Commerzbank annual report 2013

I had apparently made a mistake when I booked the date for the release of the annual report from Commerzbank which means I am a week late on this one. The market was happy about the report because the shares directly jumped up with almost 3%. The running woman (still to be seen on the poster I the back) is being taken over by a bicycle and obviously higher speed. She should have worn a helmet though to show that they are decreasing risks.



The key figures that the Commerzbank management decided to push into our faces can be seen in the table below and the full report can be found here on their homepage. And in my eyes the news are not good. Decreased operating profit by -38% is nothing to be proud of. Operating return on equity... not that I even like that figure but still 2.5% is bad. Profit is bad. Cost to income ratio is much, much better than Deutsche Bank with 73% but still far from Handelsbanken with their 36%. Capital ratios are however fully ok now so thumbs up there. Staff has overall decreased but mainly in Germany and abroad they are pushing some expansion so they have even increased the amount of employees with 1.1k.

In the income statement below we see for instance that their interest income decreased by almost -15% and that is not good news. So both Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank are loosing customers and the question is where do they go? The only good counter part is that their costs have decreased with -20%. Another semi good thing can be that they placed a pretty large re-structuring cost in 2013 so hopefully that will not happen during 2014.

Conclusion: Also Commerzbank is doing bad and have not yet managed to turn things around at least not based on their income statement as it was published over a week ago. I have however higher expectations that Commerzbank might be able to get back on their feet during 2014 which I do not yet believe that Deutsche Bank will do. Of course I and my nephews will remain as shareholders in Commerzbank keeping our fingers crossed that we will get a dividend in 2015.