Share count
7.7Bpeak FY2025
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HDB, HDFC Bank Limited
Banks financial
HDFC Bank is an Indian bank. It gathers deposits from retail and corporate customers, lends that money back out as retail and business loans, and keeps the spread between what it pays savers and what it charges borrowers. Around that lending it sells related financial services — insurance, asset management, and stock brokerage through its subsidiaries — for fee income.
Since completion of the Transaction (as defined under "— About Our Bank " below) on July 1, 2023, we are also engaged in life and general insurance, asset management and securities broking products and services through our specialized subsidiaries and joint venture.
We have four principal business activities: retail banking, wholesale banking, treasury services and insurance services.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
₹2.37T
+19.4% YoY · 25% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue ₹2.37T 5-yr avg ₹1.50T
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 commodity in the sense that money is money; the franchise, if there is one, lives in the cost of funding and the discipline of lending. The test is whether deposits are cheap and sticky enough to give an edge no rival can easily match, and whether loans are underwritten so that defaults stay small — for a lender earns a thin spread on a large balance sheet, and a bad book can wipe out years of it. Management itself flags how competitive the market is and how hard it is to price to keep customers, alongside its largest single-borrower exposures and a standing dependence on raising capital to fund the book. The figures for the spread, loan losses, and returns are in the record below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 14%, 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.
Drafted from the company's filings and reviewed by hand; every number is shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.
Revenue
₹2.37Tlow FY2016
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 20-F · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Below the cost of equityNet income ₹686.5B ÷ equity ₹7.68TIndustry 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.
- SolidNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill ₹1.63T − intangibles ₹1.37T)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 53%Cost-income, not comparable to the US gradesNoninterest expense ₹1.27T ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 62%
What this means
The share of revenue eaten by running costs. A 20-F/IFRS filer structures its income statement differently from a US bank, so this figure is not comparable to the US thresholds and is shown without a lean/bloated grade — read it against the bank's own history, not across the pool.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 15.9%Well capitalizedEquity ₹7.68T ÷ assets ₹48.19T
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 56%Mostly deposit-fundedDeposits ₹27.11T ÷ assets ₹48.19T
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 ₹181.4B ÷ net interest income ₹1.40T
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 Framed as a capability
The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.
“As we recognize the increasing shift towards digital transactions, we envision the transformation of retail branches into engagement centers with strategic imperatives like customer lifecycle engagement and AI Analytics-driven customer conversations, among other innovations.”
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.
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% |
| TFCTruist Financial Corporation | $20.3B | 8% | 11% | 63% | 2.7% |
| HDBHDFC Bank Limited | ₹2.37T | 14% | 15% | 40% | 3.7% |
| Group median | — | 10% | 13% | 61% | 2.5% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookEnter the home-market price, not the US ADR quote. HDFC Bank Limited reports in INR, and every figure here (owner earnings, book value, the share count) is on that INR, ordinary-share basis. Enter the price on the same basis: the local-exchange quote per ordinary share in INR. A US ADR price in dollars bundles the ADR-to-ordinary ratio and the exchange rate, so it will not reconcile with these figures and would throw the multiple off.
A 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 HDFC Bank Limited’s record justifies.
₹
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered12%/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 equity15%
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 ₹4.68T on 7652M shares, a 15% 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, "HDFC Bank Limited (HDB), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/HDB, data as of 2026-07-09.
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