Evercore ISI Raises Price Target on Regions Financial (RF) to $15 After Meeting with Management

Evercore ISI reiterated a Buy rating on Regions Financial (NYSE: RF), and raised the price target to $15.00 (from $14.00), after meeting with management. Evercore came away confident, and with a positive outlook on the shares, despite the stock's post-election run. Management remains committed to improving returns, despite increased optimism following Trump election. The company will provide an update on expense efforts and its 2017 outlook at a conference this week, and alluded to a likely pull-forward of its previously announced $400M exp program currently targeted to be achieved by YE19.

Analyst John Pancari commented, "We met with Regions mgmt in Birmingham on Thursday and came away confident in our positive outlook on the shares, despite the stock's post-election run. Importantly, mgmt emphasized that it is not dialing back its focus on returns, despite potentially better economic conditions and banking industry dynamics under a Trump presidency. Also, mgmt appeared cognizant of the heavy interest in its 2017 expense outlook to be provided at an industry conference this week, and while RF didn't provide this detail, CFO David Turner did imply that the market should be pleased with Regions' 2017 expense commitment. Bottom line: while the stock has clearly re-rated post the Trump election, RF is still trading at a relative discount to peers. And given mgmt's unwavering focus on improving returns and RF's above-average upside to Trump presidency implications (we estimate +34% to 2018 EPS under a fully baked-in scenario), we expect this discount to continue to abate over time."

For an analyst ratings summary and ratings history on Regions Financial click here. For more ratings news on Regions Financial click here.

Shares of Regions Financial closed at $13.74 yesterday.

You May Also Be Interested In

• TechnipFMC (FTI) PT Raised to $30 at BTIG
• Persistent Systems Ltd. (PSYS:IN) PT Lowered to INR4,560 at Macquarie
• ASM Pacific Technology (522:HK) (ASMVF) PT Raised to HK$106 at HSBC