Analyst Note
| Eric Compton, CFA |Narrow-moat Citigroup reported decent first-quarter earnings, easily beating FactSet consensus EPS of $2.60 with reported EPS of $3.62. This equates to a return on tangible common equity of 20% for the quarter. The biggest swing factor was provisioning for credit losses. As we had expected, the bank released a sizable portion of reserves, totaling roughly $4 billion. We have been more bullish than consensus on reserve releases, and with the current set of releases, the bank is nearing our full-year estimate already. We were expecting additional releases in 2022, but some of these may be pushed into 2021 if the environment continues to trend in a positive direction.