Head to Head Comparison: Community Financial (NASDAQ:TCFC) & Metro Bank (OTCMKTS:MBNKF)

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

Analyst Recommendations

This is a summary of current recommendations and price targets for Metro Bank and Community Financial, as reported by MarketBeat.com.

	Sell Ratings	Hold Ratings	Buy Ratings	Strong Buy Ratings	Rating Score
Metro Bank	1	1	0	0	1.50
Community Financial	0	1	1	0	2.50

Community Financial has a consensus price target of $45.00, indicating a potential upside of 66.11%. Given Community Financial’s stronger consensus rating and higher probable upside, analysts plainly believe Community Financial is more favorable than Metro Bank.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

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

Risk & Volatility

Metro Bank has a beta of 1.34, suggesting that its share price is 34% more volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, Community Financial has a beta of 0.76, suggesting that its share price is 24% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Valuation and Earnings

This table compares Metro Bank and Community Financial’s top-line revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Metro Bank	$845.12 million	0.28	-$89.92 million	N/A	N/A
Community Financial	$82.52 million	1.86	$28.32 million	$5.20	5.21

Community Financial has lower revenue, but higher earnings than Metro Bank.

Profitability

This table compares Metro Bank and Community Financial’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Metro Bank	N/A	N/A	N/A
Community Financial	29.65%	15.94%	1.26%

Summary

Community Financial beats Metro Bank on 10 of the 12 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Metro Bank

Metro Bank Holdings PLC operates as the bank holding company for Metro Bank PLC that provides various banking products and services in the United Kingdom. It offers personal banking products and services, including current, cash, and foreign currency accounts; savings; residential and buy-to-let mortgages; overdrafts; credit cards and personal loans; pet insurance; and safe deposit box services. The company also provides business banking products and services comprising business bank, commercial and community current, foreign currency, and insolvency practitioner accounts; deposit accounts, such as business and community instant access deposit, business notice, client premium and fixed term deposit, and business and community fixed term deposit accounts; insurance products; and business and commercial loans and overdrafts, asset and invoice financing, bounce back loans, business credit cards, and recovery loan schemes. In addition, it offers private banking products and services, such as private bank, savings, foreign currency, and money management accounts; mortgages; credit cards; and partnership loans. The company was founded in 2010 and is based in London, the United Kingdom.

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.