BCS Barclays PLC

   By Adam Clark 
 

Barclays PLC (BARC.LN) reported its first-quarter earnings on Thursday. After initially falling, the bank's shares recovered to trade up over 1% by late morning. Here's what we watched:

PROFIT: Barclays booked a net loss of 764 million pounds ($1.07 billion) on the back of litigation and conduct costs, wider than the GBP499 million forecast by analysts.

REVENUE: Barclays reported net operating income of GBP5.07 billion for quarter, falling short of analysts' expectations of GBP5.58 billion. Quarterly total income fell 8% to GBP5.36 billion, which Barclays said was driven the nonrecurrence of one-off benefits in its international segment.

INVESTMENT BANK: Chief Executive Jes Staley received a boost to his strategy of backing the investment banking unit. Barclays said its corporate-and-investment bank made a pretax profit of GBP1.18 billion, up from GBP790 million the prior year, benefiting from higher equities and markets income.

LITIGATION, CONDUCT CHARGES: In addition to the previously announced $2 billion settlement with the U.S. Department of Justice, Barclays was dragged to a loss by the GBP400 million additional provision made for payment protection insurance mis-selling claims. Barclays said it had a "continued higher complaints flow" in the first quarter, but sees its current PPI provision as appropriate.

CAPITAL: The impact of the net loss was to drag Barclays' common equity tier one ratio--a key measure of capital strength--down to 12.7% from 13.3% at the end of 2017. Barclays said it is confident of returning to a ratio of around 13% "in good time," and increasing its return of capital to shareholders.

Write to Adam Clark at adam.clark@dowjones.com; @AdamDowJones

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 26, 2018 06:06 ET (10:06 GMT)

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