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Swiss banking giant UBS on Tuesday posted $770 million in fourth-quarter net profit, launching a $1 billion share buyback program in the first half of 2025.
The net profit figure compares with a mean forecast of $886.4 million in a LSEG poll of analysts and with a $483 million estimate in a company-provided consensus estimate.
Group revenue over the period hit $11.635 billion, versus analyst expectations of $11.64 billion in a LSEG analyst poll.
The bank also announced plans to repurchase $1 billion of shares in the first half of 2025, along with up to an additional $2 billion over the second half of this year.
Other fourth-quarter highlights included:
- Return on tangible equity hit 3.9%, compared with 7.3% over the third quarter.
- CET 1 capital ratio, a measure of bank solvency, was 14.3%, unchanged from the third quarter.
Investment banking shone over the fourth quarter, with underlying revenues up 37% year-on-year amid “strong growth” in global banking and global markets performance. The group’s global wealth management division logged a 10% hike in revenues over the fourth-quarter stretch, “largely driven by higher recurring net fee income, a decrease in negative other income and higher transaction-based income.”
After weathering the storm of a turbulent government-backed tie-up with fallen domestic rival Credit Suisse in 2023, UBS said it was on track with its 2024 integration milestones and delivered an additional $700 million in gross cost savings in the fourth quarter. The group had hoped to achieve $7.5 billion out of a total of $13 billion in cost savings by the end of last year, with CEO Sergio Ermotti signaling in a Bloomberg interview last month that redundancies were “inevitable” as part of the process — even as the group aims to rely on voluntary departures.
UBS on Tuesday said it plans to achieve another $2.5 billion of gross cost saving this year.
The Swiss belt tightening adds to a picture of broader expense discipline and restructuring across Europe’s banking sectors, as lenders exit a period of high interest rates and claw profitability to keep pace with U.S. peers. On Monday, fellow Swiss bank Julius Baer revealed an additional target of 110 million of Swiss francs ($120 million) in gross savings, while HSBC last week said it is preparing to wind down its M&A and equity capital markets operations in Europe, the U.K. and the U.S.
Armed with a balance sheet that topped $1.7 trillion in 2023 — roughly double Switzerland’s anticipated economic output last year — UBS has been battling vocal concerns at home that its scale has breached the Swiss government’s comfort, depriving the lender of peers that can absorb it and facing Bern with a steep nationalization price tag, in the event of its failure.
The Swiss economy has already been backed into a fragile corner by depressed annual inflation — of just 0.6% in December — and a punitively strong Swiss franc, which only gained further ground on Monday as the global tumult resulting from U.S. tariffs pushed jittery investors toward the safe-haven asset.
