First Interstate BancSystem: Recent Results Justify A Cautious Upgrade

2025-11-25 04:06:02 ET

As much as I don't enjoy being bearish about a company, sometimes it is justified. That has historically been the case, at least over the last couple of times that I wrote about it, when it comes to First Interstate BancSystem ( FIBK ). In my last article published about the firm, which came out in April of this year, I cited weakening profitability and low asset quality as reasons to be pessimistic. Since then, the stock has outperformed the market, climbing 30.7% compared to the 22.9% rise achieved by the S&P 500. Considering that I view a ‘sell’ candidate as one that should underperform the market for the foreseeable future, this return disparity is rather disappointing. However, I have still been right over the longer time horizon. Since I originally rated the company a ‘sell’ back in May of last year, shares have risen only 23.8%, which falls short of the 29.4% rise that the market enjoyed....

Read the full article on Seeking Alpha

For further details see: