Goldman Sachs is set to report first-quarter earnings — here’s what the Street expects

cnbc.com:

In this article

Goldman Sachs is scheduled to report first-quarter earnings before the opening bell Tuesday.

Here's what Wall Street expects:

How did Goldman's traders perform last quarter?

The answer to that question will determine whether Goldman exceeds or misses expectations for the first three months of this year.

Unlike its more diversified rivals, Goldman gets the majority of its revenue from Wall Street activities including trading and investment banking. With the advisory business remaining subdued because the IPO window remains mostly shut, it's up to traders to pick up the slack.

Heading into the quarter, analysts wondered whether turmoil during March — in which two American banks failed and a global investment bank was forced to merge with a longtime rival — would provide a good or bad backdrop to trading.

That question was seemingly answered by JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup, both of which beat estimates in part because of better-than-expected fixed income trading. Goldman has one of the biggest bond shops on Wall Street, so expectations are high.

So far this earnings season, big banks have mostly outperformed their smaller peers, helped by an influx of deposits after Silicon Valley Bank's meltdown. But since retail banking plays a small — and probably shrinking — role at Goldman, much more focus will be on how trading and investment banking fared, and what expectations are for later this year.

Separately, analysts will want to hear what has come of CEO David Solomon's proclamation in February that Goldman was weighing «strategic alternatives» for its consumer platforms business. That has been interpreted as potentially selling off the GreenSky business it acquired recently or offloading credit-card