Business First Bancshares to acquire Progressive Bancorp in stock deal valued ~$82.6M

Business First Bancshares, Inc.

BFST to issue ~3.05M shares for Progressive at fixed exchange ratio of 6.63 BFST shares per Progressive share.
Deal valued at ~$82.6M based on BFST's July 3 close of $26.19; expected to close early Q1 2026.
Post-merger assets ~$8.5B, loans ~$6.6B; Progressive had $752M assets, $673M deposits as of Mar 2025.
Progressive shareholders, including directors/execs owning 30.7%, agreed to vote in favor.
George Cummings III to join BFST and b1BANK boards; David Hampton to be vice chairman of North Louisiana market.

item 1.01item 7.01item 9.01

This headline and bullets were generated automatically by deepseek-v4-flash:cloud@v2 from the public filing. Read the source on SEC.gov before relying on any specific claim. Not investment advice. See methodology for how this pipeline works.