Barclays Q1 2021 Results
Barclays has announced its Q1 2021 Financial Results.
Webcast replay details
Webcast replay: Barclays Results Webcast
Key documents
Financial performance highlights
Group Chief Executive Officer’s review
Since the early days of the pandemic last year, our diversified business has demonstrated the resilience critical to ensuring Barclays’ financial integrity. It gives us the capacity to step up for our customers, clients, colleagues and communities when they need our support the most, and deliver for our shareholders by staying profitable in every quarter.
Group CEO
Updates from across the business
Barclays Group
Our diversification continued to drive a strong performance, delivering a Group RoTE of 14.7% in the first quarter of 2021. Group profit before tax increased to £2.4bn, contributing towards EPS of 9.9 pence. While evidence of recovery is encouraging, we have continued to take a cautious view of the impact of the pandemic on the business. We remain disciplined on costs, with a cost to income ratio of 61% this quarter. Our capital position remains well above target with a CET1 ratio of 14.6% and we completed our £700m buyback this month.
Barclays UK
In the quarter, Barclays UK generated income of £1.6bn with lower impairment charges resulting in a RoTE of 12.0%. Strong demand in mortgages and record completions drove organic net asset growth of £3.6bn which was our best ever single quarter. Within Barclays UK Business Banking income increased 13% to £338m due to lending and deposit balance growth from continued support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) through £11.8bn of government scheme lending to date, partially offset by deposit margin compression from lower interest rates and lower transactional fee volumes.
Barclays International
As was the case throughout 2020, within Barclays International, performance in the CIB was strong this quarter, achieving a RoTE of 17.9% on income of £3.6bn, just 1% down from our Q1 income performance last year, which was a very strong comparative. Barclays International's profit before tax increased 140% to £1,971m. The 8% depreciation of average USD against GBP adversely impacted income and profits and positively impacted credit impairment charges and total operating expenses.
Annual Report 2020
Our strategy is working and we are confident Barclays is in a strong position for the challenges and opportunities ahead.
Our 2021 Annual General Meeting
The Barclays PLC 2021 AGM will be held on Wednesday 5 May 2021 at 11:00 (UK time) at 1 Churchill Place, London E14 5HP and on an electronic platform as described in the Notice of Meeting (PDF 1.4MB).
Contact Investor Relations
For any enquiries, please do not hesitate to contact a member of the relevant team.
Jes Staley - Group Chief Executive Officer Review
Since the early days of the pandemic last year, our diversified business has demonstrated the resilience critical to ensuring Barclays’ financial integrity. It gives us the capacity to step up for our customers, clients, colleagues and communities when they need our support the most, and deliver for our shareholders by staying profitable in every quarter.
Our diversification continued to drive a strong performance, delivering a Group RoTE of 14.7% in the first quarter of 2021. Group profit before tax increased to £2.4bn, contributing towards EPS of 9.9 pence.
As was the case throughout 2020, within Barclays International, performance in the CIB was strong this quarter, achieving a RoTE of 17.9% on income of £3.6bn, just 1% down from our Q1 income performance last year, which was a very strong comparative.
It also partially offset challenges in our consumer businesses that have been impacted by lower spend and activity levels as a result of the pandemic. Barclays UK generated income of £1.6bn in the quarter with lower impairment charges resulting in a RoTE of 12.0%. Strong demand in mortgages and record completions drove organic net asset growth of £3.6bn which was our best ever single quarter. Our CC&P business generated an income of £805m and delivered a RoTE of 16.5%.
As we enter the next phase of this pandemic, we remain resolute in our commitment to support the economic recovery. From our spend data, which captures UK economic activity across our cards and acquiring businesses, we are already seeing encouraging early signs of recovery in some sectors, including those hit hardest by the crisis.
While momentum in the consumer businesses, particularly card balances, will take time to build, Barclays secured significant new growth opportunities in Q1.
We negotiated a new, long-term agreement to issue Gap’s co-branded and private label credit card programme in the US from May 2022.
Following the launch of our point-of-sale finance partnership with Amazon in Germany last year, we have agreed to extend our Amazon partnership to the UK, a significant expansion of our franchise in Europe’s two largest consumer markets. Alongside existing partnerships including with Apple in the UK, it demonstrates the strength and potential of our consumer platform.
More broadly across payments, we expect to realise around £900m of income growth opportunity over the coming three years.
While evidence of recovery is encouraging, we have continued to take a cautious view of the impact of the pandemic on the business. We remain disciplined on costs, with a cost to income ratio of 61% this quarter. Our capital position remains well above target with a CET1 ratio of 14.6% and we completed our £700m buyback this month. We will give further guidance on distributions when appropriate.
With a strong balance sheet and diversified business, Barclays remains well-positioned to support the economy and deliver for our shareholders.