Deutsche Bank (DBK) Q2 earnings 2025

Deutsche Bank on Thursday beat expectations on the bottom line and said it was on track to meet full-year targets, despite mixed results within its key investment banking unit and euro gains against the U.S. dollar.

Net profit attributable to shareholders reached 1.485 billion euros ($1.748 billion) in the second quarter, versus a 1.2 billion forecast from Reuters. It compares with a loss of 143 million euros in the June quarter of 2024, when earnings were hit by legal provisions linked to Deutsche Bank’s takeover of Postbank.

The lender’s revenues over the period came in at 7.804 billion euros, in line with a mean analyst forecast of  7.76 billion euros produced by LSEG.

Deutsche Bank Chief Financial Officer James von Moltke told CNBC’s Annette Weisbach in a Thursday interview: “The setup in terms of momentum, discipline around costs, momentum in the businesses, looks to us very encouraging, and therefore we’re confident that we’re on track to achieve our targets.”

Across the board, the bank noted an impact from the relative strength of the euro against the U.S. dollar, with von Moltke describing it as the “big thing that’s kind of flowing through our numbers.”

Deutsche Bank shares were jumped over 9% as of 2:45 p.m. London time (9:45 a.m. E.T.).

Other second-quarter highlights included:

• Profit before tax of 2.4 billion euros, up 34% year-on-year, excluding the impact of the Postbank litigation.
• CET 1 capital ratio, a measure of bank solvency, was 14.2%, compared with 13.8% in the March quarter.
• Post-tax return on tangible equity (ROTE) rate of 10.1%, from 11.9% in the previous quarter.

The firm’s core investment banking unit reported a 3% year-on-year uptick in revenue to 2.7 billion euros in the June quarter, but reported mixed results at its subdivisions.

In fixed income and currencies, the bank posted a “strong” 11% revenue bump driven by higher net interest income in financing and increased volatility and client activity in foreign exchange. But Deutsche Bank’s origination and advisory division — which deals with relationships with major corporates and sovereign institutions — logged a second-quarter revenue decline of 29% to 416 million euros, citing “market uncertainty” and noting an overall “postponement of some material transactions into the second half of 2025.”

Corporate banking revenues, meanwhile, dipped by 1% on the year to 1.896 billion euros in the second quarter, with von Moltke noting “a bit of a chill” in corporate activity and decision-making.

“Loan growth has been more sluggish than we’d like to have seen,” he said, flagging the effect of foreign exchange translations from the parts of the business accounted in the U.S. dollar. “Otherwise, as I say, it’s been a normalization of deposit margins, a little bit of effects. That’s … held the business back in the quarter.”