Earnings Quality At Goldman Sachs Questionable, UBS Downgrades

UBS's Brennan Hawken downgrades Goldman Sachs' stock rating from Buy to Neutral with a price target lowered from $255 to $230 due to expectations for continued weak earnings that will pressure shares. Meanwhile, Goldman Sachs' stock is trading at a level which implies an inflection in FICC (fixed income, currencies and commodities) revenue — something the analyst has "limited confidence in." Also, the company would need to demonstrate a "substantial" recovery in trading revenue and it would take a "surprise event" such as Brexit or President Donald Trump's election win to reverse recent weakness. Finally, the analyst raised his 2017 earnings per share estimate from $18.45 to $18.60 due to the company's second-quarter earnings beat but more importantly his 2018 EPS estimate was lowered from $24.40 to $19.30. As such, a $230 price target implies a 12x multiple on Goldman Sachs' stock, which is consistent with its current multiple. Related Links: 5 Biggest Price Target Changes For Monday Benzinga's Top Upgrades, Downgrades For July 24, 2017 ________ Image Credit: By Beyond My Ken (Own work) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC BY-SA 4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0-3.0-2.5-2.0-1.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

The analyst is forecasting a 10 percent ROE (return on equity) in 2017 for the bank but this is due to a 24 percent tax rate (versus a long-term average of 28 to 30 percent) along with a $1.7 billion recovery in I&L revenues. But normalizing the tax rate and reducing the I&L revenue to the analyst's 2018 forecast would imply a ROE of just 9.3 percent for Goldman Sachs.

"Goldman continues to run a premium franchise but we have limited confidence in predicting when their trading revenues will recover," the analyst concluded.