Wells Fargo (WFC) Stock Turns Red After Q4 Revenue Missed Expectations

Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE:WFC), founded in 1852, is a leading financial services company based in San Francisco. It offers a suite of solutions and services related to banking, investment, and personal finance through its thousands of branches spread across the U.S. Wells Fargo in 2015 became the world’s biggest bank in terms of market value, though it lost that position shortly after it was found involved in opening nearly 2 million fake bank accounts. In 2018, the Federal Reserve System put the bank under an asset cap, and the move severely hurt its growth.

WFC shares were trading around $53 at the start of 2020. Its stock fell sharply in March after it announced to pay $3 billion to resolve criminal probes related to its fraudulent sales practices. In the same month, the bank’s chairwoman Betsy Duke stepped down from her position amid heightened pressure from regulators over Wells Fargo’s stumbling attempts to fix the misleading consumer practices. Duke stepped down after leading the board for more than a year.

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Wells Fargo shares traded flat for the most part of 2020, touching a low of $20.76 on October 29, a couple of weeks after reporting disappointing results for the third quarter. Overall, the stock lost about half its value during 2020.

The company was off to a decent start in 2021, with the stock trading higher for most of the days. However, Wells Fargo shares fell 7.80 percent on Friday after reporting fourth-quarter revenue below the consensus forecast. Q4 revenue came in at $17.93 billion, down 9.7 percent on a year-over-year basis, and below analysts’ average estimate of $18.12 billion.

Nevertheless, Q4 earnings increased to $2.99 billion, or 64 cents per share, beating the consensus forecast of 59 cents per share. Meanwhile, the bank warned that asset sales and low interest rates will affect its revenue in the coming quarters. Wells Fargo ranked 24th among the  30 most popular stocks among hedge funds.

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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.