Morgan Stanley: quarterly profit more than doubles

(CercleFinance.com) - Morgan Stanley's profit more than doubled in the past quarter, despite the Wall Street bank's fixed-income trading business taking a hit from the unfavorable market-making conditions of late 2018.


For the fourth quarter, net income attributable to shareholders reached 1.5 billion dollars, or 0.80 dollar per share, compared with 643 million dollars, or 0.26 per share for the same period a year ago.

The fourth quarter of the previous year included a provision of 1 billion dollars related to Donald Trump's tax reform.

The company reported fourth-quarter net revenues of 8.5 billion dollars, down 10% year-on-year.

Fixed income sales and trading revenues fell by 30% to 564 million dollars, reflecting lower results in credit and fixed income products, due to a significant widening of the credit spread and volatile interest rate movements, the bank said.

The shares were down 5% in pre-market trading after this report. Until Wednesday's close, the Morgan Stanley stock had risen by about 12% over the past month.

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