Share count
24Mpeak FY2020
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ECPG, Encore Capital Group Inc
Consumer Finance financial
A balance-sheet business, read on book value, net interest margin and credit losses rather than an earnings multiple.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$88M
+4.3% YoY · −5% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $86M 5-yr avg $94M
Revenue $475M +21.0% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin 38.7% yr-ago 32.9%
Net income $86M yr-ago $47M
Net margin 18.1% yr-ago 11.9%
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 debt terms & refinancing, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has run high across the record (median 15%, above 12% in 8 of 10 years). A bank that earns above its cost of equity through the cycle compounds book value; whether this one did it by underwriting discipline or by reaching for risk is what the 10-K, and the worst years in the record, will tell you.
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, 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 | TTMTTMMar 2026 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | |||||||||||
| $83M | $90M | $148M | $127M | $115M | $121M | $95M | $83M | $85M | $88M | $86M | RevenueRevenue |
| $77M | $83M | $116M | $168M | $212M | $351M | $195M | ($206M) | ($139M) | $257M | $296M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 33% | 38% | 29% | 16% | 25% | 20% | 37% | — | — | 24% | 24% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| 2.1% | 1.9% | 2.5% | 3.4% | 4.4% | 7.6% | 4.3% | -4.5% | -2.9% | 4.8% | 5.4% | Return on assetsROA |
| 14% | 14% | 14% | 16% | 17% | 30% | 16% | -22% | -18% | 26% | 29% | Return on equityROE |
| 14% | 14% | 14% | 16% | 17% | 30% | 16% | −22% | −18% | 26% | 29% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| — | — | — | 194% | 80% | 140% | 58% | -63% | -54% | 58% | 59% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $3.7B | $4.5B | $4.6B | $4.9B | $4.9B | $4.6B | $4.5B | $4.6B | $4.8B | $5.3B | $5.5B | Total assetsAssets |
| $785M | $929M | $868M | $884M | $907M | $898M | $821M | $606M | $508M | $536M | $529M | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $559M | $582M | $818M | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.2B | $937M | $767M | $977M | $1.0B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 25.9M | 26.4M | 28.6M | 31.5M | 31.7M | 31.2M | 26.1M | 23.7M | 23.9M | 23.5M | 22.3M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $2.96 | $3.15 | $4.06 | $5.33 | $6.68 | $11.26 | $7.46 | $-8.72 | $-5.83 | $10.91 | $13.27 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $21.59 | $22.04 | $28.63 | $32.48 | $38.40 | $38.05 | $45.21 | $39.57 | $32.14 | $41.50 | $46.36 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $-9.80 | $-16.01 | $-3.87 | $2.75 | $8.38 | $8.06 | $12.89 | $13.94 | $10.87 | $18.72 | $22.64 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +1.8%/yr | +0.7%/yr |
| Owner earnings / share | +3.9%/yr | −9.3%/yr |
| EPS | +15.6%/yr | +10.3%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | −1.0%/yr | +0.5%/yr |
| Book value / share | +7.5%/yr | +1.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$88Mlow 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?
- Return on equity 26%Very high (≥17%)Net income $257M ÷ equity $977MIndustry peers: median -17%
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.
- Very high (≥18%)Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill $536M − intangibles $0)Industry peers: median -17%
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.
- Not enough data
What this means
Noninterest expense or revenue missing.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 18.3%Well capitalizedEquity $977M ÷ assets $5.3B
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 —Not enough data
What this means
Provision or net interest income missing.
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.
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 10-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$536M10% of all assets; the premium carried on the balance sheet for businesses acquired
Against book equity55%goodwill is this share of book equity; the rest is the company’s own retained and paid-in capital
Cash spent acquiring$97Mover 10 years buying other businesses, against $352M of capital spent building
$350M written down across 3 years (2019, 2023, 2024): 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 10-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 | Mr. Masih | $4.6M | $8.7M | $270M |
| 2022 | Mr. Masih | $5.1M | $2.9M | $173M |
| 2023 | Mr. Masih | $5.0M | $5.5M | $128M |
| 2024 | Mr. Masih | $5.3M | $3.6M | $127M |
| 2025 | Mr. Masih | $8.1M | $13.3M | $127M |
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 ownership3%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- Stock-based compensation$18M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 21% of revenue, equal to 3% 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.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Acquisitions as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Consumer 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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% |
| ECPGEncore Capital Group Inc | $88M | 15% | 58% | — | 0.5% |
| BGDEBig Digital Energy Inc. | $40M | -138% | -138% | — | 0.2% |
| RKTRocket Companies Inc. | $125M | -0% | -1% | — | 0.2% |
| VELVelocity Financial Inc. | $186M | 16% | 16% | — | 2.5% |
| AGMFederal Agricultural Mortgage Corporation | $408M | 12% | 12% | 24% | 1.1% |
| Group median | — | -9% | -9% | — | 0.5% |
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 Encore Capital Group Inc’s record justifies.
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The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered15%/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 equity58%
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 $505M on 21M shares, a 58% 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, "Encore Capital Group Inc (ECPG), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ECPG, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← ECL its page in the Manual ECVT →
Industry order: ← DFS the Consumer Finance chapter ENVA →