Share count
49Mpeak FY2016
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MBI, MBIA Inc.
MBIA Services Corporation, also owned by MBIA Inc., is a service company that provides support services such as surveillance, risk management, legal, accounting, treasury and information technology, among others, to our businesses on a fee-for-service basis.
Has also provided financial guarantee insurance in the international and structured finance markets through its subsidiary MBIA Corp.
Manages its capital and liquidity in order to ensure that it can service its debt and other financial obligations and pay its operating expenses while maintaining an adequate cushion against potential adverse events.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$201M
+378.6% YoY · −7% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $201M 5-yr avg $94M
Combined ratio 124%
Revenue $24M +71.4% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income ($42M) yr-ago ($62M)
Net margin −175.0% yr-ago −442.9%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- Situation
- Unprofitable. No sustained operating profit across the record; an earnings multiple has nothing to rest on. What the record does show is revenue, the gross-margin trajectory, and the burn against the cash on hand.
- What moves the needle
- Underwriting discipline and the float. What decides it: whether the combined ratio stays below 100% so the policies make money on their own, how large the float is against equity, and what that float earns once it is invested. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on concentrated dependence, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- It runs an underwriting loss, about a 124% combined ratio, and must earn the difference back on the float. The float runs about -0.4× equity, the leverage that magnifies both the underwriting and the investing. Whether the discipline holds through a soft market, and how the float is invested, are what the 10-K decides.
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 | |||||||||||
| $480M | $433M | $317M | $280M | $282M | $189M | $154M | $7M | $42M | $80M | $201M | RevenueRevenue |
| $300M | $201M | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $201M | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| ($338M) | ($1.6B) | ($296M) | ($359M) | ($578M) | ($445M) | ($195M) | $477M | $435M | ($177M) | ($155M) | Net incomeNet inc. |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| ($149M) | ($652M) | ($319M) | ($368M) | ($390M) | $511M | ($418M) | ($195M) | ($176M) | $38M | $48M | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| ($150M) | ($653M) | ($320M) | ($368M) | ($390M) | $510M | ($418M) | ($195M) | — | — | $48M | Owner earningsOwner earn. |
| -10% | -114% | -26% | -43% | -425% | — | — | — | — | — | — | Return on equityROE |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $541M | $979M | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | $1.0B | Float (reserves)Float |
| $11.1B | $9.1B | $8.1B | $7.3B | $5.8B | $4.7B | $3.4B | $2.6B | $2.2B | $2.0B | $2.0B | Total assetsAssets |
| $187M | $146M | $280M | $83M | $167M | $160M | $78M | $108M | $87M | $71M | $72M | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $3.2B | $1.4B | $1.1B | $826M | $136M | ($313M) | ($882M) | ($1.7B) | ($2.1B) | ($2.2B) | ($2.3B) | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 133M | 119M | 89.0M | 81.0M | 59.1M | 49.5M | 49.8M | 48.2M | 47.4M | 49.3M | 49.8M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $-2.54 | $-13.50 | $-3.33 | $-4.43 | $-9.78 | $-8.99 | $-3.92 | $9.89 | $9.17 | $-3.59 | $-3.11 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $-1.13 | $-5.49 | $-3.59 | $-4.54 | $-6.60 | $10.31 | $-8.39 | $-4.05 | — | — | $0.96 | Owner earnings / shareOE/sh |
| — | — | — | — | — | $0.00 | $0.00 | $8.48 | $0.00 | $0.00 | $0.00 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $24.26 | $11.88 | $12.57 | $10.20 | $2.30 | $-6.33 | $-17.71 | $-34.37 | $-44.04 | $-45.40 | $-45.85 | Book value / shareBVPS |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$80Mlow FY2023
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?
- Combined ratio ≈ 130%Underwriting lossTotal benefits, losses and expenses $261M ÷ premiums earned $201M
What this means
The heart of a property-casualty insurer: claims and costs as a share of premiums. Below 100% means it is paid to hold the float, the gold standard; above 100% means it loses money on the policies and must make it back on investments. Approximate here, taken from the filer's total benefits, losses and expenses over premiums, so it can sit a point or two off the company's headline figure; a number held below 100% across cycles is the mark of a disciplined underwriter, the rarest thing in the business.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 13%
What this means
Net income or equity missing.
The float
- Float (reserves) $979M-0.4× equityLoss and claim reserves $979M, -0.4× equity
What this means
Money held against future claims and invested in the meantime. Buffett's insight was that good underwriting makes this float cost less than nothing, a pool of other people's money the owners earn on. Measured here from loss and claim reserves only; it excludes unearned premiums and funds held, so the true float is somewhat larger than shown. The larger it is against equity, the more that leverage works, for better or worse.
- Not enough data
What this means
Net investment income wasn't found.
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.
Debt maturity
the debt note, SEC EDGAR →Not how much it owes, but when it falls due, and against what. The ladder the company files, beside cash on hand and a year's owner earnings.
Bars scaled to the largest single year; “later” is everything due after 2030, shown apart since it dwarfs the years.
Due in the next 12 months$0the first rung: what must be repaid or rolled over within the year
Within two years$95Mthe near wall, the part most exposed to today’s credit conditions
Biggest single year$112Min 2028the lumpiest maturity, where a refinancing, if needed, is largest
Total scheduled principal$1.2Bevery year plus what lies beyond, as the footnote totals it
Maturity schedule extracted from the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled to the total the table states.
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. Fallon | $4.0M | $23.1M | $510M |
| 2022 | Mr. Fallon | $4.0M | −$3.0M | ($418M) |
| 2023 | Mr. Fallon | $17.1M | $5.0M | ($195M) |
| 2024 | Mr. Fallon | $3.9M | $4.1M | — |
| 2025 | Mr. Fallon | $4.3M | $3.9M | — |
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 ownership11.3%
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$0
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 0% 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 Insurance reserves 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, Insurance — Property & Casualty
The same industry, side by side on the underwriting 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 | Combined ratio | Loss ratio | ROE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MTGMGIC Investment Corporation | $1.2B | — | — | 14% |
| RDNRadian Group Inc. | $1.2B | — | — | 13% |
| NMIHNMI Holdings Inc. | $706M | — | — | 15% |
| NODKNI Holdings Inc. | $285M | — | 69% | 3% |
| AIIAmerican Integrity Insurance Group Inc. | $276M | 66% | 40% | 30% |
| ITICInvestors Title Company | $273M | — | — | 13% |
| KWYKingsway Corporation | $135M | — | — | -60% |
| MBIMBIA Inc. | $201M | 130% | — | -43% |
| Group median | — | — | — | 13% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
reverse-DCFA bank / financial isn't read on an owner-earnings DCF; its economics live on the balance sheet (book value, the return earned on it, and the cash the assets throw off).
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "MBIA Inc. (MBI), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/MBI, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← MBC its page in the Manual MBIN →
Industry order: ← LMND the Insurance — Property & Casualty chapter MCY →