Community Bank and Trust pays dividend

Community Bank and Trust shareholders will be collecting some pretty hefty dividends.

The Wolfeboro bank (traded under the symbol CBNH.OB) announced yesterday that it will be paying a quarterly dividend of 35 cents a share, bringing the total for this fiscal year (which ends Nov. 1) to $1.80 a share. The stock’s Oct. 4 closing price was $30.03.

Community Bank and Trust used to be known as one of the state’s smaller banks, but has since become – with assets of more than $430 million – the largest locally-based commercial bank (and the fourth-largest local bank overall) in the state.

Bank President Peter Alden credits the bank growth – it has expanded to eight locations – to still thinking small.
“We’ve kept a very simple product,” he told NHBR Daily. “People like to deal across the desk with someone and that’s what we do.”

The bank has not released its third-quarter results yet. At the end of July, it announced that it netted $3.909 million in the first half, about 2 percent more than it earned for the first six months of the previous fiscal year. – BOB SANDERS