Share count
226Mpeak FY2017
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PFG, Principal Financial
Insurance — Life & Health financial
Principal Financial is a leader in global financial services offering businesses, individuals and institutional clients a wide range of financial products and services, including retirement, asset management and workplace benefits and protection solutions through our diverse family of financial services companies.
Our international asset management and accumulation businesses focus on the opportunities created as aging populations around the world drive increased demand for retirement accumulation, retirement asset management and retirement income management solutions.
In the U.S., we offer a broad array of retirement and employee benefit and insurance solutions to meet the needs of the business owner and their employees.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$15.6B
−3.1% YoY · 1% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $15.5B 5-yr avg $15.5B
Revenue $3.5B −4.5% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $413M yr-ago $63M
Net margin 11.7% yr-ago 1.7%
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
- The spread on the float and the growth in book value. What decides it: the gap between what the invested reserves earn and what is credited to policyholders, the mortality and fee margins on top, and the scale of the float against equity. Benefits exceed premiums by design, so a P&C combined ratio is the wrong lens; the risks are interest rates and reserve adequacy. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- A life insurer is read on the spread it earns on a large float and the growth in book value, not a combined ratio: benefits exceed premiums by design, since claims fall due decades after the premium and are funded by the investment income on accumulated reserves. Book value per share, the measure Berkshire is judged on, has compounded about 5% a year across the record. The float runs about 0.1× equity, the leverage that magnifies the spread. Whether the spread holds as rates move, and whether the reserves prove adequate, are what the 10-K decides, not an earnings multiple.
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 | |||||||||||
| $12.4B | $14.1B | $14.2B | $16.2B | $14.7B | $14.4B | $17.5B | $13.7B | $16.1B | $15.6B | $15.5B | RevenueRevenue |
| $5.3B | $6.2B | $6.4B | $7.9B | $6.0B | $4.8B | $5.3B | $6.5B | $6.9B | $6.8B | $6.2B | Premiums earnedPremiums |
| $3.3B | $3.5B | $3.6B | $4.0B | $3.9B | $4.4B | $3.8B | $4.1B | $4.4B | $4.7B | $4.8B | Investment incomeInv. inc. |
| $1.3B | $2.3B | $1.5B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.6B | $4.8B | $623M | $1.6B | $1.2B | $1.6B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 15% | -3% | 13% | 15% | 16% | 15% | 20% | 10% | 16% | 12% | 14% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| $3.9B | $4.2B | $5.2B | $5.5B | $3.7B | $3.3B | $3.2B | $3.8B | $4.6B | $4.5B | $3.7B | Operating cash flowOp. cash |
| 13% | 18% | 14% | 10% | 8% | 10% | 48% | 6% | 14% | 10% | 13% | Return on equityROE |
| 8% | 14% | 8% | 5% | 5% | 6% | 41% | −0% | 8% | 4% | 7% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.3B | $2.4B | $1.7B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.4B | $1.3B | $1.3B | Float (reserves)Float |
| $228.0B | $253.9B | $243.0B | $276.1B | $296.6B | $304.7B | $290.9B | $305.0B | $313.7B | $341.4B | $332.7B | Total assetsAssets |
| $2.7B | $2.5B | $3.0B | $2.5B | $2.8B | $2.3B | $4.8B | $4.7B | $4.2B | $4.4B | $4.1B | Cash & investmentsCash+inv |
| $10.2B | $12.8B | $11.4B | $14.6B | $16.6B | $16.1B | $10.0B | $10.9B | $11.1B | $11.9B | $11.8B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 293M | 293M | 289M | 281M | 277M | 273M | 255M | 245M | 235M | 226M | 220M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $4.50 | $7.88 | $5.35 | $4.96 | $5.05 | $5.79 | $18.63 | $2.55 | $6.68 | $5.25 | $7.09 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $1.59 | $1.84 | $2.07 | $2.16 | $2.22 | $2.40 | $2.52 | $2.56 | $2.80 | $3.03 | $3.13 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $34.94 | $43.84 | $39.44 | $52.02 | $59.87 | $58.88 | $39.08 | $44.63 | $47.12 | $52.65 | $53.63 | Book value / shareBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +5.6%/yr | +5.4%/yr |
| EPS | +1.7%/yr | +0.8%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +7.4%/yr | +6.4%/yr |
| Book value / share | +4.7%/yr | −2.5%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$15.6Blow 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 10%Below the cost of equityNet income $1.2B ÷ equity $11.9BIndustry peers: median 9%
What this means
What it earns on shareholders' capital, the underwriting result plus what the float earns invested. Durably above the ~10% cost of equity is what compounds book value.
- Investment income $4.7Bearned on investmentsNet investment income $4.7B
What this means
What the float and capital earned this year. This is the second engine: an insurer that breaks even on underwriting still wins if the float is large and invested well.
The float and book value
- Float (reserves) $1.3B0.1× equityLoss and claim reserves $1.3B, 0.1× 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.
- the compounding scoreboardEquity $11.9B ÷ 226M shares
What this means
A life insurer is judged the way Berkshire is, by the growth in book value per share over the years as the spread on the float and the mortality and fee margins compound into equity. This is the level today; the record below shows whether it has grown. Note that reported book value swings with interest rates, which mark the bond portfolio up and down through other comprehensive income.
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.
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$350Mthe first rung: what must be repaid or rolled over within the year
Within two years$350Mthe near wall, the part most exposed to today’s credit conditions
Biggest single year$598Min 2030the lumpiest maturity, where a refinancing, if needed, is largest
Total scheduled principal$3.9Bevery year plus what lies beyond, as the footnote totals it
Against what the business has and earns
Cash & short-term investments, Mar 31, 2026$4.1B
Together, against $350M due next year11.6×
Cash on hand as of Mar 31, 2026 comes to $4.1B against the $350M due in the twelve months after the Dec 31, 2025 schedule: 12 times it.
Maturity schedule extracted from the company’s Dec 31, 2025 annual report and reconciled to the balance-sheet debt.
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 | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $17.6M | $30.4M | $1.6B |
| 2022 | $13.8M | $22.3M | $4.8B |
| 2023 | $15.1M | $12.3M | $623M |
| 2024 | $16.4M | $14.2M | $1.6B |
| 2025 | $11.3M | $13.2M | $1.2B |
| 2025 | $13.8M | $15.3M | $1.2B |
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. Net income is the whole business's, as filed, for the same fiscal years.
- Insider ownership<1%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio155:1
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$110M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 1% of revenue, equal to 8% 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, Insurance — Life & Health
The same industry, side by side on the spread-and-book-value 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 | Yield on float | Return on assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EGEverest Group | $17.7B | 9% | 4.7% | 2.5% |
| AFLAFLAC Incorporated | $17.6B | 16% | 5.8% | 3.0% |
| PFGPrincipal Financial | $15.6B | 11% | — | 0.5% |
| MKLMarkel Group Inc. | $15.5B | 9% | 3.1% | 2.5% |
| CNACNA Financial Corporation | $15.0B | 8% | 9.4% | 1.6% |
| WRBW.R. Berkley | $14.7B | 14% | 5.1% | 2.9% |
| UNMUnum Group | $13.1B | 11% | 9.6% | 1.5% |
| CNOCNO Financial Group Inc. | $4.5B | 9% | — | 1.0% |
| Group median | — | 10% | — | 2.0% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookAn insurer 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 Principal Financial’s record justifies.
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The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered−4%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). An insurer 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 an insurer.
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 $9.0B on 216M 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 insurer keeps earning that return; an underwriting cycle, a reserve shortfall or a bad year on the float changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Principal Financial (PFG), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/PFG, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← PFE its page in the Manual PFGC →
Industry order: ← MFC the Insurance — Life & Health chapter PFH →