Goldman profits surge on investment banking boom

THE WALL Street bank Goldman Sachs saw its first-quarter profit nearly quintupled, driven by a massive surge of revenue from its core investment banking and trading operations.

The jump in profits is similar to that seen at JPMorgan Chase, which also reported its results yesterday, although unlike JPMorgan, Goldman’s results did not benefit from a release from its loanloss reserves of any significant amount.

The New York-based company had a profit of $6.71 billion, or $18.80 a share, compared to a profit of $1.12 billion, or $3.11 a share, in the same period a year earlier.

The results were much better than the $10.20-per-share profit that analysts had forecast, according to FactSet.

Goldman had said in March that its losses from a fire sale of stocks triggered by a meltdown of New York investment fund Archegos were immaterial. Total revenue surged 102% to $17.7 billion in the quarter. Goldman said debt underwriting was helped by strong leveraged finance and assetbacked activity, while equity underwriting was boosted by a red-hot initial public offering (IPO) market. Goldman’s results reflect the health of the stock and bond markets compared to a year earlier.

Markets across the world plunged sharply in March 2020 as investors realized how much economic and human damage the coronavirus pandemic could cause.

The S&P 500 index dropped 12.5% just in the month of March last year. But as the economy has recovered and millions of vaccines have been administered, so has Goldman’s profits. The stock and bond market had relatively healthy volatility in the first quarter, which allowed the bank’s traders to profit from the moves.

In investment banking, Goldman had revenues of $3.57 billion, more than double the revenues of $1.74 billion in the year-ago quarter. Trading revenues rose 60% from a year earlier as well.

Goldman only had a small $70 million benefit to its results from it releasing money from its loanloss reserves.

Goldman does not have a significant consumer finance division, or sell mortgages, as compared to its Wall Street counterparts. The bank is only sitting on $4.24 billion in loan-loss reserves, whereas JPMorgan has $26 billion in reserves.