Western Alliance initiated with a Buy at UBS

UBS initiated coverage of Western Alliance (WAL) with a Buy rating and $85 price target. The firm thinks the market is "mispricing" the bank’s earning power as the current multiple implies about $4.00 of EPS in 2024 while the firm projects $10.93. The sources of the mispricing include contagion risk from the Silicon Valley Bank (SIVB) failure, but the shares are "pricing in something more dire than is fundamentally supportable in a tech/innovation deposit run-off scenario," the analyst tells investors.