On a daily basis Citigroup (NYSE:C) has by far been the most traded stock on the exchange, and Monday is sure to be a huge day as the company prepares to report its quarterly results, which will be before the market opens.
It helps that it will be fresh in the minds of investors that they have completed sold 16.4 million shares in Primerica (NYSE:PRI) to Warburg Pincus for $230 million. Warburg is a private equity firm.
As part of the initial public offering of Primerica, Warburg Pincus also has seven-year warrants to acquire another 4.1 million shares at a price of $18 a share. Citigroup’s stake in Primerica has now fallen under 40 percent.
The other important element of the performance of Citigroup is the government selling its stake in them in order to get the restrictive nature of the relationship off their back so they can have more freedom to operate in the manner they think is best for them, and not from a defensive posture alone.
From the third quarter of 2007 Citigroup had held $2.36 trillion in assets, while for the quarter ending on December 31, overall assets stood at $1.86 trillion. CEO Vikram Pandit has said he wants to get the assets down to about $1.42 trillion. That means they’ll have to divest of a little less than $450 billion to reach that target.
The estimated consensus on the street are the results for Citigroup for their latest quarter will come in at breakeven as far as earnings per share. Revenue is expected to reach around $20.8 billion.
