Barclays share price plummets as their markets business performs poorly in Q3

Barclays (LON:BARC) share price has sharply fallen as they announce a rise in profits for the third quarter. The British bank’s profit before tax climbed by 19% to £3,448 million which was driven by a reduction in operating expenses. Barclays markets business had a troubling third quarter as it saw its revenue slump by 30%.

Credit Suisse had said prior to the report that client activity was noticeably lower than in the third quarter of the year previous. James E Staley, CEO of Barclays, confirmed this in a statement, saying that “the third quarter was clearly a difficult one for our Markets business within BI. A lack of volume and volatility in FICC hit Markets revenues hard across the industry, and we were no exception to this trend.”

The poor performance of Barclays market business was partially offset by an improvement in profitability and a good return from consumer business.

The group saw additional charges relating to PPI amount to £700 million for the third quarter and remaining PPI provisions stand at £1.9 billion. These provisions are down from £2.0 billion in December 2016.

Barclays net interest margin ratio also took a hit as it fell 8 basis points to 3.55% for the first nine months of the year. This decrease was due to the “integration of the Education, Social Housing and Local Authority (ESHLA) portfolio from Non-Core” in the third quarter.

The company’s Common Equity Tier 1 (CET1) capital ratio was up compared to December 2016 to 13.1%. This exceeds the 2017 transitional minimum requirement of 9.1%.

Barclays also made a loss per share of 3.0p for the first nine months, compared to an earnings per share of 9.6p in the year previous.

Barclays share price has plummeted 6.5% to 184.2p at the time of writing.