The Westpac Banking Corp (ASX: WBC) share price is pushing higher in afternoon trade.
At the time of writing, the banking giant's shares are up 2% to $21.03.
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Why is the Westpac share price pushing higher?
Investors have been bidding the Westpac share price higher today in response to its first quarter update.
In case you missed it, Australia's oldest bank delivered unaudited cash earnings of $1.58 billion for the three months. This was up 1% over the quarterly average during the second half of FY 2021.
And while this fell short of Bell Potter's estimate of $1.82 billion, it was better than some were expecting.
How did Westpac's result compare?
According to a note out of Goldman Sachs, Westpac is currently outperforming its expectations following this update.
It commented: "WBC announced 1Q22 unaudited cash earnings (ex-notables) of A$1.58 bn, which was 1% higher than the 2H21 quarterly average of A$1.57 bn and run-rating 4% ahead of what is implied by our current 1H22E, with the beat entirely driven by better than expected revenues, which would appear due to Markets and Treasury. The A$118 mn BDD charge was broadly consistent with what is implied by our 1H22E charge of A$233 mn."
However, Goldman, which has a neutral rating and $25.60 price target on its shares, does have concerns over its net interest margin (NIM) which fell 8 basis points to 1.91%.
It concluded: "Overall, today's headline performance is slightly better than we had been expecting and while it appears largely driven by Markets and Treasury revenues, this should provide some comfort to the market. That said, the underlying decline in the NIM remains significant, with the NIM (ex-Markets and Treasury) 20 bp lower at Dec-21 than it was on average over 2H21. With approximately one-third of this driven by liquids and two-thirds from competition, retail banking profitability remains under intense pressure."
