Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) is among the stocks on Jim Cramer’s game plan as he shared his take on the market post Iran-U.S. ceasefire talks. Cramer expects the stock to rise in the coming days, as he commented:
Tuesday’s the first chock-full day of earnings season. It’s got three major banks: JPMorgan, Wells Fargo, and Citigroup. Now, they each have their own characteristics… Citi is now love, love, love by everybody on Wall Street, and it’s the stock that I think is probably the most likely to jump higher next week. It’s like a, yeah, it’s, it’s like a trained rabbit… I don’t know how that happens. It keeps happening. The estimates are always too low. People like the stock of Citi.
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Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) provides financial products and services across banking, markets, and wealth management. Cramer discussed the company during the January 14 episode, as he stated:
Last but not least, there’s Citigroup, which delivered another good, solid quarter, the latest in a long line of no drama results under CEO Jane Fraser. Excluding a one-time charge related to the… sale of its Russian operations, Citi saw 8% revenue growth while earnings per share were up 35%. Citi had the best in interest income of all banks, up 14%, also ahead of expectations. But as with Bank of America, they benefit from a smaller-than-expected provision for credit losses, which signals confidence in the economy. But it’s not an operational number. Below the top lines, it’s where it hurts. It was a mixed bag. Citi’s services business and its banking business both beat, so did the markets business, but that was driven by fixed income as equity trading fell a bit short. The company’s personal banking in the United States had a shortfall… I liked that business. It needs to really climb. As did the wealth unit, though, the wealth shortfall was very small.
Basically, for Citi, this was another professional quarter, and for a turnaround story like this, it would’ve normally been enough to send the stock roaring. Remember, Citi’s much, much, much, three muchs, cheaper than its peers, even after shooting up 66% last year. But today, with the overall market down and Wall Street deciding these bank earnings were just yawners at best, another solid result from Citi wasn’t enough to send this stock up. We’re all used to seeing it jump after earnings. One of the more interesting tidbits about Citi today didn’t even come from the quarter. In an internal memo sent to employees, which was then picked up by basically every major financial news outlet, Fraser, CEO, said that her bank’s transformation efforts are more than 80% complete. Memo also included news about more layoffs and some interesting commentary about how Citi’s adopting AI. But it matters that the bank’s self-help efforts, which have moved this stock so much, are nearing completion. I gotta wonder how long Citi stock can keep running if the company’s no longer being graded on a curve. For now, though, I think it’s just too, too cheap to ignore. It’s probably the first one I would buy of the ones I just mentioned.
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