How Profitable Is Citigroup Inc. (C)?

It’s getting better all the time
Anyone who’s followed banking for the past five years knows intuitively that all of the big banks are performing better now than they were during the financial crisis: They couldn’t be performing much worse. But some banks performed significantly worse than others, like Citi.

Yet here’s a quick look at how far Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) has come from a profitability perspective on a year-to-year basis since 2008:

–In 2008, Citi reported a loss of $27.7 billion.
–In 2009, Citi reported a loss of $1.6 billion.
–In 2010, Citi reported a profit of $10.6 billion.
–In 2011, Citi reported a profit of $11.1 billion.
–In 2012, Citi reported a profit of $7.5 billion.

Like many of its peers, Citi’s financial-crisis mess was fueled by overexposure to a bursting real-estate market. But thanks to help from a little government bailout program known as TARP, a steady-if-uninspired hand at the wheel in the person of former CEO Vikram Pandit, and a return to safer lending practices, Citi has cleaned up the majority of the mess and is at the very least now solidly profitable (if trending in the wrong direction).

Now we know how Citigroup Inc. (NYSE:C) generates its revenue, how the superbank turns that revenue into profit, and how well Citi stacks up against its peers in this all-important area. Stay tuned for the next installment in this series: “What’s Citigroup’s Special Sauce?” In it, we’ll find out what — if anything — Citi has going for it that makes it stand out as an investment among the Big Four banks.

The article How Profitable Is Citigroup? originally appeared on Fool.com.

Fool contributor John Grgurich owns shares of Citigroup and JPMorgan Chase. Follow John’s dispatches from the bleeding heart of capitalism on Twitter @TMFGrgurich. The Motley Fool recommends Wells Fargo. The Motley Fool owns shares of Bank of America, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, and Wells Fargo.

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