Critical Review: Northpointe Bancshares (NYSE:NPB) & Potomac Bancshares (OTCMKTS:PTBS)

Northpointe Bancshares (NYSE:NPB) and Potomac Bancshares (OTCMKTS:PTBS) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior business? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, profitability, risk, institutional ownership, valuation, dividends and earnings.

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of recent recommendations for Northpointe Bancshares and Potomac Bancshares, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Northpointe Bancshares	0	0	2	0	3.00
Potomac Bancshares	0	0	0	0	0.00

Northpointe Bancshares presently has a consensus price target of $17.25, indicating a potential upside of 47.81%. Given Northpointe Bancshares’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, equities research analysts plainly believe Northpointe Bancshares is more favorable than Potomac Bancshares.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

5.3% of Potomac Bancshares shares are owned by institutional investors. 4.4% of Potomac Bancshares shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Earnings & Valuation

This table compares Northpointe Bancshares and Potomac Bancshares”s revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Northpointe Bancshares	$187.14 million	2.14	N/A	N/A	N/A
Potomac Bancshares	$48.09 million	1.26	$6.80 million	$1.64	8.93

Potomac Bancshares has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Northpointe Bancshares.

Profitability

This table compares Northpointe Bancshares and Potomac Bancshares’ net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Northpointe Bancshares	N/A	N/A	N/A
Potomac Bancshares	N/A	N/A	N/A

Dividends

Northpointe Bancshares pays an annual dividend of $0.10 per share and has a dividend yield of 0.9%. Potomac Bancshares pays an annual dividend of $0.48 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.3%. Potomac Bancshares pays out 29.3% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

Summary

Northpointe Bancshares beats Potomac Bancshares on 6 of the 9 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Northpointe Bancshares

We are a bank holding company headquartered in Grand Rapids, Michigan and registered under the Bank Holding Company Act of 1956, as amended (the “BHC Act”). We operate our business primarily through our wholly-owned banking subsidiary, Northpointe Bank. We emphasize to our employees and clients that our specialized business lines differentiate us as a business that has the added benefit of being a bank. Our Bank was founded in 1999 as a focused mortgage portfolio lender primarily operating in the midwestern states of Michigan, Ohio and Indiana. Since then, we have evolved, and our business now offers a nationwide mortgage purchase program, residential mortgage loans, digital deposit banking to our retail customers and custodial deposit services to our loan servicing clients, which we believe is unique for a bank. We believe we are recognized in the market for the methods we utilize to acquire new borrowers and for our ability to provide simple, fast, and trusted digital solutions to borrowers in the mortgage banking marketplace. Our delivery systems are primarily digital and are available to clients nationwide; and we provide our staff with loan production offices across 23 cities in 15 states and support them through our centralized operating center in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Our nationwide presence has enabled us to have clients in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. As of September 30, 2024, we had $5.4 billion in assets, $4.8 billion in gross loans, including held for investment (“HFI”) and held for sale (“HFS”), $3.5 billion of deposits and $454.8 million of stockholders’ equity. We have originated more than $190 billion in home loan financings over the last 10 years. In the large and fragmented mortgage marketplace, we believe we are well-positioned as a specialty bank that uses a widely accepted and growing digitally-enabled platform to serve the borrowing and payment needs of increasingly sophisticated mortgage warehouse MPP clients and the rapidly evolving demands of professional mortgage originators and retail borrowers. Our strategy is to primarily operate four major business channels that offer products which we believe requires differentiated expertise in order to originate, hold and service those products. We believe our specialized credit, technology and payment processing expertise allows us to successfully compete and achieve the desired profitability in the channels in which we operate. We have expertise in the below businesses, which are reflected in our two primary business channels: 1) Mortgage Warehouse, or Mortgage Purchase Program (“MPP”) — our mortgage warehouse revolving purchase facility, which we refer to as MPP, utilizes proprietary software and payment technology which is integrated with our credit underwriting process to manage the high velocity of credit extension draws and repayments that result from extensive use by our MPP clients of their revolving purchase facilities. We process approximately $2.2 billion in funding draws/repayments per month; and have experienced no charge-offs in our 15-year history of MPP lending. 2) Retail Banking, including Residential Lending and our All-in-One (“AIO”) Loan — are a rapidly growing category of specialized first mortgage revolving (HELOC-styled) loans, linked by one account to a demand deposit bank account of the borrower. An AIO account requires us to accurately process a high frequency of payments, including changes in payment amounts associated with variable rate structures, revolving loan features and constantly changing balances of contractually linked demand deposit accounts. a. Specialized Mortgage Loan & Deposit Account Servicing — requires highly developed operating skills and a customized platform capable of: (a) being approved and rated by major agencies to handle subservicing AIO-style loans, (b) being a well-capitalized FDIC-insured depository institution able to accept deposits, and (c) documenting significant compliance requirements. We believe very few financial institutions have been able to offer and successfully conduct the servicing of the variable rate, varying balance and higher velocity of payments related to such linked loan and deposit accounts. We further believe we are the largest of the limited number of entities that originate, hold and service these types of loans for their own balance sheet, as well as being rated and approved for servicing such products for other issuers. b. Digital Deposit Banking — requires delivery of easy to use, real-time branchless banking to retail deposit customers nationwide with a technologically competitive delivery framework. While many financial institutions offer digital banking, our digital-only focus has allowed us to remain contemporary without being “a bleeding edge” provider. We provide our digital banking services along with attractive rates to a focused digital banking customer subset that fit our specific balance sheet strategy. Our principal executive office is located at 3333 Deposit Drive Northeast, Grand Rapids, Michigan.

About Potomac Bancshares

Potomac Bancshares, Inc. operates as the bank holding company for Bank of Charles Town that provides various banking products and services to individuals and businesses. The company offers checking, savings, and individual retirement accounts; and certificates of deposit (CD). It also provides personal loans, including new and used vehicle, home equity, unsecured home improvement and personal, retail equipment, and lot loans, as well as loans secured by CD, and home equity lines of credit; commercial loans for building or office purchases, commercial real estate and construction, and production and administrative equipment purchases; lines of credit; mortgage, commercial, term, residential and commercial construction, commercial real estate, and agricultural loans; and credit and debit cards. In addition, the company offers Card Pay, cash management, merchant, financial planning, trust and estate, investment management, wealth management, full-service brokerage, retirement and insurance planning and products, asset allocation and management, and college planning services, as well as telephone, mobile, and online banking services. Potomac Bancshares, Inc. was founded in 1871 and is based in Charles Town, West Virginia.