Battered Performance Sports Group Ltd (PSG) and Two Strong-Performing Companies Witness Insider Buying

Strong-Performing Bank Company Has Board Member Buy Some Shares

ServisFirst Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:SFBS) is the third company witnessing insider buying discussed in this article. Michael D. Fuller, Director on the Board of ServisFirst Bank of Birmingham, reported purchasing 1,075 shares on Thursday at prices that fell between $49.90 and $50.11 per share, of which 25 shares are held directly by a corporation owned by Mr. Fuller’s adult daughters that currently owns 444,025 shares. After the recent purchase, Mr. Fuller holds a direct ownership stake of 174,968 shares. It should be noted that the bank holding company that operates 18 full-service banking offices has advisory boards in each of its six primary markets.

The company’s net income has been growing consistently in the past several years, with the bottom-line figure increasing to $63.54 million in 2015 from $52.38 million in 2014, $41.62 million in 2013 and $34.45 million in 2012. ServisFirst Bancshares, which recently joined the S&P SmallCap 600 Index, generated $17.65 million for the first quarter of this year, so the company appears to be on track to deliver a higher bottom-line figure for 2016. Meanwhile, the company pays out a quarterly dividend of $0.08 per share, which equates to a dividend yield of only 0.65%. However, the bank increased its payout ratio in the past three years to 10.0% in 2015 from 9.6% in 2014 and 8.8% in 2013, which makes us believe the company will keep increasing the payout in the years ahead should bottom-line results continue to improve.

The number of funds with long positions in the company (among those we track) declined to six from ten during the December quarter. The shares of ServisFirst Bancshares have gained 41% in the past year and trade around 16.0-times expected earnings, above the forward PE multiple of 13.5 for the Financials sector. Royce & Associates LLC, founded by Chuck Royce, owned 175,000 shares of ServisFirst Bancshares Inc. (NASDAQ:SFBS) at the end of 2015.

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