Morgan Stanley reported first-quarter earnings before the opening bell on Thursday. Here’s how the numbers compared with Wall Street expectations:
- Earnings: $2.02 a share, versus $1.68 a share estimate, according to Refinitiv
- Revenue: $14.8 billion, versus $14.2 billion estimate, according to Refinitiv
Shares of the bank jumped more than 2% in premarket trading Thursday.
How well did Morgan Stanley’s traders and bankers navigate a difficult quarter? That’s the question for the New York-based bank, which gets roughly half its revenue from trading and investment banking operations.
Wall Street banks are grappling with a sudden slowdown in mergers-related advisory fees and a sharp drop in IPO activity in the first quarter, a reversal of the boom that fueled last year’s strong results. The change was triggered by stock market declines and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, forces that made markets less hospitable for deals and public listings.
The source of the other half of Morgan Stanley’s revenue, the bank’s giant wealth management and investment management divisions, may hold up better, but analysts still expect lower stock values to reduce revenue in the quarter.
— CNBC’s Hugh Son contributed reporting.
