11:40 AM EDT, 06/20/2024 (MT Newswires) -- Citigroup's ( C ) services business is "opaque but attractive," Oppenheimer said Thursday in a note citing the bank's investor event, which concentrated on the segment.

"By saying that it's an opaque business we are not suggesting that there is anything nefarious going on," the firm said.

Oppenheimer said that, unlike investment banking, the services business is "just inherently hard to track."

"Here we have a bunch of different services (liquidity management, payments, trade finance and securities processing) that are sometimes paid for with balances and [net interest income], sometimes with fees and other times with commissions, and we have no confidence that one bank's disclosures are at all comparable to others in these lines of business," the firm said.

But Oppenheimer said Citigroup ( C ) "did a good job" in showing that it has some clear differentiating factors in the services business, which had a return on average tangible common equity of about 20% in 2023 and a revenue compound annual growth rate of 20% since 2021.

Oppenheimer has a outperform rating on Citigroup ( C ), with a $86 price target.

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