Share count
11Mpeak FY2018
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OPY, Oppenheimer Holdings Inc.
Capital Markets & Asset Management financial
Oppenheimer provides a comprehensive array of financial services through a network of 924 financial advisors in 88 offices located throughout the United States.
Pursuant to this action, Freedom ceased all broker-dealer activities and closed or transferred any remaining customer accounts.
Brokerage commissions are charged on investment products in accordance with a schedule which Oppenheimer has formulated.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$1.6B
+14.4% YoY · 6% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $1.7B 5-yr avg $1.4B
Revenue $399M +23.2% vs yr-ago qtr
Operating margin −6.8% yr-ago 12.8%
Net income ($21M) yr-ago $31M
Net margin −5.2% yr-ago 9.5%
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What it is
- Revenue is led by Advisory fees (39%) and Commissions from sales and trading (30%), with 5 more lines behind.
- 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 sat below the cost of equity (median 7%, above 12% in only 3 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.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Revenue spreads across 7 lines, the largest Advisory fees at 39%.
Revenue by product line, FY2025
- Advisory fees39%$555M
- Commissions from sales and trading30%$431M
- Investment Banking, Capital Markets11%$153M
- Bank Deposit Sweep Income8%$115M
- Investment Banking, Advisory8%$114M
- Mutual Fund Income2%$33M
- Other2%$23M
From the segment footnote of the company's own 10-K. Shares are of total revenue; the profit bar shows each segment's share of segment operating profit, before unallocated corporate costs.
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 | |||||||||||
| $858M | $920M | $958M | $1.0B | $1.2B | $1.4B | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.4B | $1.6B | $1.7B | RevenueRevenue |
| ($1M) | $23M | $29M | $53M | $123M | $159M | $32M | $30M | $72M | $148M | $97M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| — | — | 36% | 29% | 27% | 29% | 29% | 35% | 33% | 30% | 32% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| -0.1% | 0.9% | 1.3% | 2.1% | 4.5% | 5.2% | 1.2% | 1.0% | 2.1% | 4.0% | 2.5% | Return on assetsROA |
| -0% | 4% | 5% | 9% | 18% | 19% | 4% | 4% | 8% | 15% | 10% | Return on equityROE |
| −1% | 3% | 4% | 8% | 15% | 17% | 3% | 3% | 8% | 14% | 9% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| -0% | 6% | 8% | 13% | 24% | 24% | 5% | 5% | 11% | 18% | 13% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $2.2B | $2.4B | $2.2B | $2.5B | $2.7B | $3.0B | $2.7B | $2.9B | $3.4B | $3.7B | $3.8B | Total assetsAssets |
| $138M | $138M | $138M | $138M | $138M | $138M | $138M | $142M | $144M | $144M | $144M | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $511M | $524M | $545M | $593M | $686M | $823M | $794M | $789M | $850M | $984M | $952M | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 13.4M | 13.7M | 14.1M | 13.9M | 13.2M | 13.6M | 12.6M | 11.6M | 11.2M | 11.4M | 10.6M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $-0.09 | $1.67 | $2.05 | $3.82 | $9.30 | $11.70 | $2.57 | $2.59 | $6.37 | $13.04 | $9.13 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.44 | $0.43 | $0.41 | $0.43 | $1.41 | $1.43 | $0.56 | $0.55 | $0.61 | $0.67 | $0.71 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $38.20 | $38.29 | $38.78 | $42.79 | $51.88 | $60.61 | $63.00 | $67.76 | $75.73 | $86.43 | $89.49 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $25.52 | $25.89 | $26.69 | $30.52 | $39.02 | $48.09 | $49.51 | $52.61 | $59.76 | $70.73 | $72.72 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +9.4%/yr | +9.7%/yr |
| EPS | — | +7.0%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +4.7%/yr | −13.9%/yr |
| Capital spending / share | +0.7%/yr | +5.9%/yr |
| Book value / share | +9.5%/yr | +10.7%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$1.6Blow FY2016
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?
- Return on equity 15%StrongNet income $148M ÷ equity $984MIndustry peers: median 12%
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 $144M − intangibles $35M)Industry peers: median 18%
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.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 72%
What this means
Noninterest expense or revenue missing.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 26.4%Well capitalizedEquity $984M ÷ assets $3.7B
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 —Not enough data
What this means
Provision or net interest income missing.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Moderate contestabilityAI 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; it frames AI mainly as a capability.
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.
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | Mr. R.S. Lowenthal | $4.8M | $4.7M | ($29M) |
| 2024 | Mr. R.S. Lowenthal | $2.5M | $1.5M | ($113M) |
| 2025 | Mr. R.S. Lowenthal | $10.9M | $9.8M | $184M |
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 ownership31.9%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio48:1
What the chief earns for every dollar the median employee makes, per the 2026 proxy. A high ratio alone settles nothing; some businesses are genuinely top-heavy in scarce skill. A runaway figure is where Buffett starts asking whether the board is doing its job.
- Stock-based compensation$32M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 15% 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.
Peers, Capital Markets & Asset Management
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MSMorgan Stanley | $70.6B | 11% | 13% | 72% | 0.6% |
| GSGoldman Sachs Group Inc. (The) | $58.3B | 10% | 10% | 65% | 0.4% |
| SCHWCharles Schwab Corporation (The) | $23.9B | 13% | 18% | — | 1.9% |
| RJFRaymond James Financial Inc. | $15.9B | 16% | 18% | 82% | 2.1% |
| SFStifel Financial | $6.3B | 12% | 17% | — | — |
| FRHCFreedom Holding Corp. | $2.2B | 17% | 18% | — | 1.5% |
| OPYOppenheimer Holdings Inc. | $1.6B | 7% | 9% | — | — |
| Group median | — | 12% | 17% | — | — |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookA 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 Oppenheimer Holdings Inc.’s record justifies.
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The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered11%/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 equity9%
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 $774M on 11M shares, a 9% 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, "Oppenheimer Holdings Inc. (OPY), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/OPY, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← OPTX its page in the Manual ORA →
Industry order: ← NU the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter OWL →