About Citigroup Inc. (C)

Citigroup Inc. is a diversified global financial services company with two main business segments: consumer banking and institutional financial services. While Citi’s consumer units include traditional and online banking, credit cards and investment advisory services, the bank’s institutional units conduct commercial lending, investment banking and securities trading operations. The bank has more than 200 million customer accounts with operations in more than 160 countries.

With assets totally more than $2.2 trillion, C is one of those financial behemoths that deserves to be known via just that single capital letter and the captainship that it connotes. C ranks as one of the five largest banks in the U.S. It is among the 20 largest banks globally. It also ranks as one of the ten largest investment banks and securities dealers in the U.S.  And it is a primary dealer of U.S. government-issued bonds.

C was formed in its current form when Citicorp and Travelers Group merged in 1998, shattering decades-long rules aimed at keeping asset holders and asset speculators from being under one roof. The company traces its roots to lower Manhattan concern that arranged the fledgling American treasury’s bond issuance circa the War of 1812.

Consensus analyst forecasts are for revenues to exceed $69 billion in 2021, resulting in earnings of $6.48 per each C share. The consumer units of C were impacted by the pandemic with third-quarter 2020 earnings falling by 34% versus the same period in 2019.

As a primary global deposit-taking lender, the share price of C can be extremely sensitive to changes (or lack thereof) in interest rates which directly impact profit margins, with higher rates helping to increase margins.