2022 has been rather rude to Citigroup Inc (NYSE: C) that’s down 20% for the year – a decline big enough for Richard Saperstein to call it quits on the Wall Street bank.
Why Saperstein pulled out of Citigroup
The founder and chief investment officer of Treasury Partners pulled out of the Citi stock on Friday. Explaining why on CNBC’s “Halftime Report”, he said:
Citi suffers from being too global. In the environment we are in now, there’s only going to be further pressure. We didn’t see the turnaround occurring as quickly ass we’d like. We had to raise capital to redeploy and that’s what we did.
In January, Citigroup blamed higher operating expenses as it reported a 26% year-over-year decline in its profit for the fiscal fourth quarter.
Wolfe Research downgrades Citigroup stock
Also on Friday, Wolfe downgraded Citigroup to “peer perform” and slashed its target on the stock to $55 a share, not representing a meaningful increase from here.
The research firm is dovish on big banks at large and sees retail brokers as better means of playing the higher rates. The upcoming earnings season is going to be a rough one for investment banking, as per Wolfe.
Last month, CEO Jane Fraser said it would take another three to five years for Citigroup to hit a 12% ROTC.
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