Goldman Sachs ($GS) is building the businesses to help cement the bank's digital future - and in the second quarter, when job postings increased, its Consumer and Investment Management group saw a 60% increase in listings for new roles. The bank will announce earnings Tuesday, July 16 before the bell and analysts tracked by Zacks Investment Research are expecting EPS of $4.82 per share.
Better building out a consumer presence was a key theme of the quarter for Goldman. The bank announced a financial services partnership with Apple ($AAPL) Pay towards the end of the first quarter of 2019, and began testing payment services out with employees from each company last month, according to Bloomberg.
And Goldman knows it doesn't need to own this market to be an outperformer in it.
"We estimate there are over $4 trillion of consumer deposited in the US that are potential customers for online savings accounts like those offered by Marcus," Goldman CFO Stephen Scherr said after announcing first quarter earnings earlier this year, adding later that the bank "looked for markets that are big where we don't need to capture commanding market share to be relevant."
Goldman Sachs isn't the only bank that knows the best path to Main Street is through a smartphone. Bank of America ($BAC) scaled down "branch" job postings at the same time is has grown hiring elsewhere in the firm - including in digital-focused positions. Bank of America will announce earnings Wednesday July 17.
The move to beef Goldman Sachs' consumer business up comes in a quarter where Goldman posted 30% more jobs overall, as our next chart reflects. Job postings at Goldman may have risen more than 30% on the quarter, but it is still down 27% from where open postings stood 12 months prior (chart not shown). Over the last 12 months, Goldman Sachs' shares have lost value and lagged broader market indices like the S&P 500. It both lost market value and reduced job postings in late 2018, following the resignation of CEO Lloyd Blankfein.
Most of the categories our data tracked for Goldman in the second quarter saw a rise in job postings - Risk, Engineering, and Operations, for example. Investment Banking hiring peaked in May at Goldman, judging by our final chart - but for the quarter, it still represents growth in terms of job postings. If the bank can maintain its traditional lines of business - M&A, lending, trading - and keep expanding their consumer business by adding digital clients, Goldman's golden.
About the Data:
Thinknum tracks companies using information they post online - jobs, social and web traffic, product sales and app ratings - and creates data sets that measure factors like hiring, revenue and foot traffic. Data sets may not be fully comprehensive (they only account for what is available on the web), but they can be used to gauge performance factors like staffing and sales.
Further Reading:
- Hiring data indicates that Bank of America is replacing branch staff
- Citigroup's wild 2019 of hiring continues with focus on Asia, Middle East
- Charles Schwab hiring is down - but the last time this happened, shares soared