Contrasting Friendly Hills Bancorp (OTCMKTS:FHLB) and Community Financial (NASDAQ:TCFC)

Friendly Hills Bancorp (OTCMKTS:FHLB) and Community Financial (NASDAQ:TCFC) are both small-cap financial services companies, but which is the superior stock? We will contrast the two companies based on the strength of their analyst recommendations, institutional ownership, dividends, risk, earnings, profitability and valuation.

Risk & Volatility

Friendly Hills Bancorp has a beta of 0.68, indicating that its stock price is 32% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Community Financial has a beta of 0.76, indicating that its stock price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Profitability

This table compares Friendly Hills Bancorp and Community Financial’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Friendly Hills Bancorp	-4.06%	-2.05%	-0.18%
Community Financial	29.65%	15.94%	1.26%

Analyst Ratings

This is a summary of recent ratings and price targets for Friendly Hills Bancorp and Community Financial, as provided by MarketBeat.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Friendly Hills Bancorp	0	0	0	0	N/A
Community Financial	0	1	1	0	2.50

Community Financial has a consensus target price of $45.00, suggesting a potential upside of 66.11%. Given Community Financial’s higher possible upside, analysts clearly believe Community Financial is more favorable than Friendly Hills Bancorp.

Earnings and Valuation

This table compares Friendly Hills Bancorp and Community Financial’s top-line revenue, earnings per share and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Friendly Hills Bancorp	$11.04 million	2.50	-$990,000.00	($0.22)	-30.09
Community Financial	$82.52 million	1.86	$28.32 million	$5.20	5.21

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

Insider & Institutional Ownership

37.8% of Community Financial shares are held by institutional investors. 8.0% of Community Financial shares are held by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company will outperform the market over the long term.

Summary

Community Financial beats Friendly Hills Bancorp on 12 of the 13 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Friendly Hills Bancorp

Friendly Hills Bancorp operates as a bank holding company for First Pacific Bank that provides various financial and banking products and services. It offers deposit products, including checking, savings, money market, NOW, sweep, and individual retirement accounts, as well as term certificates of deposit. The company also provides loan products, such as real estate construction, 1-4 family, commercial real estate, commercial and industrial, consumer, business expansion, small business administration, automobile, and personal loans, as well as machinery, technology solutions, commercial vehicle, and equipment financing; working capital and lines of credit; letters of credit; home equity lines of credit; truck financing solutions for independent owner operators and small fleet owners; business credit cards; and overdraft services. In addition, it offers business, cash and treasury management, insured cash sweep, remote deposit capture, automated clearing house, courier, wire transfer, Positive Pay, specialty, and online and mobile banking services; automated teller machines; and debit and credit cards. The company serves small and middle-market businesses, and individuals located primarily in the Los Angeles, Orange, and San Bernardino County areas of California. It operates through full-service branches located in Whittier, Santa Fe Springs, Orange, Redlands, and San Diego, California. Friendly Hills Bancorp was founded in 2006 and is based in Whittier, California.

About Community Financial

The Community Financial Corporation operates as the bank holding company for Community Bank of the Chesapeake that provides commercial and retail banking services to individuals and businesses. The company offers demand, savings, money market, and time deposit accounts, as well as certificates of deposit; and commercial real estate and other non-residential real estate, residential first mortgage, residential rental mortgage, construction and land development, home equity and second mortgage, and commercial equipment loans, as well as commercial loan products, including term loans, demand loans, and lines of credit; consumer loans, such as loans for automobiles, boats, recreational vehicles, and trucks, home improvement loans, secured and unsecured personal lines of credit, and credit card loans. It also provides safe deposit box, night depository, cash vault, automated clearinghouse transaction, wire transfer, automated teller machine (ATM), online and telephone banking, retail and business mobile banking, remote deposit capture, reciprocal deposit, merchant card, credit monitoring, investment, positive pay, payroll, account reconciliation, bill pay, credit card, and lockbox services. The company was formerly known as Tri-County Financial Corporation and changed its name to The Community Financial Corporation in October 2013. The Community Financial Corporation was founded in 1950 and is headquartered in Waldorf, Maryland.