MRBK vs. AROW, SMBK, ALRS, SHBI, NEWT, GNTY, CARE, CBNK, PFIS, and FISI
Should you be buying Meridian stock or one of its competitors? The main competitors of Meridian include Arrow Financial (AROW), SmartFinancial (SMBK), Alerus Financial (ALRS), Shore Bancshares (SHBI), NewtekOne (NEWT), Guaranty Bancshares (GNTY), Carter Bankshares (CARE), Capital Bancorp (CBNK), Peoples Financial Services (PFIS), and Financial Institutions (FISI). These companies are all part of the "national commercial banks" industry.
Meridian (NASDAQ:MRBK) and Arrow Financial (NASDAQ:AROW) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their profitability, media sentiment, institutional ownership, earnings, risk, analyst recommendations, valuation, dividends and community ranking.
Meridian presently has a consensus price target of $13.00, suggesting a potential upside of 25.73%. Given Meridian's higher possible upside, research analysts plainly believe Meridian is more favorable than Arrow Financial.
Arrow Financial has higher revenue and earnings than Meridian. Meridian is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Arrow Financial, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.
Arrow Financial has a net margin of 14.34% compared to Meridian's net margin of 6.75%. Arrow Financial's return on equity of 7.89% beat Meridian's return on equity.
Meridian has a beta of 0.7, suggesting that its share price is 30% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Arrow Financial has a beta of 0.72, suggesting that its share price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Meridian received 17 more outperform votes than Arrow Financial when rated by MarketBeat users. Likewise, 58.08% of users gave Meridian an outperform vote while only 52.49% of users gave Arrow Financial an outperform vote.
Meridian pays an annual dividend of $0.50 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.8%. Arrow Financial pays an annual dividend of $1.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.3%. Meridian pays out 47.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Arrow Financial pays out 62.8% 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. Meridian is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
58.6% of Meridian shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 46.7% of Arrow Financial shares are owned by institutional investors. 14.0% of Meridian shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 3.6% of Arrow Financial shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that large money managers, endowments and hedge funds believe a stock is poised for long-term growth.
In the previous week, Arrow Financial had 2 more articles in the media than Meridian. MarketBeat recorded 4 mentions for Arrow Financial and 2 mentions for Meridian. Arrow Financial's average media sentiment score of 1.26 beat Meridian's score of 0.83 indicating that Arrow Financial is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
Summary
Arrow Financial beats Meridian on 11 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.
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This chart shows the number of new MarketBeat users adding MRBK 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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