Goldman Sachs gets an embarrassing start to the year
Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein has delivered a clunker.
The white-shoe investment bank posted disappointing earnings for the first quarter, with trading revenue — traditionally the bank’s big money-maker — ceding ground to rivals with less-fancy names.
Despite easy comparisons with last year’s abysmal first quarter, when stocks and bonds had slumped amid corporate skittishness over the economy, Goldman on Tuesday reported $1.69 billion in revenue from trading in bonds, currencies, and commodities — a paltry 1-percent increase.
Goldman’s stock got hammered on the disappointing news, recently off 5.7 percent to hit a session low of $213.41, its lowest level since late November. Goldman had recently lost $5.2 billion in market capitalization during the session, in the biggest single-day selloff since June 24, the day after Britain voted to leave the European Union.
Goldman’s sluggish growth in the latest quarter plagued a period that had seemed specially designed to boost Goldman Sachs’ profit: Donald Trump had come into office, the White House was stacked with at least half a dozen Goldman alumni, the Federal Reserve was hiking interest rates, and bankers sold the “Trump Trade” to willing investors who were finally ready to buy again.
“Ultimately we didn’t navigate the market well, but no quarter defines the franchise,” Marty Chavez, Goldman’s incoming chief financial officer, said during an analyst call.
“Hard to put lipstick on these results, given solid expectations and peer results so far,” rival bank UBS said in an analyst note.
Chavez suggested that unusually calm markets were responsible for the slowdown in trading for the first three months of 2017. But that didn’t seem to have the same impact on Goldman’s rivals.
This quarter, JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup, and Bank of America all posted significant increases in revenue from trading in bonds, currencies and commodities. JPMorgan posted a 17-percent uptick in revenue. Citi’s rose 19 percent, and BofA grew nearly 17 percent, versus Goldman’s 1-percent gain.
Overall, Goldman posted $2.26 billion in profit, or $5.15 a share, which was a 99 percent increase from last year’s abysmal first quarter.
Still, analysts had expected about $5.31 a share.
The earnings adds insult to injury for Goldman, which struggled last year to define itself against its peers amid a vastly changing Wall Street landscape, where trading is largely being executed by computer programs and cost-cutting has been the most reliable way to post profits.
Investors had expected the first quarter, traditionally a strong one for trading as traders stake out new positions for the year, to be a bonanza for Goldman. The Fed had raised rates twice since December, moves that typically spur a flurry of trading.
Separately on Tuesday, Bank of America posted better-than-expected profits of $4.86 billion, or 41 cents a share — up 44 percent, in part, from an increase in trading revenue.