5-star analyst sends strong verdict on Bank of America stock

Bank of America (BAC) closed Wednesday at $61.59, up 8.36% over the past month and sitting within a few cents of its 52-week high of $62.03.

There’s a reason behind that rise. 

Bank of America reported second-quarter results on July 14 that beat Wall Streetexpectations on both lines. Since then, analysts have been upgrading their targets.

Among them was Gerard Cassidy of RBC Capital Markets, who has covered U.S. banks for more than three decades and built the Texas Ratio, a screening tool that regulators and investors still use to gauge the risk of bankfailure.

Cassidy raised his 12-month price target on Bank of America to $65 from $59 and kept his Outperform rating.

What makes his call stand out to investors is that four of his peerswent higher.

What RBC’s Gerard Cassidy actually told Bank of America investors

Gerard Cassidy’s case rests on one asset most investors overlook: deposits.

Bank of America pays very little for the roughly $2 trillion it holds in customer deposits. The bank then lends those trillions out at higher rates. 

The difference between that high lending rate and the low deposit rate is called net interest income, and that income is the engine of the whole business.

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Cassidy expects the bank to make even more profit as long-term loan rates rise faster than short-term deposit rates, according to Benzinga. 

Banks pay low short-term rates to depositors and charge high long-term rates to borrowers, and a wider gap increases their profit margin.

Cassidy also expects credit quality to hold up over the next 12 months, pointing to 15 years of fortifying capital reserves since the Great Recession.

The quarter that forced Wall Street to rewrite its models

The second-quarter numbers gave Cassidy plenty to work with.

Bank of America reported earnings of $1.21 per diluted share on $31.6 billion in revenue. Analysts had predicted about $1.12 and $30.67 billion, Investing.com reported.

Revenue climbed 15% from the previous year, net income rose27% to $9.1 billion, and earnings per shareincreased 34%.

Here is what stood out in the report:

• Every business segment posted double-digit net income growth, so no single division carried the quarter

• Sales and trading revenue hit $7.1 billion, up 33%, the 17th straight quarter of annual growth

• Equities trading revenue surged 70% to $3.6 billion, Quartz reported

• Investment banking fees rose 50% to more than $2.1 billion

• Efficiency ratio improved to 59%, with 6.6% operating leverage

Operating leverage means revenue grew faster than expenses. For a bank of this size, that is the key to making a real profit rather than just breaking even.

Where Cassidy’s $65 sits against the rest of Wall Street

Cassidy raised his target, but he placed it below the average on Wall Street. The consensus among 18 analysts now sits at $67.39.

The target movements during the same week:

Cassidy made the second-largest raise on the board in dollar terms, a $6 increase. 

So it’s not that Cassidy does not have as much confidence in the stock as other analysts. He simply started from a lower base than most.

A $65 target from the bank analyst with the longest track record is a vote of confidence, not a ceiling.

Why the loudest bull case comes from Goldman Sachs, not RBC

The largest move came from Goldman Sachs, where Richard Ramsden raised his target to $71 from $63 on July 14.

KBW’s Christopher McGratty raised his target to $70, citing a second consecutive quarter of positive fundamental trends, Investing.com noted.

Related: JPMorgan doubles down on stock market, S&P 500

At BAC’s Wednesday close of $61.59, Cassidy’s $65 implies an increase of about 5.5% over 12 months. Analysts’ consensus implies closer to 7%, and Jefferies’ $75 implies more than a 21% increase.

The spread between the price targets is a useful signal. 

When top analysts sit $10 apart on the same stock after the same earnings report, they are disagreeing about the market conditions, not the company.

What still has to go right before BAC reaches $65

For Cassidy’s expectations to work out, a few things need to go right. 

• The yield curve has to steepen. If it flattens instead, the deposit advantage he is counting on shrinks rather than widens.

• Credit has to stay clean. Bank of America’s management guided to about $1.4 billion in quarterly provision expenses. A consumer slowdown changes that math fast.

• The trading boom has to hold. A 70% jump in equities revenue reflects an unusually volatile market, driven partly by the Iran conflict. Calm markets mean smaller trading revenue.

• Second-half comparisons get harder. Bank of America is coming off a strong back half of 2025, so matching this quarter’s growth rates against that baseline gets tougher from here.

Bank of America’s management raised its full-year operating leverage outlook to 300 to 400 basis points from more than 200basis points.

CFO Alastair Borthwick also told analysts the bank now expects full-year net interest income growth to land at the top of its 6% to 8% range, Investing.com noted. 

The case against buying the news 

Not everyone agrees that BAC’s good quarter justifies a higher stock price.

Evercore ISI’s Glenn Schorr warned before earnings that strong second-quarter results were already priced into bank stocks. Schorr’s own target moved only to $63 from $61.

Oppenheimer downgraded BAC to Market Perform from Outperform on June 30, before the quarter landed.

Bank of America stock rose just 1.26% on earnings day, while Goldman Sachs gained 7.63% and Citigroup also fell 5.77%. That is the sell-the-news dynamic Schorr described, playing out in real time.

What this means if you own Bank of America or an index fund

You may own more of this stock than you realize. 

Bank of America is a top holding in most S&P 500 funds and nearly every financials ETF, so these calls affect your portfolio whether or not you bought shares directly.

Here are a few practical reference points:

• The valuation is not stretched. BAC trades at about 15.4 times trailing earnings and roughly 13.4 times forward earnings, well under the S&P 500’s multiple

• The dividend yields 1.82%, with a quarterly payout of $0.28 per share

• The stock is near its high, so entry timing carries more risk than it did a month ago

• Book value per share rose 7% to $39.34, meaning the price-to-book gap has widened alongside the rally

If you are already holding, Cassidy’s note is confirmation that the fundamentals support the run. 

If you are looking to start a position, the $61.59 price against a $66.02 consensus leaves a smaller cushion than it did in June.

The verdict underneath the verdict

Cassidy has covered banks since before the Great Recession. 

TipRanks tracks his ratings at a 68% success rate with an average return of 13.5% per call, and ranks him among the top analysts covering the financial sector.

When someone with that record raises a target by $6 and still lands below consensus, he is not being bearish. 

He is being disciplined about what a bank is worth when the economy is good, and the curve cooperates.

The stock is priced for that scenario now. But the next test comes when the second-half comparisons get hard, and the trading desks face a quieter market.

That is what investors should pay attention to, not just the $65.

Related: J.P. Morgan’s stock price is flashing valuation warning

This story was originally published by TheStreet on Jul 17, 2026, where it first appeared in the Investing section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.