Business First Bancshares (NASDAQ:BFST) Posts Earnings Results

Business First Bancshares (NASDAQ:BFST) announced its earnings results on Thursday. The company reported $0.66 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, topping analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.49 by $0.17, Zacks reports. Business First Bancshares had a net margin of 14.92% and a return on equity of 11.57%.

Business First Bancshares Stock Performance

NASDAQ BFST opened at $27.69 on Friday. The company has a current ratio of 0.99, a quick ratio of 0.99 and a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.75. The firm has a market capitalization of $817.96 million, a price-to-earnings ratio of 11.94 and a beta of 1.00. The firm’s 50 day simple moving average is $26.64 and its 200 day simple moving average is $25.40. Business First Bancshares has a 1 year low of $18.97 and a 1 year high of $30.30.

Business First Bancshares Announces Dividend

The company also recently declared a quarterly dividend, which will be paid on Friday, February 28th. Investors of record on Saturday, February 15th will be given a dividend of $0.14 per share. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, February 14th. This represents a $0.56 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.02%. Business First Bancshares’s dividend payout ratio is 24.14%.

Analyst Ratings Changes

A number of brokerages have issued reports on BFST. Raymond James upgraded shares of Business First Bancshares from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and set a $30.00 target price on the stock in a research report on Thursday, December 19th. Hovde Group upgraded shares of Business First Bancshares from a “market perform” rating to an “outperform” rating and increased their price target for the stock from $31.50 to $33.00 in a research report on Friday.

Insider Buying and Selling

In related news, Director Joseph Vernon Johnson sold 6,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 1st. The shares were sold at an average price of $26.36, for a total value of $158,160.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 185,557 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $4,891,282.52. This represents a 3.13 % decrease in their position. The sale was disclosed in a document filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is available at this link. In the last 90 days, insiders have sold 12,480 shares of company stock worth $329,972. Corporate insiders own 6.45% of the company’s stock.

About Business First Bancshares

Business First Bancshares, Inc operates as the bank holding company for b1BANK that provides various banking products and services in Louisiana and Texas. It offers various deposit products and services, including checking, demand, money market, time, and savings accounts; and certificates of deposits, remote deposit capture, and direct deposit services.