East West Bancorp price target raised to $106 from $103 at Morgan Stanley

Morgan Stanley raised the firm’s price target on East West Bancorp to $106 from $103 and keeps an Overweight rating on the shares. Rate cuts are here and the Fed is “moving even faster than expected,” notes the analyst, who points out that the firm’s economists expect another 150 basis points of rate cuts between now and the middle of 2025. While noting that the path for net interest margins, or NIM, can be difficult to model, the firm says that in general, a faster pace of rate cuts is positive for NIM at midcap banks, while being “more mixed” for large cap banks.