Analyzing Jeffersonville Bancorp (OTCMKTS:JFBC) and Citizens & Northern (NASDAQ:CZNC)

Citizens & Northern (NASDAQ:CZNC) and Jeffersonville Bancorp (OTCMKTS:JFBC) are both small-cap finance companies, but which is the superior stock? We will compare the two businesses based on the strength of their institutional ownership, dividends, profitability, analyst recommendations, valuation, earnings and risk.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Citizens & Northern and Jeffersonville Bancorp”s gross revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Citizens & Northern	$140.31 million	3.24	$23.43 million	$1.09	23.27
Jeffersonville Bancorp	$34.24 million	3.43	$12.55 million	$3.09	8.98

Citizens & Northern has higher revenue and earnings than Jeffersonville Bancorp. Jeffersonville Bancorp is trading at a lower price-to-earnings ratio than Citizens & Northern, indicating that it is currently the more affordable of the two stocks.

Institutional and Insider Ownership

30.8% of Citizens & Northern shares are held by institutional investors. 4.7% of Citizens & Northern shares are held by company insiders. Comparatively, 8.4% of Jeffersonville Bancorp shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that hedge funds, large money managers and endowments believe a stock will outperform the market over the long term.

Dividends

Citizens & Northern pays an annual dividend of $1.12 per share and has a dividend yield of 4.4%. Jeffersonville Bancorp pays an annual dividend of $0.80 per share and has a dividend yield of 2.9%. Citizens & Northern pays out 102.8% of its earnings in the form of a dividend, suggesting it may not have sufficient earnings to cover its dividend payment in the future. Jeffersonville Bancorp pays out 25.9% of its earnings in the form of a dividend.

Profitability

This table compares Citizens & Northern and Jeffersonville Bancorp’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Citizens & Northern	9.67%	7.47%	0.81%
Jeffersonville Bancorp	37.66%	12.60%	1.94%

Analyst Recommendations

This is a breakdown of current recommendations for Citizens & Northern and Jeffersonville Bancorp, as reported by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Citizens & Northern	0	4	0	0	2.00
Jeffersonville Bancorp	0	0	0	0	0.00

Citizens & Northern presently has a consensus target price of $23.50, indicating a potential downside of 7.37%. Given Citizens & Northern’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, research analysts plainly believe Citizens & Northern is more favorable than Jeffersonville Bancorp.

Risk & Volatility

Citizens & Northern has a beta of 0.41, meaning that its share price is 59% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Jeffersonville Bancorp has a beta of 0.14, meaning that its share price is 86% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Summary

Citizens & Northern beats Jeffersonville Bancorp on 8 of the 15 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Citizens & Northern

Citizens & Northern Corp. is a holding company, which engages in community banking. It provides a full range of banking and mortgage services to individual and corporate customers in North Central Pennsylvania and Southern New York State. The firm’s lending products include mortgage loans, commercial loans, and consumer loans. Its deposit products include various types of checking accounts, passbook and statement savings, money market accounts, interest checking accounts, individual retirement accounts, and certificates of deposit. The company was founded in 1864 and is headquartered in Wellsboro, PA.

About Jeffersonville Bancorp

Jeffersonville Bancorp operates as the bank holding company for Jeff Bank that provides community banking services to individuals, small businesses, and local municipal governments primarily in Sullivan County, New York. The company offers various deposit products, such as checking, money market, savings, and NOW, as well as demand and time deposits. It also offers commercial mortgage, farmland, construction, real estate, agricultural, residential mortgage, home equity, consumer, installment, and other consumer loans. The company was founded in 1913 and is based in Jeffersonville, New York.