Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:), the largest bank by market cap in the U.S., is slated to post Q2 2007 earnings early Friday morning. First Call estimates are listed as $1.13 EPS and almost $24.9 Billion in revenues. If the bank offers guidance, the following quarter estimates are also $1.13 on EPS and $24.50 Billion in revenues. This stock hasn’t been immune from the financial malais in the street, so it’s probably safe to expect at least some loan loss reserve increases as we’ve started seeing elsewhere. The behemoth is also trading closer to its lower-end of the $48.05 to $57.00 range over the last 52-weeks. Friday will be the first real look we will have seen that gives us a look at how the restructuring is going.
Once again, we’d like to extend the suggestion and invitation for a Chuck Prince resignation. The current indication and path of the company is still for him to stay though, at least that is how it looks. The truth is that Prince isn’t a horrible person from what I have been able to gather, but his time and place was in a different period. He was the answer to help clean up after some Weill’s problems and make the regulators happy. But that was a few years ago and it is now time for a new leader to take this into the next round of cost cuts and into the next growth phase. These are battleships thatcannot easily be turned, but a new manager would be able to show that this battleship wasn’t moving all that fast to begin with. If he leaves, it might add at least $2.00 to the stock.
Jon C. Ogg
July 19, 2007
Jon Ogg can be reached at [email protected]; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.
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