ESSA vs. HBCP, HIFS, PVBC, TSBK, BLFY, WMPN, ECBK, AFBI, NECB, and FNWB
Should you be buying ESSA Bancorp stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of ESSA Bancorp include Home Bancorp (HBCP), Hingham Institution for Savings (HIFS), Provident Bancorp (PVBC), Timberland Bancorp (TSBK), Blue Foundry Bancorp (BLFY), William Penn Bancorporation (WMPN), ECB Bancorp (ECBK), Affinity Bancshares (AFBI), Northeast Community Bancorp (NECB), and First Northwest Bancorp (FNWB). These companies are all part of the "savings institutions, except federal" industry.
ESSA Bancorp (NASDAQ:ESSA) and Home Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBCP) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, media sentiment, community ranking, analyst recommendations, dividends, risk, valuation, earnings and institutional ownership.
ESSA Bancorp pays an annual dividend of $0.60 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.5%. Home Bancorp pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.7%. ESSA Bancorp pays out 32.4% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Home Bancorp pays out 21.1% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Both companies have healthy payout ratios and should be able to cover their dividend payments with earnings for the next several years.
Home Bancorp has a net margin of 20.66% compared to ESSA Bancorp's net margin of 16.84%. Home Bancorp's return on equity of 10.65% beat ESSA Bancorp's return on equity.
Home Bancorp has higher revenue and earnings than ESSA Bancorp. Home Bancorp is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than ESSA Bancorp, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
54.2% of ESSA Bancorp shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 49.4% of Home Bancorp shares are owned by institutional investors. 7.5% of ESSA Bancorp shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 7.3% of Home Bancorp shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
Home Bancorp received 101 more outperform votes than ESSA Bancorp when rated by MarketBeat users. However, 58.57% of users gave ESSA Bancorp an outperform vote while only 57.94% of users gave Home Bancorp an outperform vote.
ESSA Bancorp has a beta of 0.35, indicating that its share price is 65% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Home Bancorp has a beta of 0.68, indicating that its share price is 32% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Home Bancorp has a consensus target price of $41.50, indicating a potential upside of 10.70%. Given Home Bancorp's higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Home Bancorp is more favorable than ESSA Bancorp.
In the previous week, ESSA Bancorp had 1 more articles in the media than Home Bancorp. MarketBeat recorded 3 mentions for ESSA Bancorp and 2 mentions for Home Bancorp. Home Bancorp's average media sentiment score of 0.63 beat ESSA Bancorp's score of 0.44 indicating that Home Bancorp is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Summary
Home Bancorp beats ESSA Bancorp on 12 of the 19 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding ESSA and its top 5 competitors to their watchlist. Each company is represented with a line over a 90 day period.
This chart shows the average media sentiment of NASDAQ and its competitors over the past 90 days as caculated by MarketBeat. The averaged score is equivalent to the following: Very Negative Sentiment <= -1.5, Negative Sentiment > -1.5 and <= -0.5, Neutral Sentiment > -0.5 and < 0.5, Positive Sentiment >= 0.5 and < 1.5, and Very Positive Sentiment >= 1.5.
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