Community West Bancshares (NASDAQ:CWBC) Announces Quarterly Dividend of $0.12

Community West Bancshares (NASDAQ:CWBC) declared a quarterly dividend on Friday, January 24th,Wall Street Journal reports. Stockholders of record on Friday, February 7th will be given a dividend of 0.12 per share by the financial services provider on Friday, February 21st. This represents a $0.48 annualized dividend and a dividend yield of 2.50%. The ex-dividend date of this dividend is Friday, February 7th.

Community West Bancshares has increased its dividend by an average of 27.5% annually over the last three years. Community West Bancshares has a payout ratio of 21.4% indicating that its dividend is sufficiently covered by earnings. Equities analysts expect Community West Bancshares to earn $2.07 per share next year, which means the company should continue to be able to cover its $0.48 annual dividend with an expected future payout ratio of 23.2%.

Community West Bancshares Trading Up 1.7 %

Shares of NASDAQ:CWBC opened at $19.20 on Friday. Community West Bancshares has a 52-week low of $15.50 and a 52-week high of $24.47. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 0.19, a quick ratio of 0.82 and a current ratio of 0.82. The company has a market capitalization of $363.84 million, a P/E ratio of 29.09 and a beta of 0.92. The company has a 50-day simple moving average of $20.17 and a 200 day simple moving average of $19.72.

Community West Bancshares (NASDAQ:CWBC) last released its quarterly earnings data on Thursday, January 23rd. The financial services provider reported $0.38 earnings per share (EPS) for the quarter, missing analysts’ consensus estimates of $0.45 by ($0.07). Community West Bancshares had a net margin of 4.53% and a return on equity of 8.14%. Sell-side analysts forecast that Community West Bancshares will post 1.61 earnings per share for the current year.

Insiders Place Their Bets

In other Community West Bancshares news, Director Robert Bartlein purchased 2,000 shares of the stock in a transaction that occurred on Friday, November 1st. The shares were acquired at an average cost of $18.75 per share, with a total value of $37,500.00. Following the completion of the transaction, the director now owns 433,876 shares in the company, valued at $8,135,175. The trade was a 0.46 % increase in their ownership of the stock. The purchase was disclosed in a legal filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission, which is accessible through the SEC website. Also, Director Steven D. Mcdonald sold 1,860 shares of the business’s stock in a transaction dated Monday, December 16th. The shares were sold at an average price of $21.51, for a total transaction of $40,008.60. Following the completion of the sale, the director now directly owns 315,531 shares of the company’s stock, valued at $6,787,071.81. This represents a 0.59 % decrease in their position. The disclosure for this sale can be found here. Insiders purchased 2,432 shares of company stock worth $45,616 over the last three months. Insiders own 11.15% of the company’s stock.

Analysts Set New Price Targets

Separately, Keefe, Bruyette & Woods reduced their price objective on shares of Community West Bancshares from $24.00 to $22.00 and set a “market perform” rating for the company in a research report on Friday.

Community West Bancshares Company Profile

Community West Bancshares operates as the bank holding company for Community West Bank, N.A. that provides various financial products and services in California. The company offers deposit products, such as checking accounts, savings accounts, money market accounts, and fixed rate and fixed maturity certificates of deposits; and cash management products.