Stephens upgrades ‘best-of-breed’ NBT Bancorp to Overweight

As previously reported, Stephens upgraded NBT Bancorp (NBTB) to Overweight from Equal Weight with an unchanged $53 price target following earnings. The firm sees the bank having “best-of-breed fundamentals,” including a strong low-cost deposit base, diversified and high-quality revenue composition, an improving yield curve, and improving markets in Syracuse, Malta, and Albany in the wake of the CHIPS Act push to create semiconductor chip manufacturing plants here in the U.S. The firm believes NBT remains “one of the best thematic stories on our list for the reasons above with one of the strongest forecasted profitability outlooks” and favors owning the bank here, the analyst added.