Owner Scorecard


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EVR, Evercore

Evercore is the leading independent investment banking firm in the world based on the dollar volume of announced worldwide merger and acquisition transactions on which we have advised in the last five years .

We were founded on the belief that there is an opportunity within the investment banking industry for a firm free of the potential conflicts of interest created within large, multi-product, capital intensive financial institutions.

Our investment banking business provides strategic advisory, liability management and restructuring, capital markets advisory and private capital advisory and fundraising services.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
EVR · Evercore
I

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025
$3.9B
+29.5% YoY · 11% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $4.6B 5-yr avg $3.1B
Operating margin 21.4% 5-yr avg 21.1%
Net margin 16.3% 5-yr avg 15.6%
Return on equity 42% 5-yr avg 31%

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
Assets under management and the fee rate on them. What decides it: net flows in or out, the market's move on the assets already there (the firm rises and falls with the indices it invests in), the drift toward cheaper passive products, and the operating leverage on a largely fixed cost base. 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?
Operating margin has been modest for a fee business (median 21%). It earns this on little capital, so return on equity has run near 29%, the leverage of a model that needs almost no plant to grow. A high return that does not fade can mark a moat, but whether the assets stay (net flows, not last year's market) is what the flow disclosures and the 10-K settle, not the multiple.

Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25TTMTTMMar 2026
Income statement
$1.5B$1.7B$2.1B$2.0B$2.3B$3.3B$2.8B$2.4B$3.0B$3.9B$4.6BRevenueRevenue
16.7%23.4%24.2%20.3%21.9%30.4%24.0%14.4%17.0%19.8%21.4%Operating marginOp. mgn
7.4%7.3%18.1%14.7%15.3%22.4%17.1%10.5%12.6%15.3%16.3%Net marginNet mgn
$108M$125M$377M$297M$351M$740M$477M$255M$378M$592M$747MNet incomeNet inc.
53%22%24%27%25%27%24%23%21%21%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
$409M$492M$832M$482M$954M$1.4B$508M$438M$958M$1.2B$1.5BOwner earningsOwner earn.
20%23%50%34%28%56%31%16%22%29%42%Return on equityROE
11%13%40%23%20%47%23%8%14%22%34%Retained to equityRetained/eq
Balance sheet
$1.7B$1.6B$2.1B$2.6B$3.4B$3.8B$3.6B$3.7B$4.2B$5.4B$4.3BTotal assetsAssets
$625M$738M$1.1B$1.3B$1.9B$2.4B$2.1B$2.0B$2.4B$3.0B$2.0BCash & investmentsCash+inv
$527M$544M$758M$870M$1.2B$1.3B$1.5B$1.6B$1.7B$2.0B$1.8BShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
44.2M44.8M45.3M43.2M42.6M43.3M41.0M40.1M41.6M42.1M41.9MShares out (diluted)Shares
$32.96$38.47$45.99$46.97$53.62$76.34$67.72$60.92$71.95$92.10$109.48Revenue / shareRev/sh
$2.43$2.80$8.33$6.89$8.22$17.08$11.61$6.37$9.08$14.05$17.85EPS (diluted)EPS
$9.25$10.98$18.37$11.15$22.38$31.32$12.38$10.92$23.00$29.14$36.80Owner earnings / shareOE/sh
$1.17$1.26$1.71$2.24$2.50$2.74$3.10$3.19$3.26$3.43$3.53Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$11.93$12.14$16.74$20.14$28.88$30.48$37.45$39.33$41.00$48.22$42.58Book value / shareBVPS
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+12.1%/yr+11.4%/yr
Owner earnings / share+13.6%/yr+5.4%/yr
EPS+21.5%/yr+11.3%/yr
Dividends / share+12.7%/yr+6.5%/yr
Capital spending / share+17.3%/yr+7.0%/yr
Book value / share+16.8%/yr+10.8%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count
42Mpeak FY2018
Revenue
$3.9Blow FY2016
III

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?

  • Solid fee margin
    Operating income $769M ÷ revenue $3.9B
    Industry peers: median 21%
    What this means

    The heart of a asset manager: how much of each fee dollar survives the cost of running the business. Fees ride on assets under management, so the swing factors are net flows in or out and the market's move on the assets already there; the cost base is largely fixed, which lifts margins in a bull market and squeezes them in a bear one. A high margin held for years, through a market it does not control, is the operational mark of a real franchise.

  • Net margin 15.3%
    Wide
    Net income $592M ÷ revenue $3.9B
    What this means

    What reaches the owner after tax and interest. For a capital-light fee business this should be a wide share of revenue; when it is thin despite a high operating margin, debt taken on for acquisitions is usually the reason, so read it next to the balance sheet.

  • Very high (≥25%)
    Net income $592M ÷ equity $2.0B
    Industry peers: median 13%
    What this means

    Because the business ties up little capital, a healthy fee stream throws off a high return on the equity behind it. Read it with the buyback record: returning capital lifts this ratio honestly, but heavy debt taken to do so can flatter it.

Does AI threaten the moat?

Moderate contestability

AI is likely to reshape costs and some products here without clearly contesting or sparing the core moat; how the company itself frames it is the tell.

In its own filing Raised, but not as a competitor

The filing raises AI among its risks, but in other terms (security, regulation, energy or the like), not as a competitor to its product.

The question is whether a moat the record shows as durable outlasts a technology that lowers the cost of part of what the firm sells. The durability is read in the record above, the filing's own framing of AI beside it; the industry label decides nothing on its own.

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.

Current Position

as of the latest quarter, Mar 31, 2026

Can the business pay what it owes this year, off the freshest balance sheet: the quality of the assets, the debt actually coming due, and what a low ratio means here.

Current assets$2.8B
  • Cash & short-term investments$2.0B
  • Receivables$547M
  • Other current assets$243M
Current liabilities$1.0B
  • Accounts payable$39M
  • Other current liabilities$977M
Current ratio2.77×all current assets ÷ what's due · Graham looked for 2×
Quick ratio2.77×stricter: inventory excluded
Cash ratio1.99×strictest: cash alone against what's due
Working capital$1.8Bthe cushion left after near-term bills
Revenue, latest quarter vs. a year ago+100.3%the freshest read on whether the business is still growing
Current ratio, recent quarters3.6× → 2.8×
Deeper floors
Tangible book value$1.5Bequity stripped of goodwill & intangibles
Net current asset value$585MGraham's net-net: current assets less all liabilities
Debt incl. operating leases$559M$559M of it operating leases; with finance leases, “total fixed claims” below reaches $1.1B (annual-report basis)
Deferred revenue$23Mcustomer cash collected before delivery; operating float

From the company's latest filing.

Debt by another name. What the business owes on the property, aircraft, stores and equipment it rents rather than owns is a fixed claim due on a schedule; added back to the debt, it is the true leverage. That ladder, and what it adds to the debt on the page above.

'26$85M
'27$82M
'28$73M
'29$61M
'30$72M
later$350M

Lease payments by year, scaled to the largest; “later” is everything beyond year five, shown apart. These are the contractual cash payments, before the interest the filing imputes back out to the balance-sheet liability.

Due in the next 12 months$85Ma fixed cash payment, owed whether or not the business has a good year
Total lease payments$724Mevery year plus the tail, undiscounted: the full cash the leases will take
On the balance sheet$567Mthe present value of those payments, the recognised lease liability

True leverage: debt plus leases

On-balance-sheet debt$540M
Lease obligations (present value)$567M
Total fixed claims on the business$1.1B

Counting the leases the way Buffett does, the fixed claims on this business come to $1.1B, of which the leases are 51%, more than the debt itself. The lease wall above and the debt schedule together are the calendar of what must be paid, and when.

Lease ladder read from the ASC 842 tags in the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled: the yearly buckets sum to the undiscounted total, which less the imputed interest equals the balance-sheet liability; a ladder that doesn’t tie out is withheld.

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 yearPay, as filed“Actually paid”Owner earnings
2021$16.3M$38.0M$1.4B
2021$10.3M$12.8M$1.4B
2022$15.2M$5.7M$508M
2022$7.7M$5.5M$508M
2023$13.0M$18.7M$438M
2024$9.9M$17.1M$958M
2025$17.1M$21.6M$1.2B

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%

    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$675M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 17% of revenue, equal to 88% 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 Revenue recognition, Credit & receivables, Contingencies 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, Capital Markets & Asset Management

The same industry, side by side on fee margins. 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.

CompanyRevenueOp. marginNet marginROE
ARESAres Management$5.6B13.1%9.0%13%
CGCarlyle Group$4.8B23.5%11.6%13%
BAMBrookfield Asset Mgmt$3.9B50.3%62.3%65%
EVREvercore$3.9B21.1%15.0%29%
LAZLazard$3.2B18.5%11.6%44%
JHGJanus Henderson Group plc$3.1B25.0%18.8%10%
OWLBlue Owl Capital$2.9B14.3%2.7%4%
HLIHoulihan Lokey$2.6B20.5%16.1%18%
Group median20.8%13.3%16%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

reverse-DCF

Type today's close and see the owner-earnings growth you'd have to believe to justify it, beside what Evercore has delivered.

$

Through the cycle, Evercore earns about $1.2B on its 30.1% median owner-earnings margin. This year’s 31.6% margin runs in line with that. Normalize, below, values the price on that through-cycle figure rather than the latest year.

Base

The assumptions

9.0% = the 4.55% 10-year Treasury (Jul 15, 2026) + 4.45 points of equity premium. The rate you require is yours to set.

Enter a price above to run it.

Implied by the price
Owner-earnings growth · ’21→’25+4%/yr
Owner-earnings growth · ’16→’25+10%/yr
Owner-earnings yield
P/E (3-yr earnings ’23–’25)
P/B
Graham’s price gate

Graham capped the multiple at 15×; Buffett and Munger let that rule go: a wonderful business can deserve 50× if the thesis holds. The gate marks the bargain-hunter's floor.

Against a high-grade bond: Graham’s yardstick bond yield%

Prefilled with the 10-year Treasury (4.55%, as of Jul 15, 2026). Edit it for today’s exact figure, or a AAA corporate yield.

Graham measured a stock against the bond you could own instead, the heart of his margin of safety. Enter a price above to weigh the owner-earnings yield against this bond.

Free cash flow $1.5B on 39M shares outstanding (a weighted basic average, the only count this filer tags); net cash $1.5B. The if-converted diluted count is 42M, 7% above the shares outstanding: the dilution overhang (convertibles, options) a buyer inherits. The base is the latest year by default; Normalize values it on the through-cycle median owner-earnings margin (to avoid paying on a peak year). Net of stock comp treats option pay as the expense it is. Capex ($57M) runs well above depreciation ($40M), so this is a build-out; Steady-state swaps total capex for maintenance (≈ depreciation), lifting the base to about $1.6B, the cash it would throw off if it stopped expanding. The dials set the multiple a growth belief justifies; the price, and every dollar on this page, is yours.

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Evercore (EVR), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/EVR, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← EVMN its page in the Manual EVRG →

Industry order: ← ETOR the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter FHI →