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SYF, Synchrony Financial
We provide a range of credit products through programs we have established with a diverse group of national and regional retailers, local merchants, manufacturers, buying groups, industry associations and healthcare service providers, which, in our business and in this report, we refer to as our "partners."
Some of this information is from industry publications and other third-party sources, and other information is from our own data and market research that we commission.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
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 customer concentration, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
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.
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 21%Very high (≥17%)Net income $3.6B ÷ equity $16.8BIndustry peers: median 5%
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 $1.4B − intangibles $1.3B)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 27%Low cost ratio (<58%)Noninterest expense $5.1B ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 56%
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) 14.1%Well capitalizedEquity $16.8B ÷ assets $119.1B
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 funding 68%Deposit-fundedDeposits $81.1B ÷ assets $119.1B
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 —Not enough data
What this means
Provision or net interest income missing.
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.
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“We may not be able to deploy new technologies in a timely manner, including emerging technologies such as generative artificial intelligence and blockchain, where their adoption is rapidly accelerating, as critical systems and applications become obsolete and better ones become available or implement adequate controls …”
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.
Management, ownership & pay
read the proxy →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.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Income taxes, 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, 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXPAmerican Express Company | $72.2B | 30% | 35% | 73% | 4.3% |
| DFSDiscover Financial Services | $17.9B | 25% | 26% | 39% | 8.6% |
| BKKTBakkt Inc. | $2.3B | -146% | -252% | — | 0.5% |
| GDOTGreen DOT Corp | $2.0B | 5% | 13% | — | -0.1% |
| UPSTUpstart | $1.0B | -7% | -8% | — | 0.0% |
| SOFISoFi Technologies | $3.6B | -6% | -9% | 85% | 3.6% |
| SYFSynchrony Financial | $19.0B | 21% | 25% | 27% | 15.5% |
| OMFOneMain Holdings Inc. | $4.9B | 23% | 48% | 39% | 15.3% |
| Group median | — | 13% | 19% | 39% | 3.9% |
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).
Manual order: ← SYBT its page in the Manual SYK →
Industry order: ← STRK the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter TIGR →