Goldman Sachs Group
said Tuesday it was exploring the sale of GreenSky, the company’s lending platform.
Goldman Sachs
(ticker: GS) Chief Executive Officer David Solomon said on the company’s first-quarter earnings call that the bank was “initiating the process to explore the sale of GreenSky,” which makes home improvement loans and other loans.
“We believe GreenSky is performing well with first-quarter originations and loans up over 25% year over year and awaited FICO on total originations of over 780. Given our current strategic priorities, however, we may not be the best long-term holder of this business,” the CEO added.
Goldman bought GreenSky for about $2.24 billion in late 2021.
Shares of Goldman were down 2.6% on Tuesday to $331.04. The bank beat earnings estimates for the first quarter, but sales came in below Wall Street forecasts with much of the miss coming from Goldman’s trading division.
Net revenue included a loss of about $470 million related to a partial sale of the bank’s Marcus loans portfolio. The bank said Tuesday it was narrowing its “consumer ambitions.”
This isn’t much of a surprise. Solomon told investors in February that the bank was considering strategic alternatives for its consumer business after losses in the segment.
“We made a strategic decision kind of 12 months ago … to really narrow our consumer focus and we’ve been executing on it,” the company said on the call Tuesday. “Narrowing that focus, making and executing on it are not things that can be done instantaneously. So we’ve gone through a thoughtful process and we’re moving forward in the execution of that.”
Write to Angela Palumbo at angela.palumbo@dowjones.com
Read the full article here
