Citigroup Inc. said on Friday that its fourth quarter revenue fell 7% and that it took out some of the reserves it had made to cover potentially impaired loans.
The New York bank said earnings fell to $ 4.63 billion, or $ 2.08 per share, compared to $ 4.98 billion, or $ 2.15 per share, a year earlier. This still exceeded the $ 1.34 expected by analysts surveyed by FactSet.
Revenue fell 10% to $ 16.5 billion, falling below the $ 16.72 billion expected by analysts.
Throughout 2020 – a year of turbulence in the economy – the country’s third-largest bank’s net assets fell 41% to $ 11.37 billion, and revenue was flat at $ 74.3 billion. Like its large bank peers, Citigroup has done well on its Wall Street operations, but this has been offset by the billions of dollars it has had to earmark for potentially bad loans.
In a sign that its outlook for the economy has improved, Citigroup withdrew $ 1.5 billion from the reserves it had set aside for future loan losses, a major reason the bank’s profit was better than expected.