Regions Financial (NYSE:RF) & Dime Community Bancshares (NASDAQ:DCOM) Head to Head Review

Dime Community Bancshares (NASDAQ:DCOM) and Regions Financial (NYSE:RF) are both finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two businesses based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, dividends, institutional ownership, profitability, risk, valuation and earnings.

Analyst Ratings

This is a breakdown of recent recommendations and price targets for Dime Community Bancshares and Regions Financial, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Dime Community Bancshares	0	2	3	1	2.83
Regions Financial	3	9	7	0	2.21

Dime Community Bancshares currently has a consensus target price of $39.75, indicating a potential upside of 10.07%. Regions Financial has a consensus target price of $30.12, indicating a potential upside of 6.77%. Given Dime Community Bancshares’ stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts clearly believe Dime Community Bancshares is more favorable than Regions Financial.

Profitability

This table compares Dime Community Bancshares and Regions Financial’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Dime Community Bancshares	15.15%	9.12%	0.83%
Regions Financial	23.13%	12.70%	1.40%

Institutional & Insider Ownership

75.3% of Dime Community Bancshares shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 79.4% of Regions Financial shares are owned by institutional investors. 7.4% of Dime Community Bancshares shares are owned by insiders. Comparatively, 0.3% of Regions Financial shares are owned by insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, hedge funds and large money managers believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Dividends

Dime Community Bancshares pays an annual dividend of $1.00 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.8%. Regions Financial pays an annual dividend of $1.06 per share and has a dividend yield of 3.8%. Dime Community Bancshares pays out 37.6% of its earnings in the form of a dividend. Regions Financial pays out 44.2% 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. Dime Community Bancshares has increased its dividend for 2 consecutive years and Regions Financial has increased its dividend for 12 consecutive years. Regions Financial is clearly the better dividend stock, given its higher yield and longer track record of dividend growth.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Dime Community Bancshares and Regions Financial”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Dime Community Bancshares	$472.68 million	3.35	$110.68 million	$2.66	13.58
Regions Financial	$9.61 billion	2.54	$2.16 billion	$2.40	11.75

Regions Financial has higher revenue and earnings than Dime Community Bancshares. Regions Financial is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Dime Community Bancshares, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Volatility & Risk

Dime Community Bancshares has a beta of 1, suggesting that its stock price has a similar volatility profile to the S&P 500.Comparatively, Regions Financial has a beta of 1.02, suggesting that its stock price is 2% more volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Regions Financial beats Dime Community Bancshares on 10 of the 18 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Dime Community Bancshares

Dime Community Bancshares, Inc. operates as the holding company for Dime Community Bank that engages in the provision of various commercial banking and financial services. The company accepts time, savings, and demand deposits from the businesses, consumers, and local municipalities. It also offers commercial real estate loans; multi-family mortgage loans; residential mortgage loans; letters of credit; secured and unsecured commercial and consumer loans; lines of credit; home equity loans; and construction and land loans. In addition, the company invests in Federal Home Loan Bank, Federal National Mortgage Association, Government National Mortgage Association, and Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation mortgage-backed securities, collateralized mortgage obligations, and other asset backed securities; U.S. Treasury securities; New York state and local municipal obligations; U.S. government-sponsored enterprise securities; and corporate bonds. Further, it offers certificate of deposit account registry services and insured cash sweep programs; federal deposit insurance corporation insurance; merchant credit and debit card processing, automated teller machines, cash management services, lockbox processing, online banking services, remote deposit capture, safe deposit boxes, and individual retirement accounts; investment products and services through a third-party broker dealer; and title insurance broker services for small and medium sized businesses, and municipal and consumer relationships. The company was founded in 1910 and is headquartered in Hauppauge, New York.

About Regions Financial

Regions Financial Corporation, a financial holding company, provides banking and bank-related services to individual and corporate customers. It operates through three segments: Corporate Bank, Consumer Bank, and Wealth Management. The Corporate Bank segment offers commercial banking services, such as commercial and industrial, commercial real estate, and investor real estate lending; equipment lease financing; deposit products; and securities underwriting and placement, loan syndication and placement, foreign exchange, derivatives, merger and acquisition, and other advisory services. It serves corporate, middle market, and commercial real estate developers and investors. The Consumer Bank segment provides consumer banking products and services related to residential first mortgages, home equity lines and loans, consumer credit cards, and other consumer loans, as well as deposits. The Wealth Management segment offers credit related products, and retirement and savings solutions; and trust and investment management, asset management, and estate planning services to individuals, businesses, governmental institutions, and non-profit entities. It also provides investment and insurance products; low-income housing tax credit corporate fund syndication services; and other specialty financing services. The company was founded in 1971 and is headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.