Citi on path to profitability

NEW YORK (AP) — Citigroup Inc. says it’s heading back toward sustained profitability after two years that saw the bank lose billions of dollars and be bailed out by the government.

CEO Vikram Pandit said Thursday that Citigroup has overhauled its operations, shed money-losing businesses in the US and shifted its focus overseas.

“Citi today is a fundamentally different company than it was two years ago,” Pandit told an investor conference in New York. “We are well positioned to return to sustained profitability.”

Investors embraced his bullish view, sending Citigroup shares up 5.6 percent to $4.18. The stock is up nearly 20 percent in the past week.

Pandit didn’t give a timetable for returning to profitability. But he said Citigroup, the hardest hit U.S. bank during the credit crisis, sees big growth in emerging markets including Latin America and Asia, which generated about half of Citigroup’s 2009 revenue.

In 2009, Citigroup lost $1.61 billion, or 80 cents per share. It lost $27.68 billion, or $5.61 per share in 2008. Most of the losses were from soured residential and other consumer loans.

Going forward, Pandit said the bank will focus on client businesses in three core areas of its Citicorp division – investment banking, consumer banking and transaction services like credit cards.

Citigroup split itself into two parts last year – Citicorp and Citi Holdings, the division holding noncore, riskier assets including the mortgage backed securities that undermined the bank and other financial institutions.

Pandit said the bank would continue selling off Citi Holdings, which had $547 billion worth of assets at the end of 2009.

His remarks came a year after reports surfaced that Citigroup had returned to profitability in the first two months of 2009. The reports sent the Dow Jones industrial average up 379 points on March 10, 2009, pulling the overall market off of its 12-year lows.

Citing Pandit’s upbeat outlook, prominent banking analyst Dick Bove raised his price target on Citigroup’s stock from $3.75 per share to $4.25.

“Mr. Pandit’s concepts... are simple: Grow overseas and cut back operations domestically. Focus on client profitability rather than product profitability,” Bove wrote in a research note. “I believe this program will work.”

Still, some analysts have expressed concern over how the bank will perform once it cuts ties with the government.

Citigroup received $45 billion in government bailout money at the height of the financial crisis. It raised $20 billion in December to help repay the money it received as part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program. The remaining $25 billion was converted to stock last fall, giving the government what is now a 27- percent ownership stake.