Wells Fargo shares climbed Wednesday after the bank posted better-than-expected earnings and issued strong guidance on net interest income for 2025.
Here’s what the bank reported for the fourth quarter compared with what Wall Street was expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:
- Adjusted earnings per share:Â $1.58 vs. $1.35 expected
- Revenue:Â $20.38 billion versus $20.59 billion expected
Net income rose 47% to $5.1Â billion, or $1.43 per share, from $3.45 billion, or 86 cents per share, a year ago. After excluding severance costs of 15 cents per share, Well Fargo earned $1.58 per share, outpacing the consensus estimate reported by LSEG.
The San Francisco-based lender said it expects 2025 net interest income, a key measure of what a bank makes on loans, to be 1% to 3% higher than 2024’s number of $47.7 billion.
Shares of Wells jumped more than 5% Wednesday.
“Our solid performance this quarter caps a year of significant progress for Wells Fargo,” CEO Charlie Scharf said in a statement. “Our earnings profile continues to improve, we are seeing the benefit from investments we are making to increase our growth and improve how we serve our customers and communities, we maintained a strong balance sheet, we returned approximately $25Â billion of capital to shareholders, and we made significant progress on our risk and control work.”
Wells Fargo’s investment banking fees jumped 59% to $725 million in the fourth quarter compared with a year earlier.
The bank repurchased 57.8 million shares, or $4 billion, of common stock in fourth quarter 2024.
Shares of the bank surged nearly 43% in 2024, and the stock is up 6% so far in January.
Correction: Wells Fargo earned $1.58 per share on an adjusted basis. An earlier version of this story excluded other items from the quarterly result, however, analysts are only adjusting for severance costs, according to LSEG.
