David Solomon’s unconvincing performance at investor day rattles Wall Street

One after another at the bank’s investor day on Tuesday, Goldman’s top brass offered a glossy portrait of the firm’s strengths and underscored it can consistently belt out predictable profits in years ahead. But a dearth of ambitious new targets and messaging whiplash over what’s to happen with the troubled consumer business underwhelmed the market.

The stock slid 3.8% in New York, the biggest drop in the Dow Jones Industrial Average, and the bank’s worst performance since it announced quarterly results in mid-January. The slump whittled Goldman’s gain this year to 2.4%, the smallest among major peers.

Executives assured the audience they’re working to make a scaled-back version of its consumer platform profitable, but also said they’re willing to consider strategic alternatives for what’s left of the business. 

Possible Sales 

Chief Executive Officer David Solomon got visibly flustered as analysts pressed him to explain the apparent divergence between promising to scale up operations such as credit cards and installment lending, while signaling parts could also be sold.

“This is an albatross around Goldman’s neck,” Gerard Cassidy, a banking analyst with Royal Bank of Canada said of the consumer business in an interview, adding that it was disheartening to hear that it’s not going to break even until 2025.

“They could have come out and said we made an error, we are putting it all up for sale, and it’s egg on our face,” he said. “They could have said we are committed to this business and turn it profitable through organic means. But having a blended message was a confusing one. Are you going to keep it or are you going to sell it?”

Goldman has already scaled back its consumer ambitions, folding what’s left into a segment called Platform Solutions — a collection of units that the firm has blamed for almost $4 billion in losses over the past three years.

In contrast, executives played up the prospects of the firm’s asset and wealth management business during their presentation. The $2.5 trillion division is earmarked as a key piece of a plan to boost the company’s stock value.

One of the few new targets outlined by the bank on Tuesday sought to quell investor concerns about practices in the unit that have made earnings more volatile: using its balance sheet to make wagers. The firm said it aims to reduce on-balance-sheet investments from $59 billion to less than $45 billion next year and to less than $35 billion over the “medium term,” around three to five years.

In a bid to tame costs, the bank in January began implementing a plan to cut about 3,200 positions, or 6.5% of the bank’s headcount, in one of the firm’s largest rounds of job reductions ever. Goldman, like its rivals across Wall Street, has been grappling with falling revenue and profit, amid slumps in deal activity and asset prices.

Profits plunged by half last year and Solomon has also been battling dissatisfaction within his own ranks, with many executives frustrated with strategic missteps. Solomon laid blame on compensation being down this year as a cause of some of those tensions.

“When you look at the core legacy businesses of Goldman Sachs, they are very good at banking, trading, and now asset and wealth management. All of those pieces of the puzzle are there,” Cassidy said. “What’s really a distraction is this consumer business.”

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