Owner Scorecard


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FNLC, First Bancorp Inc (ME)

Banks financial

The Bank offers traditional banking products & services including deposit accounts, cash management and payment processing solutions, and consumer, commercial and mortgage loans.

The transaction value was approximately $25.2 million consisting of the loans, building, equipment, core deposit intangible, and goodwill.

Personal service and convenience is emphasized to a customer base consisting primarily of small businesses, government entities, non-profit organizations, and individuals located or residing within its markets.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
FNLC · First Bancorp Inc (ME)
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$95M
+18.0% YoY · 4% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue $95M 5-yr avg $87M
Return on equity 13% 5-yr avg 14%
Return on tangible equity 15% 5-yr avg 16%
Efficiency ratio 54% 5-yr avg 53%
Equity / assets 8.1% 5-yr avg 8.8%

The business in brief

read the 10-K →

What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.

What moves the needle
Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not an earnings multiple, and the worst year of credit losses matters more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on concentrated dependence, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?
Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 12%, above 12% in 7 of 10 years). It runs at a 54% efficiency ratio, lean. A bank that earns above its cost of equity through the cycle compounds book value; whether this one did it by underwriting discipline or by reaching for risk is what the 10-K, and the worst years in the record, will tell you.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25
Income statement
$55M$60M$63M$67M$78M$86M$93M$81M$80M$95MRevenueRevenue
$43M$47M$50M$52M$60M$66M$76M$65M$64M$77MNet interest incomeNet int.
$12M$13M$13M$14M$18M$19M$17M$15M$16M$17MNoninterest incomeFee inc.
$2M$2M$2M$1M$6M($375K)Credit-loss provisionProvision
$18M$20M$24M$26M$27M$36M$39M$30M$27M$34MNet incomeNet inc.
26%25%15%16%16%17%18%17%17%18%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
1.1%1.1%1.3%1.3%1.3%1.5%1.5%1.0%0.9%1.1%Return on assetsROA
10%11%12%12%12%15%17%12%11%13%Return on equityROE
5%4%6%6%6%9%11%6%5%7%Retained to equityRetained/eq
13%13%15%14%14%17%20%14%13%15%Return on tangible equityROTCE
53%53%53%53%51%49%47%54%59%54%Efficiency ratioEffic.
Balance sheet
$1.6B$1.8B$1.9B$2.0B$2.1B$2.4B$2.5B$2.8B$3.0B$3.2BTotal assetsAssets
$1.1B$1.3B$1.4B$1.6B$1.6B$2.0B$2.2B$2.5B$2.5B$2.7BDepositsDeposits
$30M$30M$30M$30M$31M$31M$31M$31M$31M$31MGoodwillGoodwill
$173M$181M$192M$213M$224M$246M$229M$243M$243M$260MShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
10.8M10.8M10.9M10.9M10.9M11.0M11.0M11.1M11.1M11.2MShares out (diluted)Shares
$1.66$1.81$2.17$2.34$2.48$3.30$3.53$2.66$2.43$3.07EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.91$1.06$1.11$1.19$1.22$1.27$1.34$1.39$1.42$1.46Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$15.93$16.76$17.65$19.52$20.46$22.36$20.75$21.93$21.78$23.18Book value / shareBVPS
$13.18$14.00$14.90$16.78$17.66$19.57$17.98$19.17$19.03$20.44Tangible book / shareTBVPS
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+5.7%/yr+3.5%/yr
Owner earnings / share+6.8%/yr+11.5%/yr
EPS+7.0%/yr+4.3%/yr
Dividends / share+5.4%/yr+3.7%/yr
Capital spending / share+4.3%/yr+4.3%/yr
Book value / share+4.3%/yr+2.5%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count
11Mpeak FY2025
Revenue
$95Mlow FY2016
III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

  • Strong
    Net income $34M ÷ equity $260M
    Industry peers: median 9%
    What this means

    The bank's north star, what it earns on shareholders' capital. Cost of equity is roughly 10%, so a return durably above that builds value and below it destroys it. One year is noisy; the durability across a full credit cycle is what counts.

  • Strong
    Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill $31M − intangibles $432K)
    Industry peers: median 12%
    What this means

    The cleaner return, stripping out the goodwill paid for past acquisitions. This is the number a buyer of the whole bank actually earns on the hard capital.

  • Low cost ratio (<58%)
    Noninterest expense $51M ÷ (net interest income + fees)
    Industry peers: median 62%
    What this means

    The share of revenue eaten by running costs; lower is better, and below about 60% marks a genuinely efficient operation. A low ratio held for years is the operational side of a moat.

Is it sound?

  • Capital (equity / assets) 8.1%
    Adequate
    Equity $260M ÷ assets $3.2B
    What this means

    A plain-English leverage read: how much of the balance sheet is the owners' own money. This is a rough proxy; the regulatory figure is the CET1 ratio, which is risk-weighted and reported in the filing. The point is the same, how much loss the bank can absorb before depositors are at risk.

  • Deposit-funded
    Deposits $2.7B ÷ assets $3.2B
    What this means

    Low-cost, sticky deposits are a bank's real moat, the cheap raw material it lends out at a spread. A bank funded mostly by deposits earns more durably than one that rents its money in the wholesale market.

  • Credit cost (provision / NII) -0%
    Net reserve release
    Provision for credit losses ($375K) ÷ net interest income $77M
    What this means

    What the bank set aside this year against loans going bad, as a share of its lending income. This swings hard with the cycle, low in good years and spiking in recessions, so read it across the record, not in one year. Disciplined underwriting shows up as low, stable provisions through a downturn.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Low contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

In its own filing Framed as a capability

The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.

“As a result of recent innovations related to generative artificial intelligence ("AI"), the Bank has established a cross-functional task force to analyze current and future use cases for AI and to promote effective and secure implementation.”

AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.

Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.

All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.

Fiscal yearChief executivePay, as filed“Actually paid”Owner earnings
2021Tony C. McKim$1.1M$1.3M$55M
2022Tony C. McKim$1.2M$1.1M$40M
2023Tony C. McKim$1.3M$1.2M$35M
2024Tony C. McKim$1.4M$1.4M$25M
2025Tony C. McKim$1.6M$1.6M$36M

Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.

  • Stock-based compensation$966K

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 1% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.

What an owner would ask, FY2025

read the 10-K →
  • Which reported numbers are a judgment call?
    Management names Income taxes, Credit & receivables as critical estimates

    each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →

The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.

Peers, Banks

The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.

CompanyRevenueROEROTCEEfficiencyNII / assets
BCALCalifornia BanCorp$180M8%9%65%3.9%
BFCBank First Corporation$174M12%14%50%3.2%
CARECarter Bankshares Inc.$153M7%7%75%2.7%
SFSTSouthern First Bancshares Inc.$118M9%9%58%3.0%
SFNCSimmons First National Corporation$103M8%13%62%2.7%
WTBAWest Bancorporation$95M14%14%49%2.6%
CHMGChemung Financial Corp$95M10%12%68%3.0%
FNLCFirst Bancorp Inc (ME)$95M12%14%53%2.7%
Group median10%12%60%2.9%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

A bank is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what First Bancorp Inc (ME)’s record justifies.

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The assumptions

Tangible book / share, delivered2%/yr’20→’25

The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). A bank earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for a bank.

Enter a price above to run it.

Price / tangible book
Justified by the return
Normalized return on tangible equity14%
Price / book
Earnings yield
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)
Graham’s price gate

Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.

Tangible book $229M on 11M shares, a 14% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the bank keeps earning that return; a credit cycle, a rate shock or a bad acquisition changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "First Bancorp Inc (ME) (FNLC), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/FNLC, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← FNKO its page in the Manual FOCL →

Industry order: ← FNB the Banks chapter FRME →