Citigroup net income came from core businesses and the company continued to reduce non-core assets in Citi Holdings. Corbat also mentioned that the company significantly improved their efficiency ratio, return on assets and return on tangible common equity from the first quarter, on top of growing loans in consumer and institutional businesses, reducing expenses, and utilizing additional deferred tax assets.
This brought the total utilized to $10 billion over the last four years. He explained that utilization fuels the company’s ability to generate regulatory capital and, with the Fed’s non-objection to their capital plan, Corbat shared that Citigroup will significantly increase the amount of capital returned to their shareholders over the next year.
The quarterly earnings report also showed that Citigroup reduced its operating expenses by 5% to $10.4 billion, benefitting from a foreign exchange transaction. These upbeat earnings figures is in line with the trends of banking sector companies such as JP Morgan and Wells Fargo that reported their quarterly data earlier in the week.
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