Barclays sets new performance targets as 2024 pretax profit rises..
Barclays raised its 2025 performance targets on Thursday after reporting a better-than-expected 24% rise in annual pretax profit driven by investment banking income growth and strength in its domestic lending business.
The bank’s shares – which had hit their highest levels since March 2011 on Wednesday – fell as much as 5.5% in early trading, which analysts said could be a bout of profit-taking linked to the lender’s rising costs and UK impairments which both missed forecasts.
Barclays is the first major UK bank to report earnings for 2024, a year when Britain regained domestic political stability but lost the confidence of some international investors after the new Labour government brought in tax hikes it said were needed to fix the country’s public finances.
The bank reported profit before tax for the year to December 31 of 8.1 billion pounds ($10.12 billion), slightly above the 8.07 billion pounds average of analysts’ forecasts and higher than the 6.6 billion pounds it reported for the year prior.
Source: FINANCE.YAHOO