Share count
22Mpeak FY2020
← All companies ← CAR Manual CARG → ← CAC Banks CASH →
CARE, Carter Bankshares Inc.
Banks financial
Carter Bankshares Inc. provides a full range of commercial banking, consumer banking, mortgage and services through the Bank.
The Bank became a member of the Federal Reserve System on November 13, 2025.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$153M
+12.8% YoY · 3% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue $153M 5-yr avg $146M
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 pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has sat below the cost of equity (median 7%, above 12% in only 1 of 7 years). It runs at a 76% efficiency ratio, on the heavy side. The cycle and the loan book decide this one; weigh the recession years in the record, not the average, and read the 10-K.
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.
The record, 2019–2025
realized figures from each filing · older years to the left| 2019’19 | 2020’20 | 2021’21 | 2022’22 | 2023’23 | 2024’24 | 2025’25 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||
| $129M | $132M | $140M | $162M | $141M | $136M | $153M | RevenueRevenue |
| $112M | $105M | $111M | $140M | $122M | $114M | $131M | Net interest incomeNet int. |
| $17M | $27M | $29M | $22M | $18M | $21M | $22M | Noninterest incomeFee inc. |
| $3M | $18M | $2M | $3M | $6M | ($5M) | ($4M) | Credit-loss provisionProvision |
| $27M | ($46M) | $32M | $50M | $23M | $25M | $31M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 4% | — | 12% | 19% | 19% | 21% | 22% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||
| — | -1.1% | 0.8% | 1.2% | 0.5% | 0.5% | 0.6% | Return on assetsROA |
| 6% | -10% | 8% | 15% | 7% | 6% | 7% | Return on equityROE |
| 6% | −11% | 8% | 15% | — | — | — | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| 6% | -10% | 8% | 15% | 7% | 6% | 8% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| 76% | — | 73% | 60% | 75% | 81% | 76% | Efficiency ratioEffic. |
| Balance sheet | |||||||
| — | $4.2B | $4.1B | $4.2B | $4.5B | $4.7B | $4.9B | Total assetsAssets |
| — | $3.7B | $3.7B | $3.6B | $3.7B | $4.2B | $4.2B | DepositsDeposits |
| $473M | $440M | $408M | $329M | $351M | $384M | $420M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||
| 26.3M | 26.4M | 26.3M | 24.6M | 23.2M | 22.8M | 22.5M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $1.01 | $-1.74 | $1.20 | $2.04 | $1.01 | $1.07 | $1.40 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.00 | $0.14 | $0.00 | $0.00 | — | — | — | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $18.02 | $16.69 | $15.47 | $13.36 | $15.11 | $16.84 | $18.69 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $18.02 | $16.69 | $15.47 | $13.36 | $15.11 | $16.84 | $18.59 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 6-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +5.6%/yr | +6.4%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +3.7%/yr | — |
| EPS | +5.5%/yr | — |
| Capital spending / share | +1.8%/yr | −1.3%/yr |
| Book value / share | +0.6%/yr | +2.3%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2019–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$153Mlow FY2019
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 $31M ÷ equity $420MIndustry peers: median 9%
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 $1M − intangibles $940K)Industry peers: median 9%
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 76%High cost ratio (>75%)Noninterest expense $117M ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 64%
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) 8.7%AdequateEquity $420M ÷ assets $4.9B
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 87%Deposit-fundedDeposits $4.2B ÷ assets $4.9B
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) -3%Net reserve releaseProvision for credit losses ($4M) ÷ net interest income $131M
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 A competitive risk, new this year
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.
“Any failure to appropriately govern the use of AI or to mitigate its associated risks could expose the Company to legal liability, regulatory action, operational disruptions, financial loss, or reputational harm.”
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.
Acquisitions & goodwill
from the balance sheet & the 7-year cash-flow recordGoodwill grows only when a company acquires and falls only when it concedes it overpaid. The size of that bet, the cash put into buying rather than building, and how much has already been written off.
Goodwill & intangibles$2M0% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity0%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$54Mover 7 years buying other businesses, against $59M of capital spent building
$62M written down across 1 year (2020): goodwill the company has already conceded it overpaid for, charged against earnings. A write-down costs no cash (the cash went out when the deal was signed), but it is management marking its own past judgment to market.
Goodwill, acquired intangibles and equity from the latest balance sheet; acquisition spend and write-downs summed across the 7-year record, from the company's own filings.
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” | Owner earnings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Litz Van Dyke | $934k | $891k | $69M |
| 2022 | Litz Van Dyke | $1.3M | $1.3M | $65M |
| 2023 | Litz Van Dyke | $785k | $798k | $37M |
| 2024 | Litz Van Dyke | $1.3M | $1.4M | $29M |
| 2025 | Litz Van Dyke | $1.4M | $1.4M | $32M |
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 ownership2.4%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio23:1
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.
- Stock-based compensation$2M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 2% of operating profit. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. One trap: the cash-flow statement adds SBC back, so the operating cash, and the owner earnings drawn from it, are flattered by exactly this amount; counted as the cost it is, what an owner keeps is lower.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SHBIShore Bancshares Inc | $225M | 8% | 9% | 64% | 3.0% |
| ALRSAlerus Financial Corporation | $224M | 10% | 12% | 77% | 2.8% |
| SMBKSmartFinancial Inc. | $200M | 7% | 9% | 69% | 2.9% |
| PFISPeoples Financial Services Corp. | $188M | 9% | 11% | 62% | 2.9% |
| BCALCalifornia BanCorp | $180M | 8% | 9% | 65% | 3.9% |
| BFCBank First Corporation | $174M | 12% | 14% | 50% | 3.2% |
| CARECarter Bankshares Inc. | $153M | 7% | 7% | 75% | 2.7% |
| SFSTSouthern First Bancshares Inc. | $118M | 9% | 9% | 58% | 3.0% |
| Group median | — | 8% | 9% | 64% | 2.9% |
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 Carter Bankshares Inc.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered3%/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 equity7%
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 $418M on 22M shares, a 7% 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, "Carter Bankshares Inc. (CARE), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/CARE, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← CAR its page in the Manual CARG →
Industry order: ← CAC the Banks chapter CASH →