Citigroup, grappling with a tepid mortgage market and a broad slowdown in its fixed-income business, reported disappointing third-quarter earnings growth on Tuesday.
Citigroup, the nation’s third-largest bank by assets, said profit rose to $3.23 billion, or $1 a share, from $468 million, or 15 cents a share, in the period a year earlier.
Adjusted for one-time items, Citi’s earnings were slightly higher, at $3.26 billion, $1.02 a share.
Revenue swelled 30 percent, to $17.88 billion, from $13.7 billion in the period a year earlier. But Citigroup’s results were undercut by weakness in the fixed-income unit and fell short of analysts’ expectations of $3.16 billion, or $1.04 a share.
Excluding one-time items, Citi reported revenue of $18.2 billion, compared with $19.2 billion in the year-ago quarter and short of the analyst estimate of $18.74 billion.
“We performed relatively well in this challenging, uneven macro environment,†Michael Corbat, the chief executive of Citigroup, said in a statement.
For Mr. Corbat, the bank’s third-quarter earnings report comes at a critical moment: his one-year anniversary atop the bank. It was almost a year ago that Mr. Corbat took over the reins after Vikram Pandit was forced out in a boardroom coup led by Citi’s chairman, Michael O’Neill, who maneuvered behind the scenes for months to orchestrate the management change.
Since taking over, Mr. Corbat, a veteran of Citigroup who was spearheading much of the bank’s international business, has grappled with some of the same problems that dogged Mr. Pandit, including how to slough off unprofitable assets.
And like Mr. Pandit, Mr. Corbat has assiduously tried to slash costs and slim down business units at the sprawling bank. As part of that push, Citibank has sold its remaining stake in a brokerage joint venture with Morgan Stanley.
But Citi, like its rivals, is challenged by a tough environment â€" a lackluster American economy and slowing demand for loans.
Bedeviled by weak mortgage growth at home, Citi has pinned some of its hopes for growth on its international footprint. More than 50 percent of Citi’s revenue comes from outside of North America.
