Citigroup carried by retail banking, trading back down

(Reuters) – Citigroup's third-quarter revenue and profit marginally outpaced market expectations, as growth in its retail bank offset its weakness in trading activities.

The most internationalized US bank, Citi announced Tuesday a 4% increase in its revenues in retail banking, excluding currency effects. They were particularly driven by the 11% increase in its credit card revenues in North America.

Trading income, on the other hand, fell by 1%.

Citigroup also exceeded its return on tangible equity (ROTCE) target of 12.2% versus the 12% promised to investors for the full year.

The bank made a non-exceptional profit of $ 1.97 per share on net banking income up 1% to 18.57 billion dollars (16.9 billion euros) while analysts expected respectively 1.95 dollar and 18.5 billion dollars according to Refinitiv's IBES data.

The action was stable after about half an hour of trading on Wall Street.

(Sweta Singh in Bangalore and Imani Moise in New York, Bertrand Boucey for French Service, edited by Jean-Michel Belot)