JMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) released its earnings numbers for the three months through June 30 this morning before the market opened on Wall Street. The bank showed earnings of $1.46 per share for the quarter, which the company records as its second of 2014, on revenue totaling $25.3 billion. Shares were up in pre-market trading directly after the release of the figures.
In the run up to the announcement, analysts following JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) were looking for earnings per share of $1.30 from the company’s second quarter. Consensus revenue estimates, garnered from a Bloomberg survey of analysts following the company, came to $23.7 billion. In the same three months of 2013 the bank earned $1.60 per share on revenue of $25.2 billion.
Financials show recovering economy
Earnings from Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) were released on Monday, and gave the market a burst of optimism about the wider economy, sending stock prices up across the board. This morning’s results from JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) appears to confirm the positivity surrounding the economy.
The JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE”JPM) CEO James Dimon confirmed this interpretation of the company’s second quarter results.”Toward the end of the second quarter, we saw encouraging signs across our businesses including an uptick in wholesale utilization, strengthening pipelines in our commercial and business banking segments, and some improvements in markets activity. While it is too early to assume that this momentum will continue, we have confidence in the long-term growth of the economy.”
Those positive signs included record loan origination in Business Banking, record investment banking revenues for the first half of 2014, and deposit growth which outpaced the rest of the banking industry. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) performed well in Q2, but the company’s shareholders have been less concerned with core business in the last year and more concerned with the actions of the Federal government.
JPMorgan fights oversight
Much of the depressive force affecting stock in JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) in the last eighteen months has come from the Federal government. The bank has been followed by regulators through several parts of its business from commodity trading to mortgage bonds. The company’s investors have suffered under the weight of those legal cases, but there appears to be an optimistic mood around the company, despite CEO James Dimon’s recent illness.
In the last twelve months shares in JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) have risen by just 2%. The wider stock market, measured by the S&P 500, rose by more than 17% in the same time period. Today’s earnings, despite a $500 million one-off legal expense incurred by the company, may herald the end of the company’s large-scale legal troubles.
The legal charge the company took in the second quarter took about 13 cents per share off of EPS, showing that though the effect of the company’s legal problems seem to be waning, they have not left the company’s accounts just yet. This morning, however, sees traders become optimistic about the firm. Shares in JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE:JPM) were up 1.62% to $57.20 at time of writing.
