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Deutsche Bank said that the profits decreased by 92 percent in the last quarter and warned investors against the highest costs of this year, as the head of the German Bank pledged to consider getting rid of the weakest companies to improve performance.
CEO Christian Sewing said on Thursday that the bank will reveal a new medium -term strategy this year.
He said: “We will study whether we should redistribute parts of the invested capital or even give up an area or another area to use our capital better elsewhere,” adding that “nothing is outside the border.”
The net profit, which is due to shareholders, decreased to 106 million euros in the fourth quarter, by 92 percent in the same period a year ago and much less than the number of 380 million euros expected by analysts. The bank blames 329 million euros linked to a long -term sales scandal in the Polish mortgage market.
The largest lender in Germany said it missed the cost goals of 2024, as it was severely high in litigation fees. Loan losses in the last three months of the year were higher than expected by analysts.
The shares decreased by 6 percent in early trading on Thursday.
The sewing 2025 described as a “year of reckoning”, adding that the bank wanted to “lay the foundations” to become the “European champion”. He said that Deutsche was still aiming to generate revenues of more than 32 billion euros in 2025, adding that the lender had started “a strong start … this year.”
“Our clear ambition is to run the bank with fewer employees, and we aim to operate a much smaller platform” including cutting layers of management.
Deutsche On Thursday, its target of costs – a main criterion of efficiency – settled to 65 percent of income this year, compared to a previous goal of 62.5 percent of income. This will continue to be much better than the 76 percent of its achievement in 2024.
sewing He still has a “firm confidence” that the lender will achieve his goal of raising the revenues on concrete property rights to more than 10 percent in 2025, after decreasing to 4.7 percent last year.
Andrew Combs, Citibank analyst, wrote that reaching a 10 percent goal “is increasingly difficult.” Before Thursday's results, analysts expected 8.9 percent on property rights in 2025.
The group's revenues for the last quarter of 2024 increased by 8 percent to 7.2 billion euros, driven by a 30 percent increase in its investment bank with a high fixed income and currency. Both the two main business units of the lender-the Corporate Customer Department and the retail arm-have suffered from minor declines on an annual basis in revenue in the three months to December.
Sewing said the annual profits-with a decrease in 36 percent year on an annual basis to 2.7 billion euros-due to restructuring and legal costs such as saving about 900 million euros for a long lawsuit on the price that it paid to purchase the post-back minority of shareholders in 2010.
He said: “We have now put these old issues behind us, and thus we have greatly reduced the risks of moving forward in our bank.”
The bank announced the program of re -purchasing new shares worth 750 million euros and proposed profit distributions of 0.68 euros per share, an increase of 0.45 euros per share for 2023, and raised total payments to shareholders from 2024 to 2.1 billion euros. Financial Director James von Malltec said the bank expects basic profits per share at least in 2025.
