Eastern Bankshares (NASDAQ:EBC) Releases Quarterly Earnings Results, Beats Estimates By $0.05 EPS

Eastern Bankshares (NASDAQ:EBC) announced its earnings results on Thursday. The company reported $0.34 EPS for the quarter, topping the consensus estimate of $0.29 by $0.05, Zacks reports. Eastern Bankshares had a net margin of 38.00% and a return on equity of 4.49%.

Eastern Bankshares Stock Performance

NASDAQ:EBC opened at $17.85 on Friday. The firm has a market cap of $3.83 billion, a price-to-earnings ratio of 7.69 and a beta of 0.94. Eastern Bankshares has a 52 week low of $12.22 and a 52 week high of $19.40. The firm’s 50-day simple moving average is $17.75 and its 200 day simple moving average is $16.84.

Eastern Bankshares Dividend Announcement

The firm also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, March 14th. Investors of record on Monday, March 3rd will be paid a $0.12 dividend. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Monday, March 3rd. This represents a $0.48 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.69%. Eastern Bankshares’s dividend payout ratio (DPR) is presently 20.69%.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Eastern Bankshares news, Director Deborah C. Jackson sold 5,713 shares of the stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 2nd. The shares were sold at an average price of $18.56, for a total transaction of $106,033.28. Following the sale, the director now directly owns 67,284 shares in the company, valued at $1,248,791.04. This represents a 7.83 % decrease in their ownership of the stock. The sale was disclosed in a filing with the SEC, which is available at the SEC website. Company insiders own 1.15% of the company’s stock.

Wall Street Analysts Forecast Growth

Separately, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods upped their target price on Eastern Bankshares from $19.00 to $21.00 and gave the company an “outperform” rating in a research report on Wednesday, December 4th.

About Eastern Bankshares

Eastern Bankshares, Inc operates as the bank holding company for Eastern Bank that provides banking products and services primarily to retail, commercial, and small business customers. The company provides deposit accounts, interest checking accounts, money market accounts, savings accounts, and time certificates of deposit accounts.