Morgan Stanley said fourth-quarter profit rose 51% year-over-year, which would be another major U.S. bank that would appear in a better-than-expected state in a turbulent year at the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
The New York company reported a profit of $ 3.39 billion or $ 1.81 per share. Revenue rose 26% to $ 13.64 billion. Both beat the consensus estimates of analysts polled by FactSet, which predicted earnings per share of $ 1.30 on revenue of $ 11.58 billion.
Morgan Stanley rounded up fourth-quarter earnings reports from the country’s major banks, which still benefited from a recovery on Wall Street and federal pandemic response measures that prevented the worst-case economic scenario. The competitor Goldman Sachs Group Inc. on Tuesday reported a fourth-quarter profit that was more than twice as large as the previous year’s results and an annual revenue of 11 years.
With its focus on affluent Americans and large corporations and money managers, Morgan Stanley is less exposed to mass unemployment and small business than more main banks in Main Street.
Morgan Stanley’s stock and bond trading rose 32% to $ 4.22 billion, a larger leap than any other bank. Investment bank fees rose 46% to $ 2.30 billion, mostly due to $ 1 billion in revenue earned by Morgan Stanley to insure initial public offerings and other shares. These fees have more than doubled since the fourth quarter of 2019.