Goldman says commods exposure cut, results "solid"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group, which on Tuesday posted its first quarterly loss in nine years, said it cut its commodities exposure during the fourth quarter, although it called its commodities trading performance "solid."

It said the risk it assumed for trading commodities was down 25 percent from the third quarter.

"Net revenues in commodities and currencies were solid, but lower compared with the fourth quarter of 2007," said the once top investment bank on Wall Street, which became a bank holding company during the credit crisis.

Goldman did not break out results for its commodities, business. The bank said its fixed income, currency and commodity businesses saw a combined negative net revenue of $3.4 billion for the quarter ended November 28, versus a net revenue of $3.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007.

Negative revenue is accounting terminology used to describe situations when actual income and fees were more than offset by investment write-downs and losses.

Goldman posted a net loss of $2.12 billion, or $4.97 a share for the fourth quarter ended November 28, compared with record net income of $3.2 billion, or $7.01 a share, a year earlier. Analysts, on average, had expected a loss of $3.73 a share, according to Reuters Estimates.

"These results were adversely impacted by unprecedented weakness across the broader credit markets, reflecting broad-based declines in asset values, substantially reduced levels of liquidity and dislocation between prices for cash instruments and the related contracts and between credit indices and the underlying single names," Goldman said.

It said its Value-at-Risk -- or the maximum it stood to lose in a single day -- for trading commodities fell to $38 million in the fourth quarter, from $51 million during the third quarter ending August 29.

But the figure was still higher when compared to the $26 million VaR for commodities during the fourth quarter of 2007.