Owner Scorecard


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RF, Regions Financial Corporation

Banks financial

Regions provides financial solutions for a wide range of clients including retail and mortgage banking services, commercial banking services and wealth and investment services.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K
RF · Regions Financial Corporation
I

The business

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

Revenue · FY2025
$7.5B
+6.3% YoY · 4% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue $7.5B 5-yr avg $7.2B
Return on equity 11% 5-yr avg 12%
Return on tangible equity 16% 5-yr avg 19%
Efficiency ratio 57% 5-yr avg 58%
Equity / assets 12.0% 5-yr avg 11.3%

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 pricing power & competition, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
Is it a good business?
Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 11%, above 12% in 2 of 10 years). It runs at a 57% efficiency ratio, lean. 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.

II

The record

Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.

The record, 2016–2025

realized figures from each filing · older years to the left
2016’162017’172018’182019’192020’202021’212022’222023’232024’242025’25
Income statement
$5.4B$5.5B$5.8B$5.9B$6.3B$6.4B$7.2B$7.6B$7.1B$7.5BRevenueRevenue
$3.4B$3.5B$3.7B$3.7B$3.9B$3.9B$4.8B$5.3B$4.8B$5.0BNet interest incomeNet int.
$2.0B$2.0B$2.0B$2.1B$2.4B$2.5B$2.4B$2.3B$2.3B$2.5BNoninterest incomeFee inc.
$262M$150M$229M$387M$1.3B($524M)$271M$553M$487M$470MCredit-loss provisionProvision
$1.2B$1.3B$1.8B$1.6B$1.1B$2.5B$2.2B$2.1B$1.9B$2.2BNet incomeNet inc.
30%33%18%20%17%22%22%20%20%21%Effective tax rateTax rate
Cash flow & returns
0.9%1.0%1.4%1.3%0.7%1.5%1.4%1.4%1.2%1.4%Return on assetsROA
7%8%12%10%6%14%14%12%11%11%Return on equityROE
5%6%9%6%3%10%10%7%6%7%Retained to equityRetained/eq
10%11%17%14%9%21%23%18%16%16%Return on tangible equityROTCE
64%63%62%60%58%58%56%58%60%57%Efficiency ratioEffic.
Balance sheet
$126.0B$124.3B$125.7B$126.2B$147.4B$162.9B$155.2B$152.2B$157.3B$158.8BTotal assetsAssets
$99.0B$96.9B$94.5B$97.5B$122.5B$139.1B$131.7B$127.8B$127.6B$131.1BDepositsDeposits
$4.9B$4.9B$4.8B$4.8B$5.2B$5.7B$5.7B$5.7B$5.7B$5.7BGoodwillGoodwill
$16.7B$16.2B$15.1B$16.3B$18.1B$18.3B$15.9B$17.4B$17.9B$19.0BShareholders’ equityEquity
Per share
1.26B1.20B1.10B999M962M963M942M938M918M896MShares out (diluted)Shares
$0.92$1.05$1.60$1.58$1.14$2.62$2.38$2.21$2.06$2.41EPS (diluted)EPS
$0.25$0.29$0.41$0.58$0.62$0.63$0.70$0.84$0.97$1.02Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$13.21$13.52$13.69$16.31$18.83$19.03$16.93$18.58$19.48$21.25Book value / shareBVPS
$9.15$9.27$9.21$11.36$13.30$12.75$10.58$12.25$13.05$14.70Tangible book / shareTBVPS
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
9-yr5-yr
Revenue / share+7.8%/yr+5.1%/yr
EPS+11.2%/yr+16.2%/yr
Dividends / share+16.8%/yr+10.5%/yr
Book value / share+5.4%/yr+2.5%/yr

The record, charted

FY2016–2025

Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.

Share count
896Mpeak FY2016
Revenue
$7.5Blow FY2016
III

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?

  • Adequate
    Net income $2.2B ÷ equity $19.0B
    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.

  • Strong
    Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill $5.7B − intangibles $140M)
    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.

  • Low cost ratio (<58%)
    Noninterest expense $4.3B ÷ (net interest income + fees)
    Industry peers: median 62%
    What this means

    The share of revenue eaten by running costs; lower is better, and below about 60% marks a genuinely efficient operation. A low ratio held for years is the operational side of a moat.

Is it sound?

  • Capital (equity / assets) 12.0%
    Well capitalized
    Equity $19.0B ÷ assets $158.8B
    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.

  • Deposit-funded
    Deposits $131.1B ÷ assets $158.8B
    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) 9%
    Low
    Provision for credit losses $470M ÷ net interest income $5.0B
    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 A competitive risk, new this year

Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat, in language that was not in the prior year's filing.

“We may not be able to sufficiently mitigate, remediate or detect any of the foregoing limitations or risks given our and other market participants' evolving experience with using AI, the pace of technological change, and rapid adoption of AI by our third-party vendors, clients, counterparties or competitors.…”

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.

Management, ownership & pay

read the proxy →

Two things from the proxy: how much of the business the people running it own, and how they are paid.

  • 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 ratio118:1

    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$30M

    The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 0% of revenue, equal to 57% 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 Credit & receivables 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, 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
CFGCitizens Financial Group Inc.$8.2B8%11%61%2.6%
HBANHuntington Bancshares Incorporated$8.2B10%14%62%2.8%
NTRSNorthern Trust Corporation$8.1B12%13%70%1.2%
ALLYAlly Financial Inc.$7.9B8%8%
RFRegions Financial Corporation$7.5B11%16%59%3.0%
KEYKeyCorp$7.5B9%11%62%2.4%
FHNFirst Horizon$3.4B10%14%63%2.9%
ZIONZions Bancorporation N.A.$3.4B12%14%62%2.9%
Group median10%13%62%2.8%
IV

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

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 Regions Financial Corporation’s record justifies.

$
The assumptions

Tangible book / share, delivered2%/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 equity16%
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.

Tangible book $13.2B on 853M shares, a 16% 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, "Regions Financial Corporation (RF), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/RF, data as of 2026-07-09.

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