BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) _ Investar Holding Corp. (ISTR) on Monday reported fourth-quarter profit of $4.5 million.

The Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based bank said it had earnings of 42 cents per share. Earnings, adjusted for non-recurring gains, were 39 cents per share.

The results topped Wall Street expectations. The average estimate of three analysts surveyed by Zacks Investment Research was for earnings of 32 cents per share.

The holding company for Investar Bank posted revenue of $26.7 million in the period. Its revenue net of interest expense was $22.8 million, which also topped Street forecasts.

For the year, the company reported profit of $13.9 million, or $1.27 per share. Revenue was reported as $85.6 million.

Investar shares have increased slightly more than 4% since the beginning of the year. In the final minutes of trading on Monday, shares hit $17.26, a fall of 27% in the last 12 months.

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a Zacks stock report on ISTR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/ISTR

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