In a report released yesterday, Chris Kotowski from Oppenheimer assigned a Buy rating to Citigroup (NYSE: C), with a price target of $88. The company’s shares closed yesterday at $66.68.
Kotowski noted:
“Recent news that the activist investor ValueAct had taken a stake in Citi has brought into renewed focus the two seemingly contradictory facts that the company has a strong global franchise, but that its shares remain very cheap at ~1.1x TBV. It is of course unknown what ValueAct, with its reported 0.7% stake in Citi, could cause it to do that it would not be doing anyway. Nevertheless, it does strike us as an opportune occasion for all the interested parties—management, shareholders, investors, analysts and others—to revisit the debate about whether it makes sense to have all these diverse businesses under one roof. We think the best global franchise should generate more than a 10% ROTCE, which is what Citi is aspiring to this year.”
According to TipRanks.com, Kotowski is a 5-star analyst with an average return of 10.0% and a 64.6% success rate. Kotowski covers the Financial sector, focusing on stocks such as Eagle Point Credit Company Inc, Great Elm Capital Corporation, and Apollo Global Management LLC.
Currently, the analyst consensus on Citigroup is Moderate Buy and the average price target is $81.33, representing a 22.0% upside.
In a report issued on May 17, Daiwa also assigned a Buy rating to the stock with a $78 price target.
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Based on Citigroup’s latest earnings release for the quarter ending March 31, the company reported a quarterly revenue of $23.78 billion and net profit of $4.57 billion. In comparison, last year the company earned revenue of $21.68 billion and had a net profit of $4.04 billion.
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