← All companies ← AGL Manual AGNC → ← ABR Mortgage & Specialty Finance BETR →
AGM, Federal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation
Agricultural and rural credit markets, we provide vital liquidity by attracting additional capital sources for financing rural America and agricultural borrowers.
Congress has charged Farmer Mac, in our charter, with the mission of providing a secondary market for a variety of loans made to borrowers in rural America.
We are an institution of the Farm Credit System ("FCS"), which is composed of the banks, associations, and related entities regulated by the Farm Credit Administration ("FCA"), an independent agency in the executive branch of the United States government.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not an earnings multiple, and the worst year of credit losses matters more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on supplier & input dependence, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 12%AdequateNet income $207M ÷ equity $1.7BIndustry peers: median -7%
What this means
The bank's north star, what it earns on shareholders' capital. Cost of equity is roughly 10%, so a return durably above that builds value and below it destroys it. One year is noisy; the durability across a full credit cycle is what counts.
- SolidNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill $0 − intangibles $0)Industry peers: median -13%
What this means
The cleaner return, stripping out the goodwill paid for past acquisitions. This is the number a buyer of the whole bank actually earns on the hard capital.
- Efficiency ratio 24%Low cost ratio (<58%)Noninterest expense $97M ÷ (net interest income + fees)
What this means
The share of revenue eaten by running costs; lower is better, and below about 60% marks a genuinely efficient operation. A low ratio held for years is the operational side of a moat.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 4.9%ThinEquity $1.7B ÷ assets $35.4B
What this means
A plain-English leverage read: how much of the balance sheet is the owners' own money. This is a rough proxy; the regulatory figure is the CET1 ratio, which is risk-weighted and reported in the filing. The point is the same, how much loss the bank can absorb before depositors are at risk.
- Funding —Not enough data
What this means
Deposits or total assets missing.
- Credit cost (provision / NII) 8%LowProvision for credit losses $33M ÷ net interest income $391M
What this means
What the bank set aside this year against loans going bad, as a share of its lending income. This swings hard with the cycle, low in good years and spiking in recessions, so read it across the record, not in one year. Disciplined underwriting shows up as low, stable provisions through a downturn.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“The effective adoption, integration, and leveraging of existing and emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence and machine learning systems into our operations, presents operational and business risks, including system failures, inaccuracies with artificial intelligence outputs, and the investment of time…”
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →From the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Nordholm | $3.2M | $5.1M | — |
| 2022 | Mr. Nordholm | $3.5M | $3.1M | — |
| 2023 | Mr. Nordholm | $5.6M | $8.8M | — |
| 2024 | Mr. Nordholm | $3.3M | $5.3M | — |
| 2025 | Mr. Nordholm | $4.0M | $3.4M | — |
Both pay figures are the company’s own, from the pay-versus-performance table its proxy statement files. “As filed” is the Summary Compensation Table total: salary, bonus, and equity awards at their value on the day of grant. “Actually paid” is the SEC’s prescribed recalculation, which re-marks those equity awards to what they became as they vested; it can swing far above or below the filed figure in either direction, and negative years occur. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership1.9%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio21:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
Peers, Mortgage & Specialty Finance
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | ROE | ROTCE | Efficiency | NII / assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ATLCAtlanticus Holdings Corporation | $2.0B | 42% | 42% | 55% | 21.3% |
| TREELendingTree Inc. | $1.1B | 5% | — | — | -2.2% |
| UPSTUpstart | $1.0B | -7% | -8% | — | 0.0% |
| KEELKeel Infrastructure Corp. | $229M | -17% | -17% | — | 0.5% |
| ABTCAmerican Bitcoin Corp. | $185M | -38% | -152% | — | 0.0% |
| BETRBetter Home & Finance Holding Company | $165M | -446% | -3947% | — | 1.0% |
| AGMFederal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation | $408M | 12% | 12% | 24% | 1.1% |
| VELVelocity Financial Inc. | $186M | 16% | 16% | — | 2.5% |
| Group median | — | -1% | -8% | — | 0.8% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFA bank / financial isn't read on an owner-earnings DCF; its economics live on the balance sheet (book value, the return earned on it, and the cash the assets throw off).
Manual order: ← AGL its page in the Manual AGNC →
Industry order: ← ABR the Mortgage & Specialty Finance chapter BETR →