Barclays (BARC.L) beat profit expectations in the second quarter and announced a further £1bn in share buybacks.
Pre-tax profit rose 28% in the second quarter to £2.84bn, results released on Tuesday showed. That exceeded expectations of £2.24bn, according to consensus estimates provided by the bank. For the first half, profit before tax totalled £5.2bn, which was up 23% from the same period last year.
Total income was up 14% in the second quarter at £7.19bn, which was also ahead of expectations of £7.01bn.
Income from Barclays investment bank was up 10% in the second quarter to £3.3bn, driven by global markets, as heightened volatility fuelled by US president Donald Trump’s tariffs has boosted trading activity.
Group net interest income — the gap between what the bank pays out to savers and receives from borrowers in interest — excluding Barclays investment bank and head office, came in at £3.1bn, up 13% year-on-year.
Barclays also recorded a return on tangible equity — a key measure of profitability — of 12.3% in the second quarter, up from 9.9% for the same period in 2024.
The bank announced a further share buyback of £1bn and a half-year dividend of 3p per share. This came after Barclays said on Friday that it had completed the £1bn share buyback programme it announced in its full-year results in February.
Barclays CEO CS Venkatakrishnan, known as Venkat, said: “We remain on track to achieve the objectives of our three-year plan, delivering structurally higher and more stable returns for our investors.
“At the mid-point of the plan, with six quarters of consistent execution, we have achieved over half of the c.£30bn planned UK risk weighted assets (RWAs) growth, half of the target income growth and realised two-thirds of the £2bn planned gross cost efficiency savings.”
The bank had posted a stronger-than-expected 19% rise in first-quarter profits in results released at the end of April, as improved performance in its investment banking division helped the UK lender outpace analyst forecasts.
Pre-tax profit for the three months to March rose to £2.7bn, exceeding analysts’ expectations of £2.49bn, according to data from LSEG. Group revenues reached £7.7bn, also ahead of the consensus estimate of £7.33bn.
Lloyds (LLOY.L) and NatWest (NWG.L) reported stronger-than-expected profits last week, with HSBC (HSBA.L) the next big FTSE 100-listed bank due to report on Wednesday.
Domestically, Barclays faces a shifting British banking landscape, where Spanish bank Santander has doubled down on its U.K. presence with the early-July acquisition of British high street lender TSB from Sabadell, and investors are watching for any change in strategic approach from NatWest, which returned to private ownership at the end of May.
Inflation could meanwhile position the Bank of England to take a cautious approach to rate cuts, impacting the net interest margin of U.K. banks.
