This Analyst Thinks Seattle Seahawks And Morgan Stanley Have A Lot In Common

Morgan Stanley MS missed its fourth quarter earnings estimate today when it declared results on back of weaker bond trading revenues. Mike Mayo, CLSA analyst, was on CNBC recently to dissect the bank’s financial results.

“Morgan Stanley lost the quarter, but won the year,” Mayo said. “They are little bit like the Seattle Seahawks, tough conditions, made a few mistakes, but they still won the game, fourth-quarter was their first earnings miss in ten quarters, they had bad trading, the revenues fell short, but for the year Morgan Stanley had the best revenue growth for each investment banking, equities, and fixed income.

He continued, “The bank results so far are lousy in the fourth quarter, but we would not extrapolate fourth-quarter results and for Morgan Stanley we expect revenues in 2015 to be on average 13% higher than where they were in the fourth-quarter.

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“Well there’s ongoing issues about too big to manage and too big to analyze and too big to break-up and we have been proponent of at least more aggressive restructuring at these banks, but at Morgan Stanley directionally, you have the wealth management business, one half the company versus one third pre-crisis,” Mayo said.

“So, a lot more [annuity] like revenues at Morgan Stanley and of course fixed-income trading down for Morgan Stanley and the industry by over one third just in the third-quarter and the fourth-quarter, you can never fully get your arms around that, but I think it’s a lot more contained compared to where it was in past and the balance sheets are a lot more resilient”