In the fourth quarter we took action to meaningfully restructure our Fixed Income business on a capital and expense basis. JMP Securities raised shares of Morgan Stanley from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $39.00 price objective on the stock in a research note on Thursday, October 8th. “The best way to get there is through continued cost cuts”. Shufro Rose & Company now owns 11,600 shares of the financial services provider’s stock valued at $368,000 after buying an additional 500 shares during the period.
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“We enter 2016 with a continued focus on managing expenses across the firm”, Gorman said in a statement.
Shares of Morgan Stanley were up by 3.4% during premarket trading on Tuesday.
Wellcome Trust increased its stake in shares of Morgan Stanley by 2.7% in the fourth quarter.
Revenue of $7.7 billion exceeded analysts’ forecasts for revenue of $7.67 billion.
Compensation expense of $3.7 billion compared with $5.1 billion a year ago.
Its after-tax legal bill stood at $2.9 billion in the fourth quarter of 2014 as it settled litigation related to mortgage-backed securities and crisis-era issues.
As its trading business suffers, the bank has been focusing on its less volatile wealth management unit, which accounted for almost half of its revenue in 2015.
Revenue from Morgan Stanley’s wealth-management arm totaled $3.75 billion, down slightly from a year earlier. It is believed that this strength will continue in the coming years and that the strong points outweigh the fact that Morgan Stanley has had a disappointing stock performance recently.
The firm last week named Sam Kellie-Smith, who helped Morgan Stanley become Wall Street’s top equities-trading shop by revenue, to revamp fixed income – a capital-intensive area that several rivals have been retreating from in the face of tougher rules. The firm said last month that it was taking a US$150 million severance charge as it pared the business. “We should see some rebound as we go into the first half of 2016”, Vining Sparks analyst Marty Mosby said.
Morgan Stanley reported a fourth-quarter profit, compared with a year-earlier loss, as its legal costs plunged and compensation expenses fell.
Excluding DVA, Net Revenues were $7.9 Billion which amounted to Earnings per Diluted Share of $0.43.
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Analysts on average had expected a profit of 33 cents per share and revenue of $7.59 billion, according to Thomson Reuters. Morgan Stanley along with Citigroup, Bank of America, and Goldman Sachs carved a new 52-week low on Friday.
