My Home About Me

It's that time again. Our quarterly look at Citigroup (C) and how my breakup analysis is holding up. Citi reported a second quarter loss of $2.5 billion last week, halving its $5 billion first quarter figure. Due to continued writedowns and credit loss reserve building, it remains difficult to project what kind of profits Citi could have in a more normal environment.

That said, one way to look at it is to calculate Citi's net income by segment before accounting for asset writedowns and credit provisions. Here are some figures for Citi's 4 main businesses:

Citigroup - 2nd Quarter by Segment

Net Income/Reserve Build/Income ex reserve build

Global Credit Cards: $467M/$582M/$1049M
Consumer Banking: $(700m)/$1657M/$957M
Institutional Banking: ($2044M)/$367M/($1677M)
Wealth Management: $405M/$41M/$446M

The Institutional segment remains hard to project due to $7.2 billion of pre-tax writedowns for the quarter. The other segments, however, are tracking very close to my previous estimated ranges at ~$8 billion per year for banking and ~$2 billion per year for global wealth management. Institutional probably winds up in the $2-$4 billion annual range ultimately, which would peg Citi's annual earnings at between $12 and $14 billion.

Assign a 10 to 12 multiple on that and you get fair value of between $120 billion and $168 billion, or $21 to $29 per share, versus today's price of around $20 per share. In order for Citi to get back to the good ol' days of earning $20 billion+ annually, it appears the economy would have to improve markedly, but that environment is likely several years away at least.

Full Disclosure: No position in Citigroup at the time of writing

bailout   Basic Materials SPDR (XLB)   bond trading   bond yields   capitulation   climactic   commodities   credit crisis   credit crunch   Currency ETFs   day trading   Deron Wagner   DJIA chart   economic data   Emini's Nas 100   emini's S&P 500   emini's S&P 500e   ETFs (exchange trade funds)   ETFs (exchange traded funds)   Gold Miners ETF (GDX)