Citigroup Reports Q3 2026 Net Income of $5.2 Billion, EPS of $2.85

On Tuesday, Citigroup (NYSE: C ) discussed third-quarter financial results during its earnings call. The full transcript is provided below. APIs provide real-time access to earnings call transcripts and financial data. Visit to learn more.

5%. Revenues grew by 8% year-over-year, marking the best third-quarter revenue in a decade. The company saw revenue growth across four out of five business units, notably with a 15% increase in Services, driven by deposits and commercial card spend. Citigroup continued to invest in talent and technology, pulling forward some planned investments into Q3, but maintained positive operating leverage with expense growth held to 3%.

In Markets, revenues increased by 6%, with equities up 14% and FICC up 4%, despite pressure in rates. The Banking segment saw a 6% revenue increase, with significant roles in major transactions like SK hynix's IPO and SoftBank's high-yield offering. Wealth management showed improvement, with a 100% increase in net new investment assets and ROTCE over 14%. 4% equity stake in Banamex, advancing towards its deconsolidation expected next year.

8%. Citigroup is leveraging AI for growth, efficiency, and risk management, focusing on modernizing its technology platform and improving cyber defenses. S. economy, while Citigroup continues to support clients amid potential disruptions.

Full Transcript OPERATOR Hello and welcome to Citigroup's third quarter 2026 earnings call. Today's call will be hosted by Margot Pillage, Head of Citigroup Strategy, M and A and Investor Relations. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question and answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded today.

If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. Ms. Pillage, you may begin. Margot Pillage, Head of Strategy, M&A and Investor Relations Thank you, Operator.

Good morning and thank you all for joining our third quarter 2026 earnings call. I am joined today by our Chair and Chief Executive Officer Jane Fraser and our Chief Financial Officer Gonzalo Lucchetti. com, may contain forward-looking statements which are based on management's current expectations and are subject to uncertainty and changes in circumstances. Actual results may differ materially from these statements due to a variety of factors including those described in our earnings materials as well as in our SEC filings.

And with that I'll turn it over to Jane. Jane Fraser, CEO Thank you, Margo, and good morning to everyone. 5%. Our returns improved meaningfully in Services, Banking, Wealth, and US Consumer Cards.

The firm's ROTCE grew by 180 basis points over last year and our net income was up 17% with revenues up 8% year over year. We delivered our best third quarter revenue in a decade and we saw revenue growth in four out of our five businesses. As previously shared, we pulled some of our planned investments and severance into this quarter. We remain very intentional around our expenses and our investments in talent and technology.

Even with this pull forward, we delivered positive operating leverage, holding expense growth to 3% excluding last year's notable item. Our overall performance continues to demonstrate the disciplined and consistent execution of our strategy. Now let's go through our five businesses. This was another standout quarter in Services with revenues up 15%.

Growth was broad based across every driver, from deposits to commercial card spend, and we saw continued momentum in trade loans and cross-border activity across the network. We continue to lead through innovation, bringing new real-time capabilities to our clients with the launch of Citi Token Services in the UAE and Japan and the introduction of Custody Plus. Assets under custody and administration grew by 16%, and we are laser focused on winning and onboarding further new mandates. Markets revenues were up 6%.

Equities revenues were up 14%, driven by our performance in prime and in Asia where we have been investing to gain share. FICC was up 4%. Rates was pressured by the trading environment, but we saw good growth in FX and spread products, both stable revenue streams. In Banking, revenues were up 6%.

We performed particularly well in ECM, where we played meaningful roles in the six largest transactions of the quarter, including leading SK hynix, the largest ever IPO of an Asian-based issuer. And in leveraged finance, we led SoftBank's $11 billion high-yield offering, the largest ever of its kind. I am proud of these wins and how our client relationships and bankers, including the new talent we have attracted, allowed us to land these mandates. As you have seen this quarter, we are continuing to invest responsibly in high-quality talent to build on our strengths and fill identified gaps in our franchise.

Wealth's performance continues to steadily improve with growth across all three businesses. ROTCE was over 14%, significantly higher than last year. We brought in $38 billion in net new investment assets this quarter, up over 100% from a year ago. We continue to launch new offerings such as Premium Boost to deepen client relationships and are seeing strong uptake of our wealth offering by our retail bank clients.

In US Consumer Cards, revenues were flat as a result of higher partner payments. At the same time, our general purpose portfolio drove 6% growth in total average loans. We're increasing investment in this business, both through our deep relationships with key partners and differentiated rewards for our customers, as you saw with the acquisition of Card. With returns of over 21% in the quarter, this is already a very attractive business, and the benefits of our investments will continue to scale over time.

4% equity stake of Banamex, bringing the total amount divested so far to 49%. We're now busy preparing for Banamex's deconsolidation from Citigroup next year. The IPO would happen after that, when market conditions allow and when the usual regulatory requirements are met. At that point, our international consumer divestitures will be nearly complete.

Turning to capital, we returned over $4 billion to our shareholders this quarter, including $3 billion in share buybacks. We have also utilized about $900 million of our disallowed DTA so far this year, slightly above the path we discussed at Investor Day in May. 8% and remains about 120 basis points above our current regulatory minimum. Now I know that the opportunities and risks that AI presents are on everyone's mind.

Our transformation has modernized our core technology platform, giving us the foundation we need to implement AI firm wide. As I've said before, we're approaching AI through four lenses: how it can help us grow, how we can deploy it to operate more efficiently, how we can teach our people to use these new capabilities, and how we can strengthen our defenses given the enhanced threat environment we and our clients face. I've talked frequently in the past about what we're doing on the first three, and we're excited about the top-line benefits and the efficiencies we are delivering, and the many opportunities to do more for our clients.

But let me spend a minute on the fourth lens. Our cyber defense strategy is about being on the front foot, about moving fast and retaining trust. We don't wait for risks to happen. We're constantly preparing and improving our defenses.

We're in the business of managing risk every day and this is no different. We've been hardening our systems and running challenging and disruptive scenarios to stress test our defenses and our responses. We then modify our playbooks based on what we've learned so we're ready before an event occurs, not after. We're focused on our resilience and working with our peers and regulators on reducing systemic risk even as we deploy AI to improve the performance of our firm.

Finally, on the macro environment, conditions did soften a bit during the third quarter, and while various headwinds—most recently higher energy prices and tighter monetary policies—have been challenging, the global economy has held up remarkably well. In the US, while as much has been made of the AI boom, the consumer is still driving much of the growth. The labor market is stable and companies remain active. Our near-term economic outlook remains positive.

China is seeing similar benefits from AI, but without the consumer spend needed for balanced growth and so their economy leans heavily on exports, and Europe remains structurally challenged. That backdrop is exactly why clients are leaning on our network. They're engaged and they are healthy. As you will see from our credit numbers, they're open to strategic opportunities whilst being keenly aware that there could be more disruptions ahead.

Our focus is on delivering our network and providing the intellectual firepower to help them compete more effectively, raise capital, or manage their supply chains. They know we will be at their side no matter what environment they face. This quarter was another proof point of our consistent execution and delivery in the face of a dynamic environment. In terms of the journey ahead, as you know, we expect to exceed this year's ROTCE target of 10 to 11% even as we pull forward the investments to support our near-term target of 11 to 13%.

But these are simply the next waypoints on our path to reach 14 to 15% in a sustainable manner, which we will do. With that, let me turn it to Gonzalo, and then we would both be delighted to take your questions. Mark Mason, Chief Financial Officer Thank you, Jane, and good morning, everyone. I'm going to start with the firmwide financial results focusing on year-over-year comparisons unless I indicate otherwise, and then review the performance of our businesses in greater detail.

On slide 4 we show financial results for the full firm which demonstrate the progress we've made and the momentum of our strategy. 8 billion of revenues, generating positive operating leverage. Total revenues were up 8%, driven by growth in Services, Wealth, Markets and Banking, partially offset by a decline in all other net interest income. S.

Consumer Cards, partially offset by declines in all other and Banking. S. Consumer Cards and total Markets. Revenues were up 6%.

5%. 6 billion, which included a firmwide net reserve build of $369 million. 6%. On slide 5 we show the expense and efficiency trend over the past five quarters.

As I just mentioned, excluding the impact of the notable item last year, expenses were up 3%, primarily driven by higher transactional and product servicing, deposit insurance cost, and compensation and benefits, partially offset by lower professional services expenses. On a year-to-date basis, we have recognized over $1 billion of severance largely across functions, technology and operations as we continue to drive structural efficiencies and bring down transformation expenses and stranded costs to create capacity for business growth. S. cards and corporate credit metrics.

5%. 3% which includes a downside scenario average unemployment rate of nearly 7%. S. 7%.

And we continue to see strong consumer credit performance as both net credit loss and delinquency rates in our overall cards portfolio declined year over year. Looking at the right-hand side of the slide, you can see that our corporate exposure is 79% investment grade, and in the quarter corporate nonaccrual loans as well as corporate net credit losses remained low. We are confident in the high-quality nature of our portfolios which reflect our robust risk appetite framework and rigorous client selection. 9 trillion increased 2%, driven by growth in trading-related assets and loans.

Net end-of-period loans increased 3%, driven by growth in Markets and Banking. 5 trillion deposit base remains well diversified and increased 1%, primarily driven by growth in Services. We reported a 114% average LCR and over $1 trillion of available liquidity resources in the third quarter. We continued to deploy capital to support accretive client activity while at the same time prioritizing the return of capital to common shareholders, as evidenced by the $3 billion in buybacks and the 12% increase in our quarterly common stock dividend.

6% regulatory capital requirement. Turning to the businesses, on slide 8 we show the results for Services in the third quarter. Revenues were up 15%, driven by growth across both TTS and Securities Services, reflecting the benefits of our continued investments in the business. NII increased 17%, driven by higher average deposit balances and deposit spreads.

NIR increased 12%, driven by growth in fees as we continue to see strong activity and engagement with both corporate and commercial clients, driving momentum across underlying KPIs. Expenses increased 10%, primarily driven by higher severance as well as volume- and revenue-related expenses. Average loans increased 14%, largely driven by working capital loans and export agency finance. S.

7% year to date. Turning to Markets on slide 9, revenues were up 6%, driven by growth across both Equities and Fixed Income. Fixed Income revenues were up 4%, with Spread Products and other Fixed Income up 13%, driven by an increase in Spread Products financing revenues, and Rates and Currencies was flat, with growth in Currencies on higher volumes offset by lower revenues in Rates. Equities revenues were up 14%, driven by continued momentum in Prime Services as balances grew by over 40%, partially offset by a decline in Derivatives.

Expenses increased 7%, driven by higher transactional expenses and compensation. Average loans increased 30%, primarily driven by Spread Products, as we execute against our Investor Day strategy to drive more stable financing revenues. 9% year to date. Turning to Banking on slide 10, revenues were up 6%, driven by growth in Investment Banking and gains on loan hedges, partially offset by a decline in Corporate Lending.

Investment Banking revenues increased 9%, driven by 77% growth in ECM, partially offset by declines of 4% and 3% in Advisory and DCM, respectively. Corporate Lending revenues, excluding gains on loan hedges, declined 16%, driven by lower loan spreads, partially offset by higher average loan balances and commitments. Expenses increased 8%, driven by higher compensation and continued investments in the business. Cost of credit was $23 million, consisting of $43 million in net credit losses and a net reserve release of $20 million.

7% year to date. Turning to Wealth on slide 11, revenues were up 15%, driven by growth across all businesses. NII, which you can see on the bottom left side of the slide, increased 20%, driven by higher deposit spreads and average deposit balances, partially offset by lower mortgage spreads. NIR was up 5%, largely driven by higher investment fee revenue.

Client investment assets were up 15%, primarily driven by net new investment asset flows, which were $38 billion in the quarter, contributing to over $75 billion in the last 12 months, representing 11% organic growth. Expenses increased 3%, driven by higher compensation. Cost of credit was $102 million, consisting of $70 million of net credit losses and a net reserve build of $32 million. Average loans were up 4% as we continue to grow securities-based lending and mortgages.