BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — Business First Bancshares, Inc. (BFST) on Thursday reported fourth-quarter profit of $22.4 million.

The bank, based in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, said it had earnings of 71 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring costs, came to 79 cents per share.

The results beat Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 72 cents per share.

The company posted revenue of $130 million in the period. Its revenue net of interest expense was $83.1 million, which also beat Street forecasts.

For the year, the company reported profit of $87.9 million, or $2.79 per share. Revenue was reported as $324.7 million.

Business First shares have increased nearly 8% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Thursday, shares hit $28.17, a climb of 11% 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