Big Share Repurchase at Crazy Woman Creek Bancorp, Inc.

Nate mentioned CRZY in Issue 13 of the Oddball Stocks Newsletter, back in July 2016. Here is what he had to say at the time:

The company has a market cap of $8.5m with 632,842 shares outstanding. The company has issued slightly over 1m shares and repurchased approximately 400k of them, including 8,329 shares in 2015. The continual buybacks are a positive sign for investors and demonstrate appropriate capital allocation.

The bank has a book value of $11.7m ($18.58 per share) and could be worth $15m ($24.06 per share) in an acquisition according to our CompleteBankData acquisition valuation model. Both book value and acquisition value are significantly higher than where shares currently trade at $13.50. [P/B at the time was 0.73x]

The bank could be a potential acquisition target for a larger bank looking to get into the Wyoming market, or for a bank in the region looking for a bolt-on acquisition. At current prices this is a great bank to add to the cheap bank basket.

CRZY traded above $20 earlier this year, then fell as low as $13.95 after the March crash. They've recovered to $15.62 as of today. They've also paid $1.26 of cumulative dividends since Nate mentioned them in the Newsletter.

On Wednesday (August 18th), the company put out a press release about a big share buyback funded by a issuance of ten year debt:

"...Buffalo Federal Bank, today announced the completion of its private placement of $2.0 million of 5.0% fixed-to-floating rate subordinated notes due 2030 (the “Note”) to a Wyoming bank. The Note will initially bear a fixed interest rate of 5.0% per year for five years and then reset quarterly to the three-month SOFR rate, plus a spread of 460 basis points, payable quarterly in arrears to the August 14, 2030 maturity. The Company may redeem the Note upon the end of the fixed rate period, or at any time upon certain other specified events. The primary use of the proceeds was to fund a block repurchase of 93,000 outstanding shares, or approximately 15%, of Crazy Woman Creek Bancorp’s common stock. The transaction is expected to increase book value per share by approximately $1.57. At June 30, 2020, book value per share was $23.40 with outstanding shares of 623,103.  After giving effect to the repurchase of 93,000 shares, outstanding shares are 530,103."

If their calculation is accurate, that would bring book value up to almost $25, making the current P/B ratio 0.62.

Total assets for CRZY at June 30, 2020 were $138 million, there is $3.4 million of premises and equipment, and only $132k of goodwill. Shareholder equity (then) was $14.6 million.