Share count
1.9Bpeak FY2016
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C, Citigroup Inc.
Banks financial
Citigroup is a global bank. It takes deposits and makes loans, issues credit cards to consumers, and serves corporations, governments and institutions with lending, payments, trading and the plumbing that moves money across borders. It earns the spread between what it pays for funds and what it collects on loans and securities, plus fees for handling transactions and arranging deals.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$85.2B
+5.6% YoY · 2% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $85.2B 5-yr avg $78.2B
Revenue $22.1B +9.3% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $3.8B yr-ago $3.3B
Net margin 17.2% yr-ago 16.2%
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
- A bank is a borrowed-money business: it runs on far more debt than equity, so the things that decide the outcome are the cost and stickiness of its funding, the discipline of its underwriting, and the trust of regulators and depositors. The tests a value investor watches are whether deposits are cheap and loyal enough to be a real franchise rather than rented money, whether the cross-border transaction network is genuinely hard to copy, and whether the loan book is priced so a bad credit cycle does not erase years of profit. The bad case is the one that recurs in banking — a funding scare or a wave of loan losses, amplified by leverage, that takes back more than the good years paid out. The record below holds the spread, the returns on capital, and the cushion.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has sat below the cost of equity (median 7%, above 12% in only 0 of 10 years). It runs at a 65% efficiency ratio, about average. The cycle and the loan book decide this one; weigh the recession years in the record, not the average, and read the 10-K.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Revenue spreads across 4 regions, the largest North America at 52%.
Revenue by geography, FY2025
- North America52%$44.0B
- International50%$42.3B
- United Kingdom9%$7.6B
- Corporate/Other-1%($1.1B)
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, 2016–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | TTMTTMDec 2025 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $70.8B | $72.4B | $72.9B | $75.1B | $75.5B | $71.9B | $75.3B | $78.1B | $80.7B | $85.2B | $85.2B | RevenueRevenue |
| $45.5B | $45.1B | $46.6B | $48.1B | $44.8B | $42.5B | $48.7B | $54.9B | $54.1B | $59.8B | $59.8B | Net interest incomeNet int. |
| $25.3B | $27.4B | $26.3B | $26.9B | $30.8B | $29.4B | $26.7B | $23.2B | $26.6B | $25.4B | $25.4B | Noninterest incomeFee inc. |
| $7.0B | $7.5B | $7.6B | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $8.1B | Credit-loss provisionProvision |
| $14.9B | ($6.8B) | $18.0B | $19.4B | $11.0B | $22.0B | $14.8B | $9.2B | $12.7B | $14.3B | $14.3B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 30% | — | 23% | 19% | 19% | 20% | 20% | 28% | 25% | 27% | 27% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| 0.8% | -0.4% | 0.9% | 1.0% | 0.5% | 1.0% | 0.6% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.5% | Return on assetsROA |
| 7% | -3% | 9% | 10% | 6% | 11% | 7% | 4% | 6% | 7% | 7% | Return on equityROE |
| 6% | −5% | 7% | 7% | 3% | 8% | 5% | 2% | 4% | 4% | 4% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| 8% | -4% | 11% | 12% | 6% | 12% | 8% | 5% | 7% | 8% | 8% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| 60% | 58% | 57% | 57% | 59% | 67% | 68% | 72% | 66% | 65% | 65% | Efficiency ratioEffic. |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $1.79T | $1.84T | $1.92T | $1.95T | $2.26T | $2.29T | $2.42T | $2.41T | $2.35T | $2.66T | $2.66T | Total assetsAssets |
| $929.4B | $959.8B | $1.01T | $1.07T | $1.28T | $1.32T | $1.37T | $1.31T | $1.28T | $1.40T | $1.40T | DepositsDeposits |
| $21.7B | $22.3B | $22.0B | $22.1B | $22.2B | $21.3B | $19.7B | $20.1B | $19.3B | $19.1B | $19.1B | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $225.1B | $200.7B | $196.2B | $193.2B | $199.4B | $202.0B | $201.2B | $205.5B | $208.6B | $212.3B | $212.3B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 2.89B | 2.70B | 2.49B | 2.27B | 2.10B | 2.05B | 1.96B | 1.96B | 1.94B | 1.87B | 1.87B | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $5.16 | $-2.52 | $7.23 | $8.56 | $5.26 | $10.71 | $7.56 | $4.72 | $6.54 | $7.64 | $7.64 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.79 | $1.41 | $2.01 | $2.40 | $2.55 | $2.54 | $2.55 | $2.66 | $2.68 | $2.87 | $2.87 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $77.94 | $74.39 | $78.65 | $85.31 | $95.02 | $98.55 | $102.42 | $105.05 | $107.52 | $113.34 | $113.34 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $68.67 | $64.23 | $67.72 | $73.41 | $82.20 | $85.97 | $90.14 | $92.51 | $95.25 | $100.85 | $100.85 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +7.1%/yr | +4.8%/yr |
| EPS | +4.4%/yr | +7.7%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +15.4%/yr | +2.4%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +15.5%/yr | +16.2%/yr |
| Book value / share | +4.2%/yr | +3.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$85.2Blow FY2016
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 10-K · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Below the cost of equityNet income $14.3B ÷ equity $212.3BIndustry peers: median 10%
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.
- ModestNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill $19.1B − intangibles $4.3B)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 65%Efficient (<65%)Noninterest expense $55.1B ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 63%
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) 8.0%ModestEquity $212.3B ÷ assets $2.66T
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.
- Deposit funding 53%Mostly deposit-fundedDeposits $1.40T ÷ assets $2.66T
What this means
Low-cost, sticky deposits are a bank's real moat, the cheap raw material it lends out at a spread. A bank funded mostly by deposits earns more durably than one that rents its money in the wholesale market.
- Credit cost (provision / NII) 13%ModerateProvision for credit losses $7.6B ÷ net interest income $59.8B
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.
In its own filing Named as a competitive risk
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“For additional information on Citi's competitive risks, see the co-branding and private label credit cards and qualified employees risk factors above and the AI risk factor and "Supervision, Regulation and Other—Competition" below.”
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.
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 | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $20.5M | $22.5M | $43.0B |
| 2021 | $14.1M | $19.9M | $43.0B |
| 2022 | $22.1M | $16.0M | $20.8B |
| 2023 | $25.5M | $20.7M | ($78.0B) |
| 2024 | $31.1M | $36.9M | ($24.0B) |
| 2025 | $95.8M | $144.8M | ($72.0B) |
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. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio1,309:1
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, Banks
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| JPMJPMorgan Chase & Co. | $182.4B | 13% | 16% | 57% | 2.0% |
| BACBank of America Corp. | $113.1B | 10% | 13% | 64% | 1.8% |
| CCitigroup Inc. | $85.2B | 7% | 8% | 62% | 2.3% |
| WFCWells Fargo & Co. | $83.7B | 11% | 13% | 67% | 2.5% |
| COFCapital One Financial Corporation | $53.4B | 8% | 12% | 54% | 6.0% |
| USBU.S. Bancorp | $28.7B | 12% | 17% | 59% | 2.5% |
| PNCPNC Financial Services Group Inc. (The) | $23.1B | 10% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
| TFCTruist Financial Corporation | $20.3B | 8% | 11% | 63% | 2.7% |
| Group median | — | 10% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookA bank is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Citigroup Inc.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered4%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). A bank earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for a bank.
Enter a price above to run it.
Price / tangible book—
Justified by the return—
Normalized return on tangible equity8%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Tangible book $188.9B on 1749M shares, a 8% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the bank keeps earning that return; a credit cycle, a rate shock or a bad acquisition changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Citigroup Inc. (C), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/C, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← BZH its page in the Manual CABO →
Industry order: ← BY the Banks chapter CAC →