ESSA vs. HBCP, HIFS, PVBC, FNWB, TSBK, NECB, ECBK, BLFY, WMPN, and AFBI
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), First Northwest Bancorp (FNWB), Timberland Bancorp (TSBK), Northeast Community Bancorp (NECB), ECB Bancorp (ECBK), Blue Foundry Bancorp (BLFY), William Penn Bancorporation (WMPN), and Affinity Bancshares (AFBI). These companies are all part of the "savings institutions, except federal" industry.
Home Bancorp (NASDAQ:HBCP) and ESSA Bancorp (NASDAQ:ESSA) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, earnings, valuation, risk, institutional ownership, profitability, community ranking, media sentiment and dividends.
Home Bancorp has a beta of 0.67, suggesting that its share price is 33% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, ESSA Bancorp has a beta of 0.3, suggesting that its share price is 70% less volatile than the S&P 500.
49.4% of Home Bancorp shares are held by institutional investors. Comparatively, 54.2% of ESSA Bancorp shares are held by institutional investors. 7.3% of Home Bancorp shares are held by insiders. Comparatively, 7.5% of ESSA Bancorp shares are held by 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.
Home Bancorp pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.6%. ESSA Bancorp pays an annual dividend of $0.60 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.3%. Home Bancorp pays out 20.0% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. ESSA Bancorp pays out 32.4% 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 raised its dividend for 3 consecutive years.
Home Bancorp has a net margin of 22.57% compared to Home Bancorp's net margin of 17.88%. ESSA Bancorp's return on equity of 11.46% beat Home Bancorp's return on equity.
In the previous week, ESSA Bancorp had 2 more articles in the media than Home Bancorp. MarketBeat recorded 5 mentions for ESSA Bancorp and 3 mentions for Home Bancorp. ESSA Bancorp's average media sentiment score of 0.97 beat Home Bancorp's score of 0.04 indicating that Home Bancorp is being referred to more favorably in the media.
Home Bancorp presently has a consensus price target of $41.50, suggesting a potential upside of 8.33%. Given ESSA Bancorp's higher possible upside, research analysts clearly believe Home Bancorp is more favorable than ESSA Bancorp.
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.
Summary
Home Bancorp beats ESSA Bancorp on 13 of the 20 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.
Skip ChartThis 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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