BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Business First Bancshares, Inc. (BFST) on Thursday reported second-quarter earnings of $17.2 million.

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based bank said it had earnings of 62 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for costs related to mergers and acquisitions, were 64 cents per share.

The results exceeded Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 51 cents per share.

The company posted revenue of $112 million in the period. Its revenue net of interest expense was $66.2 million, also exceeding Street forecasts.

Business First shares have increased 2.5% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $25.27, a rise of 55% 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