The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE:BK) is one of the 10 Best Bank Stocks to Buy in 2026.
JPMorgan raised its target price on BNY Mellon by 2.8% to $128.50 (from $125.00), while reiterating the firm’s Overweight call on the stock. This TP update comes as the firm updated its financial models for large-cap banks, following the release of Q4 2025 earnings. In its other bank TP updates, the firm noted that it prefers the banking sector for this market cycle.
BNY Mellon released its Q4 2025 on January 13, which was headlined by 26.3% YoY growth in net income attributable to common shareholders (from $1.1 billion to $1.4 billion). On a per diluted share basis, earnings grew 31.2% YoY to $2.02 (from $1.54). The strong earnings growth yielded a 230-basis point YoY increase in the bank’s return on average common equity to 14.5% (from 12.2%).
Unlike most of the banks on this list, which relied on net interest income, BNY Mellon’s earnings growth was driven by a 5.3% YoY increase in fee revenue (more commonly called non-interest income in most banks) to $3.7 billion (from $3.5 billion). Virtually all the $0.2 billion fee growth is attributable to the 8.0% YoY growth in investment services fees to $2.6 billion (from $2.4 billion). The other segments, such as investment management and performance, foreign exchange, and other fees, were either flat or declined YoY.
While not as prominent as in other banks, net interest income (NII) also contributed to the growth, growing 12.7% YoY to $1.3 billion (from $1.2 billion). NII growth was driven mostly by an expansion of the earning asset base (+8% YoY to $387 billion) and supplemented by a modest expansion in net interest margin (+6 basis points YoY to 1.38%).
For 2026, the bank’s management is targeting 5%+ YoY revenue growth, coupled with 3%-4% YoY growth in non-interest expenses. These targets would translate to 7%-9% YoY pre-tax income growth.
The Bank of New York Mellon Corporation (NYSE:BK) is a global financial services company that offers securities, market, and investment and wealth management services, serving 90%+ of Fortune 100 companies. The company is based in New York City, New York, and was founded in June 1784.
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Disclosure: None. This article is originally published at Insider Monkey.
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