Business First Bancshares, Inc.
BFSTHIGH VELOCITYFILING INTENSITYBusiness First Bancshares, Inc. reads as an High Velocity (composite 70/100); Consistent Strategic Buyer deploying $3M across 2 disclosed transactions, down 97% vs the prior cycle · primary market Regional Banking.
Lens
Disclosed M&A capital (2023–2025)
$3M
vs $113M in 2020–2022
Disclosed transactions
2
1/3 active fiscal years in window
Buyer archetype
Consistent Strategic Buyer
Meaningful spend appears across repeat years.
Composite score
70
High Velocity dominates · Filing Intensity
Behavioral posture, nine reads.
Each index scores the issuer 0–100 against an EDGAR-anchored definition. Scores ≥ threshold elevate the issuer into the index's constituent set; the dominant index drives the masthead label.
Active Acquirer
Companies actively deploying disclosed capital into M&A
- $129M disclosed buyer spend
Buyer Cadence
Buyer-side companies with recent filing activity
- Filed within 39d
- 130 8-Ks
Target Probability
Issuers showing target-side patterns from filings
Spin/Carve
Issuers showing spin-off, carve-out, or sum-of-parts posture
Pressure Watch
Issuers facing activism, governance, or control pressure
Distress Watch
Issuers showing financial-distress filing patterns
Restatement Risk
Issuers with accounting-integrity flags from filings
- 2 auditor changes
- Latest event 4y ago; discounted
Capital Velocity
DominantIssuers with the highest filing-activity intensity
- 130 8-Ks
- 4 form types
Quiet Power
Large issuers with low signal volume and clean disclosure cadence
- Enterprise value $725M
- 10-Q 39d ago
- 3 active signals
Capital cadence.
Ten-year disclosed M&A activity. Bars show spend ($MM); ticks show recorded transaction count. Disclosure tier annotated where v6 audited corpus carries an entry.
Disclosed spend $MM Disclosed transactions (right axis)Peak spend year: $106M · Peak count: 2
| FY | Disclosed buys | Disclosed spend | Avg ticket | Audited tier |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2024 | 2 | $3M | $2M | N/A |
| 2023 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2022 | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
| 2021 | 1 | $7M | $7M | N/A |
| 2020 | 1 | $106M | $106M | N/A |
Strategy posture.
The buyer's playbook in terms of strategic archetype: what each disclosed move says about how they're deploying capital.
Archetype mix
- Tuck In25%
- Geographic Expansion25%
- Bolt On25%
- Talent Acquisition25%
Strategy keywords
Terms recurring across recent 10-K acquisition disclosures.
- tuck_in
- geographic_expansion
- bolt_on
- talent_acquisition
Filing language.
Direct excerpts from acquisition disclosures and strategy sections: the verbs the buyer chose, in the filings they signed.
“Disciplined Acquisition Strategy. While we will remain focused on organic expansion, we will continue to identify and evaluate opportunities for strategic business acquisitions as they arise from time to time.”
“Attraction, Development and Retention. We measure the success of our talent acquisition strategy on quality of acquisition, diversity in the workplace, and the retention of our employees.”
“We will carefully consider acquisition opportunities that we believe are consistent with our strategic vision and provide attractive risk-adjusted returns to our shareholders.”
“We measure the success of our talent acquisition strategy on quality of acquisition, diversity in the workplace, and the retention of our employees.”
“We will continue to identify and evaluate opportunities for strategic business acquisitions as they arise from time to time.”
Market context.
Where this issuer sits inside its SE-Cluster rollup wedge, with disclosed-spend rank plus trading comparables against the public peer set.
Primary market
Regional Banking
- Market spend (2023–2025)
- $245.7B
- Market spend (2020–2022)
- $72.8B
- Recent vs prior
- +238%
- Issuer rank in market
- N/A
- Share of market capital
- 0.0%
Valuation positioning
BFST trades at a -6.3-turn discount to the Regional Banking peer median of 12.3×.
- EV / Revenue
- 1.4×
- Net debt / EBITDA
- -4.9×
- Peer median EV / EBITDA
- 12.3×
Trading comparables
FMP market data · 2026-05-10
| Company | EV / EBITDA | EV / Rev | Net debt / EBITDA | Revenue | M&A 2023–2025 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 16.7× | 3.7× | -0.9× | $13.7B | $12.7B | |
| 13.9× | 3.0× | -0.7× | $58.4B | $126.1B | |
| 10.7× | 3.2× | -2.1× | $3.4B | $7B | |
| 9.3× | 2.2× | -0.3× | $14.5B | $72.6B | |
Business First Bancshares, Inc.BFST | 6.0× | 1.4× | -4.9× | $520M | $3M |
Trading multiples from FMP market data; disclosed M&A spend from the SE-Cluster EDGAR 10-K corpus. Peer set = top disclosed buyers in Regional Banking. Bars scaled to the highest EV/EBITDA in the set.
Target landscape.
Public-issuer targets that fit this buyer's archetype and target categories from filing-derived signal. Scores reflect cross-signal fit; reasons cite the EDGAR-anchored facts that drove the match.
No qualifying public-issuer targets surfaced from the current signal mix.
Stated target categories
No target categories enumerated in the audited corpus for this issuer.
Filing activity & signal stream.
Filing cadence and event-driven signals visible on EDGAR. The signal stream below is curated from restatement / spin-carve / activism categories, providing context for any near-term call.
Filing cadence
- 10-K (annual)162026-02-26
- 10-Q (quarterly)352026-05-01
- 8-K (event)1302026-04-27
- Proxy / DEF 14A142026-04-08
- Activism (13D / DFAN / PREC)0N/A
Signals on file
- elevated
Auditor change
2022-06-012 Item 4.01 filings on file; certifying accountant change.
- info
Signal
Serial acquisition history
- info
Signal
10-K strategy themes
- info
Signal
Restatement risk
Audited corpus.
No audited record on file for this CIK in the current v6 corpus.
This issuer has not been extracted into the v6 audited acquirer corpus yet. The brief above pulls from ranking-level aggregates and issuer-index signal only.