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BFST, Business First Bancshares Inc.
A balance-sheet business, read on book value, net interest margin and credit losses rather than an earnings multiple.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report Est. 10/27–11/6 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~31 days after · the wire records it on arrival
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not an earnings multiple, and the worst year of credit losses matters more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has sat below the cost of equity (median 8%, above 12% in only 1 of 10 years). It runs at a 63% efficiency ratio, about average. The cycle and the loan book decide this one; weigh the recession years in the record, not the average, and read the 10-K.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||||||||
| $43M | $50M | $70M | $91M | $149M | $190M | $229M | $252M | $272M | $325M | RevenueRevenue |
| $43M | $52M | $76M | $103M | $150M | $170M | $236M | $353M | $415M | $465M | Interest incomeInt. inc. |
| $6M | $7M | $14M | $23M | $22M | $17M | $37M | $138M | $187M | $192M | Interest expenseInt. exp. |
| $38M | $44M | $62M | $80M | $128M | $154M | $200M | $215M | $227M | $273M | Net interest incomeNet int. |
| $5M | $6M | $8M | $11M | $22M | $36M | $29M | $37M | $44M | $52M | Noninterest incomeFee inc. |
| $1M | $4M | $2M | $3M | $11M | $8M | $11M | $4M | $11M | $11M | Credit-loss provisionProvision |
| $7M | $9M | $17M | $30M | $37M | $65M | $69M | $91M | $83M | $110M | Pretax incomePretax |
| $5M | $5M | $14M | $24M | $30M | $52M | $54M | $71M | $65M | $88M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 24% | 46% | 19% | 20% | 18% | 19% | 21% | 22% | 22% | 20% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||||||||
| 0.5% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 1.0% | 0.7% | 1.1% | 0.9% | 1.1% | 0.8% | 1.1% | Return on assetsROA |
| 5% | 3% | 5% | 8% | 7% | 12% | 9% | 11% | 8% | 10% | Return on equityROE |
| 4% | 2% | 4% | 7% | 5% | 10% | 7% | 9% | 6% | 8% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| 5% | 3% | 7% | 10% | 9% | 14% | 11% | 13% | 10% | 12% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| 82% | 74% | 72% | 64% | 68% | 62% | 65% | 62% | 65% | 63% | Efficiency ratioEffic. |
| $1M | $2M | $3M | $5M | $8M | $9M | $11M | $13M | $15M | $17M | Dividends paidDiv. paid |
| $863K | $33K | $0 | $3M | $6M | $11M | $0 | $0 | $0 | $4M | BuybacksBuybacks |
| ($33M) | ($153M) | ($170M) | ($192M) | ($475M) | ($675M) | ($701M) | ($521M) | ($295M) | ($282M) | Investing cash flowInv. cash |
| $26M | $211M | $140M | $161M | $506M | $538M | $715M | $504M | $326M | $282M | Financing cash flowFin. cash |
| $1M | $65M | ($12M) | ($7M) | $60M | ($81M) | $84M | $73M | $93M | $92M | Change in cashΔ cash |
| Balance sheet | ||||||||||
| — | $975M | $1.5B | $1.7B | $3.0B | $3.2B | $4.6B | $5.0B | $6.0B | $6.2B | Loans held for investmentLoans |
| $8M | $9M | $11M | $12M | $22M | $29M | $38M | $40M | $55M | $54M | Credit-loss allowanceAllowance |
| $1.1B | $1.3B | $2.1B | $2.3B | $4.2B | $4.7B | $6.0B | $6.6B | $7.9B | $8.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $933M | $1.1B | $1.7B | $1.8B | $3.6B | $4.1B | $4.8B | $5.2B | $6.5B | $6.7B | DepositsDeposits |
| $7M | $7M | $49M | $48M | $54M | $60M | $89M | $88M | $122M | $121M | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $992M | $1.1B | $1.8B | $2.0B | $3.8B | $4.3B | $5.4B | $5.9B | $7.1B | $7.3B | Total liabilitiesTotal liab. |
| $114M | $180M | $260M | $285M | $410M | $433M | $580M | $644M | $799M | $897M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||||||||
| 7.3M | 8.0M | 11.5M | 13.7M | 18.2M | 20.6M | 22.8M | 25.3M | 26.5M | 29.5M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $0.70 | $0.61 | $1.22 | $1.74 | $1.64 | $2.53 | $2.38 | $2.81 | $2.46 | $2.97 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.14 | $0.22 | $0.28 | $0.37 | $0.41 | $0.46 | $0.47 | $0.50 | $0.56 | $0.57 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $15.52 | $22.48 | $22.52 | $20.85 | $22.47 | $21.00 | $25.44 | $25.47 | $30.22 | $30.36 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $14.28 | $21.38 | $17.55 | $16.82 | $18.99 | $17.51 | $20.94 | $21.50 | $24.98 | $25.76 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
The diluted share count moved ×1.44 into 2018 — shares issued, not a split the totals corroborate — and the per-share figures carry the counts as filed.
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +7.2%/yr | +6.1%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +14.5%/yr | +16.6%/yr |
| EPS | +17.5%/yr | +12.6%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +16.5%/yr | +6.7%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | −39.0%/yr | −57.6%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.7%/yr | +6.2%/yr |
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 10%Below the cost of equityNet income $88M ÷ equity $897MIndustry peers: median 11%
What this means
The bank's north star, what it earns on shareholders' capital. Cost of equity is roughly 10%, so a return durably above that builds value and below it destroys it. One year is noisy; the durability across a full credit cycle is what counts.
- ModestNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill $121M − intangibles $14M)Industry peers: median 12%
What this means
The cleaner return, stripping out the goodwill paid for past acquisitions. This is the number a buyer of the whole bank actually earns on the hard capital.
- Efficiency ratio 63%Efficient (<65%)Noninterest expense $203M ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 63%
What this means
The share of revenue eaten by running costs; lower is better, and below about 60% marks a genuinely efficient operation. A low ratio held for years is the operational side of a moat.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 10.9%Well capitalizedEquity $897M ÷ assets $8.2B
What this means
A plain-English leverage read: how much of the balance sheet is the owners' own money. This is a rough proxy; the regulatory figure is the CET1 ratio, which is risk-weighted and reported in the filing. The point is the same, how much loss the bank can absorb before depositors are at risk.
- Deposit funding 82%Deposit-fundedDeposits $6.7B ÷ assets $8.2B
What this means
Low-cost, sticky deposits are a bank's real moat, the cheap raw material it lends out at a spread. A bank funded mostly by deposits earns more durably than one that rents its money in the wholesale market.
- Credit cost (provision / NII) 4%LowProvision for credit losses $11M ÷ net interest income $273M
What this means
What the bank set aside this year against loans going bad, as a share of its lending income. This swings hard with the cycle, low in good years and spiking in recessions, so read it across the record, not in one year. Disciplined underwriting shows up as low, stable provisions through a downturn.
The franchise and the credit cycle
- Solid core depositsNoninterest-bearing deposits $1.3B ÷ deposits $6.7B · pays 3.21% on the interest-bearing rest (avg of year-ends)
What this means
The share of deposits the bank pays nothing for — checking accounts that stay through rate cycles. This is the deposit moat in one number: a high share means cheap, sticky raw material for lending; a low share means the funding reprices with every rate move. Buffett's Wells letter is built on exactly this economics.
- Net charge-offs 0.22%Disciplined bookCharge-offs net of recoveries $13M ÷ loans $6.1B (avg of year-ends) · worst year on record 0.37% · allowance held at 0.87% of loans
What this means
Loans actually written off, net of what was later recovered — the realized truth the provisions were guessing at. Graham's rule applies doubly here: the worst year in the record, not the average, is the read, because a loan book's sins are committed in the good years and confessed in the bad ones.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | David R. Melville | $2.0M | $2.2M | $52M |
| 2022 | David R. Melville | $2.5M | $2.0M | $65M |
| 2023 | David R. Melville | $2.4M | $2.4M | $86M |
| 2024 | David R. Melville | $3.1M | $3.1M | $60M |
| 2025 | David R. Melville | $2.6M | $2.6M | $92M |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership5.7%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio33:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
- Stock-based compensation$6M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 1.8% of revenue, equal to 1.9% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- How much of the deposit base could leave overnight?≈43.29% — the sentence's $2.9 billion over the $6.7B Deposits line (XBRL, FY2025)
“Total uninsured deposits were $2.9 billion, or 43.2% of deposits as of December 31, 2025 compared to $2.8 billion, or 43.4%, or total deposits as of December 31, 2024.”verify →
- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Credit & receivables, Acquisitions as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Banks
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each column names the period it is read over; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.
| Company | Revenuelatest FY, USD | ROEmedian over the record | ROTCEmedian over the record | Efficiencymedian over the record | NII / assetsmedian over the record | Noninterest-bearing sharelatest FY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FMBHFirst Mid Bancshares Inc. | $349M | 9% | 12% | 63% | 2.9% | 22% |
| OSBCOld Second Bancorp Inc. | $339M | 11% | 12% | 62% | 3.4% | 31% |
| AMALAmalgamated Financial Corp. | $329M | 12% | 12% | 57% | 3.1% | 41% |
| UVSPUnivest Financial Corporation | $328M | 9% | 11% | 63% | 2.8% | 20% |
| MSBIMidland States Bancorp Inc. | $325M | 7% | 11% | 66% | 3.2% | 19% |
| BFSTBusiness First Bancshares Inc. | $325M | 8% | 10% | 65% | 3.3% | 20% |
| EGBNEagle Bancorp Inc. | $299M | 11% | 12% | 41% | 2.9% | 16% |
| CPFCentral Pacific Financial Corp New | $293M | 11% | 12% | 64% | 3.0% | — |
| Group median | — | 10% | 12% | 63% | 3.0% | 20% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookA bank is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Business First Bancshares Inc.’s record justifies.
Tangible book / share, delivered8%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). A bank earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for a bank.
Enter a price above to run it.
Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Tangible book $761M on 33M shares, a 10% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the bank keeps earning that return; a credit cycle, a rate shock or a bad acquisition changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Manual order: ← BFS its page in the Manual BG →
Industry order: ← BFC the Banks chapter BHB →