The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. (NYSE: GS) is scheduled to report its third-quarter financial results Thursday before the markets open. The consensus estimates from Thomson Reuters call for $2.91 in earnings per share (EPS) on $7.14 billion in revenue. In the same period of last year, the bank posted EPS of $4.57 and $8.39 billion in revenue.

When one investment banking firm initiates coverage on a rival firm, some cynical investors may think that the firm is really talking up its view on itself. That has not proven universally true, but recently a key analyst made a very positive initiation for Goldman Sachs. Oppenheimer started coverage of Goldman Sachs with an Outperform rating, and it assigned a $236.00 price target.

Oppenheimer’s Chris Kotowski was the analyst behind this call. Oppenheimer said that it has been on the sidelines for Goldman Sachs’ stock, mainly because the firm has had a bearish outlook on the trend in fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) trading. The firm pointed out that FICC trading accounted for 25% of Goldman’s revenues in 2014, down from 48% in 2009. Overall, industry FICC trading revenues have been down in 17 of the past 22 quarters.

One key issue is that Goldman Sachs’ shares have underperformed in the past few years. Oppenheimer noted that Goldman’s shares were up just 10% since the beginning of 2010, versus about 67% for the KBW Bank Index and 76% for the S&P 500. Kotowski said that the argument that Goldman cannot thrive in this environment is “increasingly sounding like the argument that bumble bees can’t fly.”

A few analysts weighed in on Goldman Sachs ahead of its earnings:

• Sandler O’Neil upgraded the stock to a Buy rating with a $220 price target.
• Citigroup upgraded the stock to a Buy rating.
• Susquehanna has a Neutral rating but lowered its price target to $190 from $219.
• RBC Capital lowered its price target to $190 from $200.

So far in 2015, Goldman Sachs is one of the Dow stocks in the red, with shares down 5.7% year to date. Over the past 52 weeks, shares are up 2.5%.

Shares of Goldman Sachs were last seen trading down 0.4% at $180.36, with a consensus analyst price target of $210.83 and a 52-week trading range of $167.49 to $218.77.

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