BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Business First Bancshares, Inc. (BFST) on Thursday reported third-quarter profit of $17.8 million.

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based bank said it had earnings of 65 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs and costs related to mergers and acquisitions, were 68 cents per share.

The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 57 cents per share.

The company posted revenue of $113.5 million in the period. Its revenue net of interest expense was $66.9 million, also surpassing Street forecasts.

Business First shares have climbed roughly 2% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $25.04, an increase of 37% 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