2026 04 13 Earnings GS Q1 Fy2026

Summary

Goldman Sachs Q1 2026: net revenues $17.2B (second highest in company history), EPS $17.55, ROE 19.8%, ROTE 21.3%. Global Banking and Markets delivered record quarterly revenues driven by FICC (European gas +60%), equities, and financing. IB remained #1 M&A adviser globally; backlog "extraordinarily robust" despite Middle East disruption. AWM: $62B long-term fee-based inflows including $22B wealth management; private credit raised $10B; acquired Innovator ($31B AUS, top-10 global active ETF). Load-bearing chain: GS's private credit franchise (30-year track record, institutional drawdown structures) is positioned as the safe harbor when bank lending tightens under Basel III. Strategic deployment in Asia equities financing identified as a "competitive gap" now being closed.

Transcript

David Solomon (Chairman and CEO): Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone. Thank you all for joining us. In the first quarter, we delivered a very strong performance, generating net revenues of $17.2 billion, net earnings of $5.6 billion and earnings per share of $17.55. All three of which were the second highest in the history of Goldman Sachs. As a result, we delivered a return on equity of 19.8% and an ROTE of 21.3%. These results reflect the strength of our global franchise and the depth of our relationships and our ability to execute for clients while maintaining a strong focus on risk management in a highly dynamic environment.

2026 began with a degree of optimism. Markets hit record highs, confidence continued to build with most clients focused on growth, strategic activity and capital deployment. As we've said, things were only moving in a straight line. And as the quarter progressed, the macro environment started to weigh on sentiment, volatility increased meaningfully with concerns around AI-driven disruption, sectors like software, heightened uncertainty in parts of private credit and the conflict in the Middle East. Against this backdrop, our performance underscores the importance of having a scaled, diversified and global franchise that can support clients across a wide range of market conditions.

In Global Banking and Markets, we delivered record quarterly revenues, reflecting strong client engagement across our franchise. Elevated uncertainty led clients to actively reposition portfolios driving strong flows across FICC and equities. We supported our clients' intermediation and financing needs across asset classes, deploying our balance sheet in response to demand. In our commodities franchise, we acted as an intermediary for clients given significant moves in energy markets, including a record monthly increase for crude in March and price surges of 60% in European gas market. Importantly, the growth of our financing business has added further balance to our performance, reinforcing our ability to perform consistently across cycles.

In Investment Banking, we remain the #1 M&A adviser globally. Clients continue to turn to Goldman Sachs for advice and expertise regarding their most important strategic transactions. I made a backdrop of accelerating technological change and industry disruption. This includes the announced $43 billion merger of Unilever's food business with McCormick, Sysco's $29 billion acquisition of Jetro Restaurant Depot and Cortera Energy's $26 billion sale to Devon Energy. While market conditions tempered execution for IPOs and sponsor activity broadly, we believe that activity levels will rebound once conditions stabilize. As you remember, our backlog closed 2025 at its highest level in 4 years. Even with exceptionally strong revenue production, our quarter end backlog remained extraordinarily robust.

In Asset & Wealth Management, clients continue to choose Goldman Sachs for the quality of our advice and our long-standing investment track record. We generated $62 billion long-term fee-based inflows, including $22 billion in wealth management flows. The consistent inflow momentum throughout the quarter, including during the heightened volatility in March underscores the strength of our client relationships built on trust and long-term performance. We are pleased to have closed the acquisition of Innovator in the second quarter, which adds an additional $31 billion in assets under supervision across a suite of over 170 ETFs focused on defined outcome strategies, putting us in the top 10 of global active ETF providers.

In alternatives, we raised $26 billion across asset classes with private credit strategies generating $10 billion. We recognize that the private credit industry has been an area of increased focus in recent months. Our 30-year track record of performance in private credit is characterized by rigorous underwriting, selective deployment and disciplined portfolio construction. Our largest non-traded BDC saw net inflows of over 7% this quarter, reflecting continued investor demand for experienced investment managers who have navigated multiple rate and credit cycles. Looking forward, our predominantly institutional drawdown structures as well as the breadth of our origination funnel give us the flexibility to continue to patiently and selectively invest capital. Overall, we feel good about the long-term opportunity in private credit and our ability to deliver attractive risk-adjusted returns for clients.

Q&A — Denis Coleman on balance sheet deployment:

Denis Coleman (CFO): I think I would take you back to our strategic update that we gave at the end of the year, where we tried to lay out our expectations for how we were going to respond to the changes in the capital regulation. And then in particular, we'd be focused on deploying into the client franchise to support a bunch of our more durable revenue stream activities with lending being at the top of the list.

As we sit now at the end of the first quarter, you will see that we significantly expanded our activities in equities financing, and a particular area of strategic focus was Asia, something that we also did call out at that time where we had identified a competitive gap, we saw an attractive opportunity and with the excess capacity that we saw ourselves with, we deployed into that with clients and grew our revenues. You also note that we recorded a record level of lending balances in private wealth. We continue to grow FICC financing, we grew our corporate balances, acquisition financing.

All of these were the items that we called out as the priority areas for deployment, and we saw opportunities over the course of the quarter to do that. I would be remiss if we didn't mention that we also aggressively returned capital to shareholders at a record level of buybacks.

Denis Coleman: Across our portfolio of activities, we are generating very attractive returns on that incremental amount of lending activity. The ROE performance for Global Banking and Markets was north of 22% — where a lot of that deployment is happening.