Wells Fargo beats on earnings as lending falls (WFC)

The bank reported earnings of $1.oo per share, higher than the $0.97 that analysts were expecting.

The report follows a wild week for Wells Fargo.

On Tuesday, the board of directors released its investigation into the bank's fake accounts scandal. In September, it was revealed that Wells had settled with regulators after its employees in the retail banking segment had opened up as many as 2 million accounts for customers without their knowledge between 2011 and 2015. The scandal led to multiple congressional hearings and the resignation of former CEO John Stumpf.

The board determined that both Stumpf and former Community Banking head Carrie Tolstedt were responsible for not cracking down on the practice earlier, and the board said the scope of the practices most likely extended beyond 2011.

For his role in the fake accounts issue, the board clawed back another $28 million in compensation for Stumpf (in addition to the $41 million it had clawed back previously). Tolstedt was also retroactively fired and had $47.3 million clawed back.

Since the settlement with regulators was announced, the bank has seen a steep decline in new account openings. The bank said that new account openings declined by 35% in March from the same month last year, but were up 7% from February. Additionally, bank branch interactions were down from the year before.

New Wells CEO Tim Sloan tried to move forward from the scandal in the earnings press release, touting the release of the investigation as "valuable" to the bank.

"Wells Fargo continued to make meaningful progress in the first quarter in rebuilding trust with customers and other important stakeholders, while producing solid financial results," Sloan said. "We have taken significant actions throughout the company to date and we are committed to building a better bank as we move Wells Fargo forward."

Additionally, on Thursday, it was selling a total of 9 million shares of Wells Fargo to duck under regulatory hurdles from the Federal Reserve.

Any entity owning more than 10% of a large bank — as Berkshire did with Wells — is subject to additional regulation from the Fed. Berkshire decided that the extra scrutiny did not allow them to be the type of shareholders they wanted, so Buffett's firm announced it would reduce its holding in Wells to just below the 10% threshold.

Wells Fargo beats on earnings as lending falls (WFC)

Wells Fargo beat on its earnings, but missed ever so slightly on revenue for the first quarter of 2017.

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