During a strong third quarter, Citigroup Inc (NYSE-C) saw strong revenue growth and positive operating leverage in all five of its segments. The company’s services business continued its momentum after gaining share across TTS and securities services in the first half of this year. Strength in equity markets with equity markets up 32% year-on-year. Financial Services continued to gain, driven primarily by a 75% increase in banking fees and a 32% increase in advisory fees. The company posted total sales of $20.315 billion for the third quarter of 2024 with a 1% year-over-year increase. The company’s operating profit stood at USD 13.250 billion with a year-on-year growth of 2%. After deducting all expenses, the company recorded a net profit of USD 3.238 billion. This increase in revenue was due to growth in all business areas, partially offset by declines in all other areas. Citigroup’s operating expenses of $13.3 billion decreased 2%, both on a reported basis and excluding the impact of the sale . This decrease in costs was primarily due to savings associated with Citi’s organizational simplification and reduction in stranded costs, partially offset by volume-related costs and continued investment in transformation and other risk and control initiatives. Citigroup’s credit costs were approximately $2.7 billion in the third quarter of 2024 compared to $1.8 billion in the prior year period, primarily driven by higher net card losses and higher provision for credit losses (ACL) due to portfolio growth and composition.
Citigroup Inc (NYSE-C) is moving vital infrastructure to Google Cloud as part of a broader AI push. The companies have joined forces in a strategic, multi-year agreement to support Citi’s digital strategy through cloud technology and artificial intelligence (AI). The collaboration focuses on modernizing Citi’s technology infrastructure and improving employee and client experiences with cloud applications. Through the collaboration, Citi will migrate more applications to Google Cloud’s secure and scalable infrastructure. By modernizing its technology infrastructure in Google Cloud, Citi will unlock the ability to offer enhanced digital products, streamline employee workflows, and run high-performance computing (HPC) and analytics platforms. This includes leveraging advanced HPC capabilities to facilitate the execution of millions of calculations per day across Citi Markets. As part of the agreement, Citi will also use Google Cloud’s Vertex AI platform to deliver generative AI capabilities across the company. With Google Cloud, Citi will be able to support its generative AI initiatives related to developer toolkits, document processing and digitization capabilities to strengthen customer service teams.
Tim Ryan, Citi’s director of technology and business support, said: “Citi’s goal is to modernize our infrastructure and improve our security and reliability so that our businesses can continue to serve our clients quickly and flexibly, where leveraging Google Cloud opens up a whole new frontier in how we can run applications with faster, more complex outputs and provide our colleagues with the tools they need to deliver to our clients.”
Citigroup Inc (NYSE-C) also pays a quarterly dividend. Currently, the dividend yield is at 3.46% per annum and the actual dividend amount approved by the company’s board of directors is $0.56 per share. The average target price has been set at $72.83 per share for the short to medium term investment horizon.
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