Our survey said...

So the RBS results are out, and it's time to see how my predictions turned out. Basically things were pretty much as I expected, except for the subsequent behaviour of the share price.

I predicted:
Some further, relatively minor, writedowns due to subprime or similar. Less than £1bn.
The results say:
The annual report doesn't make this as clear as I would have liked, but I think I'm right in saying that there were further writedowns, but these were not much higher than those already reported. There was a "reduction of £978 million in the carrying value of financial instruments we acquired" from the purchase of ABN Amro, which I hadn't predicted. On the other hand the sale of Thames Water brought in over £1bn in exceptional profit.

I think I'll chalk this one down as a near-miss, since it sounds like total additional writedowns were over £1bn.

I predicted:
Record profits
The results say:
Record profits

I predicted:
A moderate increase in the dividend
The results say:
Total dividend up 10%.

I predicted:
Confirmation that a rights issue is not on the cards
The results say:
Only referred to fairly obliquely, but core tier 1 capital was reported as 4.5%, which is close to the regulatory limit of 4%, but not dangerously so. There were some reasonably reassuring words about "rebuilding" the capital ratio, and mentioned hte profitability of ABM Amro as a factor that would help that - suggesting to me that retained earnings and asset sales would be the most likely route to rebuilding capital ratios.

I predicted:
A subsequent jump in the share price, probably settling at about 425p.
I got:
Obviously predicting share prices in the short-term is a mug's game, and I'm already regretting I made any prediction on this one. We had an instant jump to 425p, followed by a steady decline to 385p.