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Back of Napkin

Southern First Bancshares, Inc. SFST

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Southern First pays no dividend, so a decade of retained earnings compounded tangible book at 12.3% a year while earnings per share managed 3.3% over the last five.

That gap is a return on equity that fell from the mid-teens to ten, and 1.27x tangible book is the price of an opinion on how much of it comes back.

Key data

Sector / industryFinancials / Regional banks
FYE / countryDec / US
Price · 52w range$60.59 · $40.90 to $65.09
Market cap$573M
Filing anchorQ2-FY2026 (CQ2 CY2026); 10-Q filed Aug 3, 2026
Tangible book / share$47.77 (no goodwill; book equals tangible book)
TTMNet interest income $119.0M · fee income $13.7M · diluted EPS $4.65
Forward P/EFY26E 12.1x · FY27E 9.8x (two analysts)
CapitalBank CET1 11.61% · TCE/assets 9.62%
YieldNo dividend

SFST · price with moving averages

Daily · 6MWeekly · 3Y
$23$34$45$56$67 Sep '23Apr '24Nov '24Jun '25Jan '26Sep '26 BID
EMAs82140

Source: market data.

The business

Founded in Greenville in 1999 and still run by Art Seaver, who started it. Twelve offices and 315 people carry $4.7B of assets, about $392M per office against a community-bank norm nearer $100M. Instead of branch networks they hire a commercial lending team into a city, and the team brings its own borrowers and their operating accounts. Sixty-two percent of the loan book is commercial and 81% is secured by real estate, funded by business checking and money-market balances rather than passbook savings.

The moat is a cost line: fewer buildings, fewer tellers, more assets per banker. An efficiency advantage rather than a franchise, and it travels only as fast as they recruit lenders into Charlotte, Raleigh, Greensboro and Atlanta.

Inside the complete Back of Napkin

  1. 01The business
  2. 02The numbers
  3. 03Management
  4. 04How it fails or surprises you
  5. 05The shape of the payoff
  6. 06Closing thoughts
  7. 07Methodology

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