Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) delivered a decent fourth quarter of 2017 performance, with Investment Banking revenues rising to $1.4 billion against $1.3 billion in the prior corresponding period. Despite the Advisory revenues pressure which fell to $522 million against $628 million in pcp, Equity underwriting revenues offset this pressure, with revenue rising to $416 million against $225 million in pcp boosted by better revenues on IPOs and follow-on offerings. The Fixed income underwriting revenues rose to $499 million against $421 million in the prior year quarter due to rising non-investment grade loan fees.
On the other hand, the Sales and trading division performed weak with net revenues falling to $2.7 billion against $3.2 billion in pcp. Equity sales and trading segment hurt this with net revenues falling to $1.9 billion against $2.0 billion in pcp on the back of falling revenues in execution services driven by a decline in derivatives, that partially offset the rising financing business. Fixed Income sales and trading net revenues fell to $808 million against $1.5 billion in pcp on the back rates and foreign exchange impact.
Wealth Management reported pre-tax income from continuing operations of $1.2 billion against $891 million in the fourth quarter of last year. Net revenues for the current quarter fell to $4.4 billion from $4.0 billion in pcp. Asset management revenues of $2.5 billion rose from $2.2 billion in pcp on the back of rising asset levels and positive flows. Transactional revenues rose to $790 million against $774 million in pcp on the back of gains on investments related with certain employee deferred compensation plans, was partially offset by lower fixed income revenues. Wealth Management client liabilities rose to $80 billion at quarter end against $73 billion in the prior year quarter.
The overall client assets reached $2.4 trillion and client assets in fee-based accounts were $1.0 trillion as of the end of the quarter. Fee-based asset flows reached $20.9 billion during the quarter. Wealth Management representatives of 15,712 produced average annualized revenue per representative of $1.1 million in the current quarter
MS stock rose over 0.8% on Jan 18th, 2018 (as on 10:22AM EST; Source: Google finance) leading to a total rally of over 6.4% in this year to date.