NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Citigroup Inc. are higher by 0.40% to $52.10 in late afternoon trading on Thursday. The financial services holding company is said to be evaluating a return to Cuba. Francisco Aristeguieta, Citibank's CEO for its operations in Latin America made the announcement at a business forum on Thursday, Reuters reports. "Our license in Cuba is active. We have had it for 54 years, it never expired. And we are evidently evaluating our return to Cuba," Aristeguieta said, adding that any return to the island nation would take time for a "number of political reasons." With relations between the U.S. and Cuba on better terms private companies have expressed hope that they'd be able to return to the country after having to abandon or following expulsion from Cuba after the 1959 revolution that brought Fidel Castro into power, Reuters added. The U.S. still has a trade embargo in place on Cuba and Communist Cuban officials would still need to clear the way for U.S. companies to make their return, Reuters said. Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates CITIGROUP INC as a Hold with a ratings score of C+. TheStreet Ratings Team has this to say about their recommendation: "We rate CITIGROUP INC (C) a HOLD. The primary factors that have impacted our rating are mixed-some indicating strength, some showing weaknesses, with little evidence to justify the expectation of either a positive or negative performance for this stock relative to most other stocks. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its good cash flow from operations and increase in stock price during the past year. However, as a counter to these strengths, we also find weaknesses including deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity and poor profit margins." Highlights from the analysis by TheStreet Ratings Team goes as follows: Net operating cash flow has significantly increased by 1537.12% to $27,291.00 million when compared to the same quarter last year. In addition, CITIGROUP INC has also vastly surpassed the industry average cash flow growth rate of 294.60%. C, with its decline in revenue, slightly underperformed the industry average of 1.7%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly dropped by 2.5%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share. The company's current return on equity has slightly decreased from the same quarter one year prior. This implies a minor weakness in the organization. Compared to other companies in the Commercial Banks industry and the overall market on the basis of return on equity, CITIGROUP INC underperformed against that of the industry average and is significantly less than that of the S&P 500. The gross profit margin for CITIGROUP INC is rather low; currently it is at 22.63%. It has decreased from the same quarter the previous year. Along with this, the net profit margin of 1.66% trails that of the industry average. You can view the full analysis from the report here: C Ratings Report Must Read: Warren Buffett's Top 25 Stocks for 2015
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