Contrasting Sterling Bancorp (NASDAQ:SBT) & NSTS Bancorp (NASDAQ:NSTS)

Valuation & Earnings

This table compares Sterling Bancorp and NSTS Bancorp”s revenue, earnings per share (EPS) and valuation.

	Gross Revenue	Price/Sales Ratio	Net Income	Earnings Per Share	Price/Earnings Ratio
Sterling Bancorp	$59.26 million	4.19	$7.41 million	$0.13	36.54
NSTS Bancorp	$6.26 million	9.91	-$3.96 million	($0.90)	-13.10

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

Profitability

This table compares Sterling Bancorp and NSTS Bancorp’s net margins, return on equity and return on assets.

	Net Margins	Return on Equity	Return on Assets
Sterling Bancorp	4.45%	1.83%	0.25%
NSTS Bancorp	-48.24%	-5.83%	-1.71%

Risk and Volatility

Sterling Bancorp has a beta of 0.52, indicating that its stock price is 48% less volatile than the S&P 500. Comparatively, NSTS Bancorp has a beta of 0.07, indicating that its stock price is 93% less volatile than the S&P 500.

Insider & Institutional Ownership

26.4% of Sterling Bancorp shares are owned by institutional investors. Comparatively, 23.7% of NSTS Bancorp shares are owned by institutional investors. 1.8% of Sterling Bancorp shares are owned by company insiders. Comparatively, 4.6% of NSTS Bancorp shares are owned by company insiders. Strong institutional ownership is an indication that endowments, large money managers and hedge funds believe a company is poised for long-term growth.

Summary

Sterling Bancorp beats NSTS Bancorp on 9 of the 11 factors compared between the two stocks.

About Sterling Bancorp

Sterling Bancorp, Inc. is a unitary thrift holding company. Its wholly owned subsidiary, Sterling Bank and Trust, F.S.B., has primary branch operations in San Francisco and Los Angeles, California and New York City, and a loan production office in Seattle, Washington. Sterling offers a broad range of loan products to the residential and commercial markets, as well as retail and business banking services. Sterling also has an operations center and a branch in Southfield, Michigan. Sterling was named as the top performing community bank in the United States with total assets between $1 billion and $10 billion in 2017 by SNL/S&P Global Market Intelligence.

About NSTS Bancorp

NSTS Bancorp, Inc. operates as a savings and loan holding company for North Shore Trust and Savings that provides banking products and services in Illinois. The company offers interest-bearing and noninterest-bearing checking, money market, savings, and time deposit accounts; and one- to four-family residential mortgage, multi-family and commercial real estate mortgage, construction, home equity, and consumer loans. It operates through full-service banking offices in Lake County, Illinois; and one loan production office in Chicago. The company was founded in 1921 and is headquartered in Waukegan, Illinois.