Owner Scorecard


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ITUB, Itau Unibanco Banco Holding SA

Banks financial

A balance-sheet business, read on book value, net interest margin and credit losses rather than an earnings multiple.

Latest annual: FY2024 20-F · figures as filed, in BRL
ITUB · Itau Unibanco Banco Holding SA
I

The business

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

Revenue · FY2024
R$90.6B
+98.2% YoY · 18% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2024, with 5-yr average
Revenue R$90.6B 5-yr avg R$43.6B
Return on equity 19% 5-yr avg 17%
Return on tangible equity 21% 5-yr avg 17%
Equity / assets 7.4% 5-yr avg 7.3%

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 customer concentration, 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 18%, above 12% in 10 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.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, charted

FY2015–2024

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.

Share count
9.8Bpeak FY2023
Revenue
R$47.1Blow FY2015
III

Quality & stewardship

Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.

Owner’s Scorecard

FY2024 20-F · source on SEC EDGAR →

Is it a good business?

  • Very high (≥17%)
    Net income R$41.1B ÷ equity R$211.1B
    Industry 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.

  • Very high (≥18%)
    Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill R$10.7B − intangibles R$8.7B)
    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.

  • Cost-income, not comparable to the US grades
    Noninterest expense R$46.1B ÷ (net interest income + fees)
    Industry peers: median 64%
    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) 7.4%
    Modest
    Equity R$211.1B ÷ assets R$2.85T
    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.

  • Leans on wholesale funding
    Deposits R$1.05T ÷ assets R$2.85T
    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) 27%
    Elevated
    Provision for credit losses R$11.9B ÷ net interest income R$43.5B
    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 contestability

The moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.

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; it frames AI mainly as a capability.

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.

CompanyRevenueROEROTCEEfficiencyNII / assets
JPMJPMorgan Chase & Co.$182.4B13%16%57%2.0%
BACBank of America Corp.$113.1B10%13%64%1.8%
CCitigroup Inc.$85.2B7%8%62%2.3%
WFCWells Fargo & Co.$83.7B11%13%67%2.5%
COFCapital One Financial Corporation$53.4B8%12%54%6.0%
BKTHE Bank of NEW York Mellon Corporation$20.1B10%20%69%0.9%
STTState Street Corporation$13.9B10%15%74%0.9%
ITUBItau Unibanco Banco Holding SAR$90.6B18%19%51%1.5%
Group median10%14%63%1.9%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

Enter the home-market price, not the US ADR quote. Itau Unibanco Banco Holding SA reports in BRL, and every figure here (owner earnings, book value, the share count) is on that BRL, ordinary-share basis. Enter the price on the same basis: the local-exchange quote per ordinary share in BRL. 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 Itau Unibanco Banco Holding SA’s record justifies.

R$
The assumptions

Tangible book / share, delivered−7%/yr’19→’24

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 equity19%
Price / book
Earnings yield
P/E (3-yr avg ’22–’24)
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.

Tangible book R$191.7B on 4958M shares, a 19% 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, "Itau Unibanco Banco Holding SA (ITUB), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/ITUB, data as of 2026-07-09.

Manual order: ← ITRN its page in the Manual IVA →

Industry order: ← ISTR the Banks chapter JPM →