Share count
2.5Bpeak FY2017
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MFG, Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.
Banks financial
Mizuho is one of Japan's large banking groups. It takes deposits and lends the money out — to companies and individuals, at home and abroad — and earns the spread between what it pays for funds and what it collects on loans and securities. Alongside the lending it runs the usual bank sidelines: payments, trust and asset management, securities dealing, and fee work for corporate clients.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2026
¥4.50T
+38.1% YoY · 8% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2026, with 5-yr average
Revenue ¥4.50T 5-yr avg ¥3.11T
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 sells a commodity — money — so the only durable edge is being a cheap, disciplined lender, and the tests are whether deposits fund the book at a low cost and whether the loans come back. Watch the spread between the yield on assets and the cost of funds, and watch credit losses across a full cycle: a bank can book years of profit and hand it all back in one bad stretch of underwriting. Because it runs thin capital against a large balance sheet, regulation sets the floor on its leverage, and the filing names cyber loss among its own worries; both bound the downside more than they add to it. The spread, the loss rate, and the capital cushion are in the record below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has sat below the cost of equity (median 5%, above 12% in only 2 of 10 years). The cycle and the loan book decide this one; weigh the recession years in the record, not the average, and read the 10-K.
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
FY2017–2026Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked. Share counts on the current split basis.
Revenue
¥4.50Tlow FY2022
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2026 20-F · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 12%AdequateNet income ¥1.33T ÷ equity ¥10.86TIndustry 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 ¥213.3B − intangibles ¥42.2B)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 58%Cost-income, not comparable to the US gradesNoninterest expense ¥2.63T ÷ (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) 3.7%ThinEquity ¥10.86T ÷ assets ¥294.90T
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 (provision / NII) 11%ModerateProvision for credit losses ¥188.4B ÷ net interest income ¥1.69T
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 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.
| 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% |
| MFGMizuho Financial Group, Inc. | ¥4.50T | 5% | 5% | 75% | 0.5% |
| Group median | — | 9% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookEnter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Per the filing's own cover, “American depositary shares, each of which represents two shares of common”; Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. reports in JPY, so every figure in this tool is stated per ADS and translated at JPY 1 = $0.0062 (2026-07-17, reference rate) so your dollar quote reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed, in JPY.
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 Mizuho Financial Group, Inc.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered4%/yr’21→’26
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 equity5%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’24–’26)—
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 $65.3B on 1245M shares, a 5% 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, "Mizuho Financial Group, Inc. (MFG), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/MFG, data as of 2026-07-09.
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