The Macquarie Group Ltd (ASX: MQG) share price is pushing higher on Monday.
In afternoon trade, the investment bank's shares are up 2.5% to $161.74.
While this has been driven largely by a rebounding ASX 200 index, there could also be some pre-results buying from investors.
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Is the Macquarie share price a buy before the bank's results?
While it is always risky to buy shares ahead of the release of results, it hasn't stopped investors from loading up today.
But is this a good idea?
Ahead of the release of the Macquarie half-year result on Friday, here's what brokers are saying about the bank.
What are brokers saying about Macquarie?
The team at Citi is sitting on the fence with Macquarie's shares right now and has a neutral rating and $172.00 price target on them.
It highlights that there are a lot of unknowns with the company's upcoming results and isn't recommending investors buy shares before the release. It explained:
Consensus earnings expectations have been little changed over the year, despite material moves across a number of asset classes and FX. While the falling AUD should ordinarily be a material tailwind for MQG given its offshore earnings, we find that these could be mitigated by lower AUM as equities and fixed income AUM will be lower on a mark-to-market.
As a result, the key earnings drivers for MQG remain gains on sale and commodities. These two pillars of earnings will need to keep delivering for MQG to cycle material results in FY22. While commodities could be supported by energy market dislocation, deal-linked revenue is susceptible to the material tightening in financial conditions. We stay Neutral given the pullback in the stock. Commodity volatility is likely to extend beyond investors' expectations, but the risk is that consensus will have revisit the outlook ex-commodities in the coming months.
Whereas over at Morgans, its analysts named the investment bank as one of its best ideas for the month.
The broker has an add rating and $214.96 price target on its shares. It said:
We continue to like MQG's exposure to long-term structural growth areas such as infrastructure and renewables. The company also stands to benefit from recent market volatility through its trading businesses, while it continues to gain market share in Australian mortgages.
Around this time on Friday we'll know which broker has made the right call on the Macquarie share price.
