Butterfield Bank needs to report a few successive quarters of earnings growth before its shares would become a viable investment opportunity, according to a top analyst with LOM.Jeremy Dyck, an investment adviser with LOM Securities (Bahamas) Ltd., wrote in his research update that he remained hesitant to recommend buying the bank’s shares until he had seen an improvement in its performance and the re-institution of a dividend policy.Maintaining a “hold” rating for the bank’s shares, he set a price target of $1.40 - equating roughly to 14 times LOM’s normalised EPS estimate and 1.3 times the bank’s 2010 year-end book value.Mr Dyck said that Butterfield’s CEO Brad Kopp and his management team continued to face a challenging operating environment, including low interest rates and local competition from HSBC Bermuda, but he remained impressed by their transparency and community engagement, while the advice and resources afforded by the new majority shareholder group was further cause for optimism.“Ultimately the task at hand resembles a classic ‘turnaround scenario’ - aiming to restore consistent revenue and profit growth - and to win back investor confidence as a result,” he wrote.Mr Dyck said that due to some non-recurring expenses incurred last year, along with bold cost-cutting measures and an improving economic climate, the bank’s bottom line was expected to swing to a healthy profit in 2011.He said the estimates were before preferred dividend payments of $18 million per annum - which will last for at least eight more years, at which point the bank could retire the issue at par.