Key Analyst Sees Bank of America Rising 25% Despite Downturn

Banking, finance, and taxes

Published: August 24, 2015 1:20 pm

Last Updated: August 24, 2015 1:23 pm

Bank of America Corp. (NYSE: BAC) is known as one of the most widely traded stocks on the New York Stock Exchange. So how did this banking behemoth deal with the huge market sell-off on Monday morning? Initially shares were down 9.3% at $14.60 (a 52-week low) just after the trading session began on Monday. However since that time, shares have recovered handily to their current levels. Helping out in the recovery was an upgrade that Bank of America received from Keefe Bruyette & Woods (KBW).

After the huge sell-off on Monday, KBW does not know how long the market carnage will last. In the meantime it is upgrading Bank of America to an Outperform rating. Ultimately, the firm believes that anything capable of ridding the sector of momentum investors could be a good thing for value investors. KBW maintained its price target at $20, adding that the downturn better aligns valuations with actual fundamental performance. The price target also implies an upside of nearly 26% from current prices.

For some background: KBW provides a broad range of services to corporate clients, such as banking companies, insurance companies, real estate and REITs, broker-dealers, mortgage banks, asset management companies and specialty finance firms, as well as to the institutional investor community. KBW’s research analysts cover more than 600 companies in the financial services industry globally.

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A couple of other analysts weighed in on Bank of America, but this was prior to the Monday sell-off:

Deutsche Bank reiterated a Buy rating with a $20 price target.
Barclays has an Equal Weight rating and raised its price target to $20 from $19.

So far in 2015, Bank of America has underperformed the broad markets, as shares are down 9.5% year to date. About 9% of this drop came in the past week alone.

Shares of Bank of America were down 1% at $15.94 in early afternoon trading. The stock has a consensus analyst price target of $19.26 and a 52-week trading range of $14.60 to $18.48. Over 130 million shares had moved at 1:20 p.m. Eastern.

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