BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Business First Bancshares, Inc. (BFST) on Thursday reported second-quarter profit of $24.2 million.

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based bank said it had earnings of 70 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 71 cents per share.

The results met Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was also for earnings of 71 cents per share.

The company posted revenue of $139.6 million in the period. Its revenue net of interest expense was $91.8 million, which topped Street forecasts.

Business First shares have increased 17% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $30.47, a climb of 16% in the last 12 months.

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This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on BFST at https://www.zacks.com/ap/BFST