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There’s A Wrench In Goldman’s Profit Machine
Goldman missed on the top line and reported a $778 million pretax loss in its newly constituted "Platform Solutions" segment, Q4 results released on Tuesday showed.
Any drama that might've accompanied the first quarterly report compiled using the "new" corporate structure was preemptively muted. In a filing last week, Goldman broke out results for the reconstituted segments going back several quarters, and also included full-year results for the new structure going back to 2020.
Including Q4's
Sounds like Platform Solutions needs to get teed up to be sold.
Back in the day (for me, the late 60s and early 70s), my favorite CEO was Charles Bluhdorn, founder of Gulf&Western. This firm was my favorite conglomerate, when such firms were “it.” It still survives as Paramount and some publishing interests. The trouble with GW was that no one seemed to understand what the boss was doing so the P/E ran mostly around 5-6x. This was a crazy good company for a few years and I made a bunch of money in it, especially after the CEO’s untimely demise and a significant restructuring. These days I am intrigued by Goldman. There are a bunch of smart people hanging out in that place but as this recap of the quarter shows, there are a lot of moving parts in this firm and it’s very hard to predict where most of them are going. For me this one is a lot like GW of old, sort of like one of those frosted glass bathroom windows.
For those who have been waiting for a reckoning to come to private equity and private debt, GS’ comments are interesting.