Citi results have beaten analyst forecasts with a 15% y-o-y rise in second quarter net income to $4.5bn, boosted by strong retail banking earnings.
Citi’s global consumer banking unit posted a 15% rise in net income to $1.28bn.
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Global consumer banking revenue of $8.3bn increased 2%, driven by growth across all regions.
North American consumer banking revenue increased by 1% to $5.0bn driven by higher revenues in Retail Banking and Citi Retail Services, partially offset by lower revenues in Citi-Branded Cards. Citi’s retail banking revenues of $1.3bn increased by 4% y-o-y.
Citi benefitted significantly as a result of President Trump’s tax cuts: its effective tax rate was 24% in the current quarter compared to 32% in the second quarter 2017.
Citi results: channel highlights
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By GlobalDataCiti’s US branch network inched down by 2 units from a year ago to 693 outlets; groupwide Citi ended the first half with 2,428 branches down 6% year-on-year.
In the US, Citi’s active digital banking customers rose by 8% y-o-y to 18 million.
Active mobile banking customers rose by 16% y-o-y to 10 million.
Outside the US, active mobile banking customer numbers soared by 43% y-o-y to 6 million.
Citi CEO Michael Corbat said, “These results demonstrate good momentum across our franchise and that we are firmly on track to achieve the financial targets we introduced last year at Investor Day. “During the quarter, we drove strong year-over-year revenue growth in many of our businesses – including our International Consumer franchise, Treasury and Trade Solutions, Equities, and the Private Bank. And we continue to support our clients as evidenced by solid loan growth that was balanced across businesses and geographies.
“Our focus on expenses has given us the ability to self-fund many of our investments and resulted in an improvement in our efficiency ratio for both the second quarter and through the first half of this year.”
