Critical Analysis: Chain Bridge Bancorp (NYSE:CBNA) & Peoples Financial Services (NASDAQ:PFIS)

Chain Bridge Bancorp (NYSE:CBNA) and Peoples Financial Services (NASDAQ:PFIS) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their risk, dividends, profitability, earnings, analyst recommendations, institutional ownership and valuation.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Chain Bridge Bancorp and Peoples Financial Services, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Chain Bridge Bancorp	0	2	0	1	2.67
Peoples Financial Services	0	1	1	0	2.50

Chain Bridge Bancorp presently has a consensus target price of $29.67, suggesting a potential downside of 9.97%. Peoples Financial Services has a consensus target price of $53.00, suggesting a potential upside of 8.65%. Given Peoples Financial Services’ higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Peoples Financial Services is more favorable than Chain Bridge Bancorp.

Profitability

This table compares Chain Bridge Bancorp and Peoples Financial Services’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Chain Bridge Bancorp	35.57%	15.37%	1.40%
Peoples Financial Services	11.80%	12.20%	1.14%

Insider & Institutional Ownership

31.7% of Peoples Financial Services shares are owned by institutional investors. 25.9% of Chain Bridge Bancorp shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.1% of Peoples Financial Services shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Chain Bridge Bancorp and Peoples Financial Services”s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Chain Bridge Bancorp	$56.58 million	3.82	$20.95 million	$3.78	8.72
Peoples Financial Services	$229.80 million	2.12	$8.50 million	$3.35	14.56

Chain Bridge Bancorp has higher earnings, but lower revenue than Peoples Financial Services. Chain Bridge Bancorp is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Peoples Financial Services, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Summary

Chain Bridge Bancorp beats Peoples Financial Services on 9 of the 14 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Chain Bridge Bancorp

Chain Bridge Bancorp, Inc. operates as a Delaware-chartered bank holding company for Chain Bridge Bank, National Association that provides commercial and personal banking, and trust services in the United States. Its deposit products include non-interest-bearing and interest-bearing checking accounts, savings accounts, and money market accounts. The company’s loan portfolio comprises of residential and commercial real estate loans, commercial loans, and consumer loans. It also provides treasury management, payments, trusts and estate administration, wealth management, and asset custody services. The company was incorporated in 2006 and is headquartered in McLean, Virginia.

About Peoples Financial Services

Peoples Financial Services Corp. operates as the bank holding company for Peoples Security Bank and Trust Company that provides various commercial and retail banking services. The company accepts money market, negotiable order of withdrawal, savings, individual retirement, demand deposit, and certificates of deposit accounts. It also provides residential real estate, automobile, manufactured housing, personal, and home equity loans; and commercial real estate, working capital, construction, small business administration, and agricultural loans, as well as loans for equipment and other commercial needs, and mineral rights. In addition, the company offers fiduciary and investment services; investment management, IRA trustee, estate administration, living and life insurance trust, trustee under will, guardianship, custodial/IRA custodial, and corporate trust services, as well as pension and profit-sharing plans. Further, it provides wealth management products and services comprising investment portfolio management, estate and business succession planning, annuities, insurance, retirement plan, and tax planning, as well as education funding strategies; and securities, brokerage, and investor services. Additionally, the company offers small business checking and merchant money market accounts, online and telephone banking, business credit cards, merchant line of credit, and financial checkup services; and remote deposit capture, automatic clearing house transaction, cash management, automated teller machine, point of sale transaction, safe deposit box, night depository, direct deposit, and official check services. It serves business, non-profit, governmental, municipal agency, and professional customers, as well as retail customers. Peoples Financial Services Corp. was founded in 1905 and is headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania.