How Should Investors Feel About AmeriServ Financial, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:ASRV) CEO Pay?
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Jeff Stopko has been the CEO of AmeriServ Financial, Inc. (NASDAQ:ASRV) since 2015. First, this article will compare CEO compensation with compensation at similar sized companies. Next, we’ll consider growth that the business demonstrates. And finally we will reflect on how common stockholders have fared in the last few years, as a secondary measure of performance. This process should give us an idea about how appropriately the CEO is paid.
View our latest analysis for AmeriServ Financial
How Does Jeff Stopko’s Compensation Compare With Similar Sized Companies?
At the time of writing our data says that AmeriServ Financial, Inc. has a market cap of US$73m, and is paying total annual CEO compensation of US$424k. (This figure is for the year to 2017). We think total compensation is more important but we note that the CEO salary is lower, at US$315k. We examined a group of similar sized companies, with market capitalizations of below US$200m. The median CEO compensation in that group is US$300k.
As you can see, Jeff Stopko is paid more than the median CEO pay at companies of a similar size, in the same market. However, this does not necessarily mean AmeriServ Financial, Inc. is paying too much. We can better assess whether the pay is overly generous by looking into the underlying business performance.
You can see a visual representation of the CEO compensation at AmeriServ Financial, below.
Is AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Growing?
AmeriServ Financial, Inc. has increased its earnings per share (EPS) by an average of 17% a year, over the last three years (using a line of best fit). In the last year, its revenue is up 1.8%.
This shows that the company has improved itself over the last few years. Good news for shareholders. It’s nice to see a little revenue growth, as this is consistent with healthy business conditions. We don’t have analyst forecasts, but shareholders might want to examine this detailed historical graph of earnings, revenue and cash flow.
Has AmeriServ Financial, Inc. Been A Good Investment?
Most shareholders would probably be pleased with AmeriServ Financial, Inc. for providing a total return of 43% over three years. This strong performance might mean some shareholders don’t mind if the CEO were to be paid more than is normal for a company of its size.
In Summary…
We compared total CEO remuneration at AmeriServ Financial, Inc. with the amount paid at companies with a similar market capitalization. As discussed above, we discovered that the company pays more than the median of that group.
However we must not forget that the EPS growth has been very strong over three years. In addition, shareholders have done well over the same time period. As a result of this good performance, the CEO remuneration may well be quite reasonable. CEO compensation is one thing, but it is also interesting to check if the CEO is buying or selling AmeriServ Financial (free visualization of insider trades).
Important note: AmeriServ Financial may not be the best stock to buy. You might find something better in this list of interesting companies with high ROE and low debt.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
