Reimagined products and services with new technology are on the front burner, albeit over low heat, at Goldman Sachs after a mixed earnings report for the first quarter of 2019.
Chairman and CEO David Solomon said during the bank’s earnings call today that he was pleased with the bank’s performance in the first quarter, especially with a “muted” start to the year, and touted “solid results” in core businesses. He also said that big institutional clients “appeared less cautious” by the start of the current quarter.
But revenue in the first quarter dropped 13% to $8.81 billion, well below analysts’ $8.9 billion estimate, on lower results in the bank’s trading, investing and lending segments. The bank made up for it, in part, by trimming headcount and reducing compensation.
“We are on an evolutionary path,” Solomon said, adding that the bank’s investments in diversifying its business will produce results “over time,” as in – not immediately.
Solomon started a “front-to-back” operational review of the bank after taking over as CEO in October. He said management is piecing together conclusions of that review and plans to offer performance targets across the entire bank by early next year. While he acknowledged how long the process was taking, he asked for patience as well.
“We think this is the right time period and the right approach for us to execute flawlessly,” he said.
Traditionally an investment bank heavily reliant on Wall Street, Goldman Sachs took a stomping step into consumer finance last month when its digital-first credit card with Apple and Mastercard was announced. Its rollout of Marcus, a digital-only arm with no-fee personal loans and high-yield online savings for individuals, was its first big move in the space.
The bank estimates there are up to $4 trillion in consumer deposits looking for Marcus-like products and services, CFO Stephen Scherr noted on the earnings call.
“We will design our deposit platforms to capture our share,” he said.
Marcus now holds $46 billion in deposits in the U.S. and U.K., and the bank said it expects to add more than $10 billion a year over the “next few years” in those markets combined.
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Scherr said the bank is building Marcus as a “fully-integrated digital business,” and that wealth management will be a key piece. “This is a very large market with $9 trillion in mass affluent customer assets across more than 20 million U.S. households,” he added.
He also said there’s a multi-tiered digital wealth product currently in early development.
Asked whether Goldman Sachs should be seen as a disruptor or just growing in line with established players with its Apple Card partnership, Scherr said, “judgment as to how disruptive the card will be, will be in the eye of the beholder.” He said the combination of innovation that Apple is known for, along with the bank’s stripping away of legacy technology, lends itself to being disruptive in a broad sense.
“We’re looking to build one coherent business that is Marcus,” he said, adding the bank looks for markets that are big, where it doesn’t need to capture a dominating share. He said the bank did just that in loans and now it’s moving on into the card space.
Goldman Sachs has a market cap of $76.2 billion. The bank’s stock was down more than 3% as of 11:30 a.m. EST.




