MRBK vs. AROW, SMBK, ALRS, SHBI, GNTY, NEWT, CARE, PFIS, CBNK, 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), Guaranty Bancshares (GNTY), NewtekOne (NEWT), Carter Bankshares (CARE), Peoples Financial Services (PFIS), Capital Bancorp (CBNK), and Financial Institutions (FISI). These companies are all part of the "national commercial banks" industry.
Arrow Financial (NASDAQ:AROW) and Meridian (NASDAQ:MRBK) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the better investment? We will compare the two companies based on the strength of their earnings, profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation, institutional ownership, community ranking, media sentiment, risk and dividends.
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.
Arrow Financial pays an annual dividend of $1.08 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.3%. Meridian pays an annual dividend of $0.50 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.8%. Arrow Financial pays out 62.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Meridian pays out 47.6% 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. Arrow Financial has increased its dividend for 6 consecutive years and Meridian has increased its dividend for 3 consecutive years. Meridian is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and lower payout ratio.
Arrow Financial has a net margin of 14.34% compared to Arrow Financial's net margin of 6.75%. Meridian's return on equity of 7.89% beat Arrow Financial's return on equity.
Arrow Financial has a beta of 0.72, indicating that its stock price is 28% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Meridian has a beta of 0.7, indicating that its stock price is 30% less volatile than the S&P 500.
Meridian has a consensus target price of $13.00, suggesting a potential upside of 25.73%. Given Arrow Financial's higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Meridian is more favorable than Arrow Financial.
In the previous week, Arrow Financial and Arrow Financial both had 3 articles in the media. Arrow Financial's average media sentiment score of 1.25 beat Meridian's score of 1.25 indicating that Meridian is being referred to more favorably in the news media.
46.7% of Arrow Financial shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 58.6% of Meridian shares are owned by institutional investors. 3.6% of Arrow Financial shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 14.0% of Meridian shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, endowments and large money managers believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.
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.
Summary
Arrow Financial beats Meridian on 10 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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