NSTS

NSTS is a tiny federally-chartered savings institution (one main office, two branches, three loan-production offices in the Chicago/Waukegan area, ~$181M deposits) that converted to stock form via its January 2022 IPO at $10.00. The headline P/S of 287.7 and net margin of -153.2% are artifacts of a bank being scored on non-interest fee income ($252K of contract revenue) rather than net interest income — for a depository this ratio is not meaningful and should be ignored. The figures that matter tell a more nuanced story: the company carries $80.0M of stockholders' equity against $267M of assets, an extraordinary ~30% equity/assets ratio, and trades at a market cap of $72.5M — i.e. roughly 0.9x book value (~$15.21/share of book vs. a $13.78 price). That combination of a sub-book price and a massive excess-capital cushion is the classic post-conversion thrift setup and is the entire reason to look at this name.

The problem is earnings power, or the lack of it. NSTS has lost money in four of the last five years: -$3.96M (FY2023), -$789K (FY2024), and -$386K (FY2025), with ROE at -0.5%. The loss is narrowing (+51% YoY improvement), but the franchise is shrinking, not turning — total assets fell 4.3%, liabilities fell 7.7%, cash dropped 36.3% to $34.0M, and operating cash flow collapsed 57% to $4.05M. Encouragingly, equity still rose 4.6% despite the net loss and zero buybacks, which points to comprehensive-income (AOCI) recovery on the securities book rather than operating profit. Management reports effective disclosure controls and internal control over financial reporting, no material litigation, and a clean cybersecurity posture overseen by the VP of IT reporting quarterly to the board — no governance or accounting red flags in the filing.