On Wednesday, Piper Sandler adjusted the price target for Community West Bancshares (NASDAQ:CWBC), increasing it from $22.00 to $24.00, while maintaining an Overweight rating on the stock. This revision follows the company’s second-quarter financial results for 2024.

Community West Bancshares reported a loss of $0.33 per share for the second quarter of 2024. However, Piper Sandler’s analysis suggests a core earnings per share (EPS) of $0.40 when excluding merger-related charges and a provision related to the Current Expected Credit Losses (CECL) standard.

The firm’s initial EPS estimate of $0.11 had already taken into account a CECL provision to align with the consensus among other analysts. Without this provision, the anticipated runrate EPS was $0.63, but the actual results significantly missed this target due to a lower-than-expected net interest margin (NIM).

The reported NIM for Community West Bancshares increased by 23 basis points, reaching 3.65%. This figure fell short of Piper Sandler’s expectation of a 4.49% margin and was also below the consensus of 4.43% among other analysts.

The discrepancy between the expected and actual NIM contributed to a shortfall of $0.27 in net interest income (NII) compared to the firm’s forecast.

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