Investing.com – The U.S. quarterly reporting season kicked off in earnest on Friday with a slew of mostly positive earnings from financial sector firms.
JP Morgan (NYSE:JPM), the largest U.S. bank by assets, saw shares move 1.91% higher in early trading after reporting a 23.8% rise in quarterly profit. Its earnings-per-share (EPS), including some special items, rose to $1.71 while revenue advanced 2% from a year ago to $24.33 billion.
Analysts had expected and EPS of $1.44 on revenue of $23.74 billion.
Bank of America (NYSE:BAC), also a Dow component and the second-largest U.S. bank, advanced 1.70% after reporting 46.8% increase in profit. It’s EPS of $0.40 beat by two cents.
Shares in Wells Fargo (NYSE:WFC) also jumped 2.88% as the largest mortgage lender in the U.S. produced an EPS excluding items of $1.03, beating the consensus by three cents, despite registering its fifth straight quarterly decline in profit.
In a slew of reactions from lesser reports out Friday in the financial sector, asset manager BlackRock (NYSE:BLK) rose 1.80%, diversified financial services firm PNC Financial (NYSE:PNC) gained 2.34%, although bank holding company First Horizon National (NYSE:FHN) bucked the general trend, with shares down 0.59%.
The KBW Bank index, known as the BKX, was up 1.82%.