JPMorgan Chase's traders and investment bankers emerged from a messy third quarter with a few surprise wins.
Fixed-income trading revenue jumped 25% and investment banking fees posted an unexpected increase, the company said Tuesday in a
JPMorgan seized on some late-quarter volatility in fixed-income markets, pushing trading revenue higher than what Chief Executive Jamie Dimon had forecast just a few weeks earlier.
And even as global trade tensions weighed on cross-border dealmaking and companies from WeWork to Endeavor Group Holdings
“JPMorgan stacks up very well relative to its competitors in the U.S, particularly in the capital markets area,” Fred Cannon, an analyst at KBW, said in an interview on Bloomberg Television.
Shares of the company rose 1.8% to $118.50 in early New York trading. They’ve jumped 19% this year.
Dimon tempered expectations for trading revenue last month, saying he wasn’t “jumping for joy” at the prospect of a 10% jump in the metric because the gain is compared with a weak third quarter in 2018. The actual increase was 14%.
The strength in fixed-income trading was offset by a surprise 5% decline in equity-trading revenue, to $1.5 billion, which the bank blamed on derivatives. Analysts had been expecting a 5% increase.
JPMorgan had been expected to benefit from a pullback by Deutsche Bank in equities. The bank has been investing in electronic technology and sharpening its focus on trade execution, trying to unseat Morgan Stanley as Wall Street’s top stock-trading shop.
Repo rates surged late last month, providing an opportunity for banks to
Wall Street trading desks have been struggling to revamp their businesses as a shift to passive investing, struggles among hedge funds and moves to cheaper electronic trading have made banks’ securities units less profitable. The five biggest U.S. banks saw a collective $5 billion drop in trading revenue in the first half of the year.
Investment banking fees rose 8.7% to $1.98 billion thanks to stronger-than-expected results from the bank’s capital markets team. Fees from helping companies raise money through bond deals and stock offerings increased 18% to $1.47 billion. Fees from advising on mergers and acquisitions slumped 13% to $506 million, worse than expectations for a 7% drop.
The bank’s book of what it considers core loans contracted for only the second time since the Federal Reserve started increasing interest rates in 2015. Average core loans fell to $900.6 billion from $905.8 billion in the previous quarter, driven by decreased lending in the consumer and investment banking divisions. Loans to medium-sized companies and to clients of its asset and wealth management group increased.
Other key results:
- Net income rose 8% to $9.08 billion, or $2.68 a share, from $8.38 billion, or $2.34, a year earlier. That beat the $2.46 average estimate of 20 analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.
- The firm’s consumer banking unit posted a 7% increase in revenue as investments to open up branches in new states started to yield returns.
- Net charge-offs at the bank surged 33% to $1.37 billion from $1.03 billion last year.
The bank lowered its guidance for this year’s noninterest expense to $65.5 billion from an earlier estimate of less than $66 billion.
