Owner Scorecard
An independent research publication · records as of August 17, 2026

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SFST, Southern First Bancshares Inc.

Banks financial

The Bank is a commercial bank with eight retail offices located in the Greenville, Columbia, and Charleston markets of South Carolina, three retail offices in the Raleigh, Greensboro, and Charlotte markets of North Carolina and one retail office in Atlanta, Georgia.

We operate our Bank using a simple and efficient style of banking that is focused on providing core banking products and services to our clients through a team of talented and experienced bankers.

We refer to this model as "ClientFIRST" and it is structured to deliver superior client service via "relationship teams," which provide each client with a specific banker contact and a consistent support team responsible for all of the client's banking needs.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
SFST · Southern First Bancshares Inc.
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$118M
+26.5% YoY · 2% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue $118M 5-yr avg $102M
Return on equity 8% 5-yr avg 9%
Return on tangible equity 8% 5-yr avg 9%
Efficiency ratio 64% 5-yr avg 67%
Equity / assets 8.4% 5-yr avg 8.3%

Next report Est. 10/28–11/4 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~32 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 9%, above 12% in only 3 of 10 years). It runs at a 64% 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.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25
Income statement
$54M$60M$70M$82M$107M$105M$107M$88M$93M$118MRevenueRevenue
$51M$61M$77M$93M$95M$93M$118M$178M$201M$211MInterest incomeInt. inc.
$8M$10M$17M$25M$15M$5M$20M$100M——Interest expenseInt. exp.
$43M$51M$60M$67M$80M$88M$98M$78M$81M$105MNet interest incomeNet int.
$11M$9M$10M$15M$27M$17M$10M$10M$12M$13MNoninterest incomeFee inc.
$2M$2M$2M$2M$30M($12M)$6M$1M$125K$3MCredit-loss provisionProvision
$20M$24M$29M$35M$24M$61M$38M$17M$20M$40MPretax incomePretax
$13M$13M$22M$28M$18M$47M$29M$13M$16M$30MNet incomeNet inc.
36%45%22%21%23%23%24%23%22%23%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
1.0%0.8%1.2%1.2%0.7%1.6%0.8%0.3%0.4%0.7%Return on assetsROA
12%9%13%14%8%17%10%4%5%8%Return on equityROE
12%9%13%14%8%17%10%4%5%8%Retained to equityRetained/eq
12%9%13%14%8%17%10%4%5%8%Return on tangible equityROTCE
58%57%57%54%50%54%59%79%79%64%Efficiency ratioEffic.
($140M)($239M)($302M)($276M)($231M)($411M)($793M)($379M)($29M)($206M)Investing cash flowInv. cash
$107M$267M$251M$312M$183M$399M$746M$346M$10M$283MFinancing cash flowFin. cash
($16M)$46M($19M)$55M($27M)$67M$4M($15M)$7M$107MChange in cashΔ cash
Balance sheet
$1.2B$1.4B$1.7B$1.9B$2.1B$2.5B$3.3B$3.6B$3.6B$3.8BLoans held for investmentLoans
$15M$16M$16M$17M$44M$30M$39M$41M$40M$42MCredit-loss allowanceAllowance
$1.3B$1.6B$1.9B$2.3B$2.5B$2.9B$3.7B$4.1B$4.1B$4.4BTotal assetsAssets
$1.1B$1.4B$1.6B$1.9B$2.1B$2.6B$3.1B$3.4B$3.4B$3.7BDepositsDeposits
$1.2B$1.5B$1.7B$2.1B$2.3B$2.6B$3.4B$3.7B$3.8B$4.0BTotal liabilitiesTotal liab.
$110M$150M$174M$206M$228M$278M$295M$312M$330M$369MShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
6.7M7.4M7.7M7.8M7.8M8.0M8.1M8.1M8.1M8.2MShares out (diluted)Shares
$1.94$1.76$2.88$3.58$2.34$5.85$3.61$1.66$1.91$3.72EPS (diluted)EPS
$16.35$20.25$22.48$26.49$29.18$34.79$36.49$38.68$40.71$45.18Book value / shareBVPS
$16.35$20.25$22.48$26.49$29.18$34.79$36.49$38.68$40.71$45.18Tangible book / shareTBVPS
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+6.8%/yr+1.1%/yr
Owner earnings / share+5.1%/yr+9.1%/yr
EPS+7.5%/yr+9.7%/yr
Capital spending / share−23.7%/yr−40.2%/yr
Book value / share+12.0%/yr+9.1%/yr
III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

  • Return on equity 8%
    Below the cost of equity
    Net income $30M ÷ equity $369M
    Industry peers: median 8%
    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.

  • Return on tangible equity 8%
    Modest
    Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill $0 − intangibles $0)
    Industry peers: median 9%
    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 64%
    Efficient (<65%)
    Noninterest expense $76M ÷ (net interest income + fees)
    Industry peers: median 64%
    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) 8.4%
    Adequate
    Equity $369M ÷ assets $4.4B
    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 84%
    Deposit-funded
    Deposits $3.7B ÷ assets $4.4B
    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) 3%
    Low
    Provision for credit losses $3M ÷ net interest income $105M
    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

  • Deposit franchise 20%
    Solid core deposits
    Noninterest-bearing deposits $732M ÷ deposits $3.7B
    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 —
    Not enough data
    What this means

    Not derivable from the filings' structured data — some filers carry recoveries only on segment axes, and a gross figure dressed as net would be a wrong number.

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 yearChief executivePay, as filed“Actually paid”Owner earnings
2021R. Arthur Seaver, Jr.$1.3M$1.9M$76M
2022R. Arthur Seaver, Jr.$931k$648k$47M
2023R. Arthur Seaver, Jr.$805k$763k$16M
2024R. Arthur Seaver, Jr.$1.1M$1.1M$25M
2025R. Arthur Seaver, Jr.$1.1M$1.2M$30M

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 ownership6.9%

    The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.

  • Stock-based compensation$2M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 1.9% of revenue, equal to 1.6% 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.

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.

CompanyRevenuelatest FY, USDROEmedian over the recordROTCEmedian over the recordEfficiencymedian over the recordNII / assetsmedian over the recordNoninterest-bearing sharelatest FY
SHBIShore Bancshares Inc$225M8%9%64%3.0%29%
SMBKSmartFinancial Inc.$200M7%9%69%2.9%21%
PFISPeoples Financial Services Corp.$188M9%11%62%2.9%22%
BCALCalifornia BanCorp$180M8%9%65%3.9%35%
BFCBank First Corporation$174M12%15%50%3.2%27%
CARECarter Bankshares Inc.$153M7%7%75%2.7%15%
SFSTSouthern First Bancshares Inc.$118M9%9%58%3.0%20%
FNLCFirst Bancorp Inc (ME)$95M12%14%53%2.5%—
Group median—8%9%63%2.9%22%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

A 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 Southern First Bancshares Inc.’s record justifies.

$
The assumptions

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.

Price / tangible book—
Justified by the return—
Normalized return on tangible equity9%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
Graham’s price gate—

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.

Tangible book $369M on 9M shares, a 9% 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.

Weigh SFST against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Southern First Bancshares Inc. (SFST), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/SFST, data as of 2026-08-17.

Manual order: ← SFNC its page in the Manual SG →

Industry order: ← SFNC the Banks chapter SHBI →