Share count
3.2Bpeak FY2016
← All companies ← WEYS Manual WFRD → ← WF Banks WSBC →
WFC, Wells Fargo & Co.
Banks financial
Wells Fargo is a large American bank. It takes deposits from households and businesses and lends the money back out — home, auto, personal, credit-card, and small-business loans on the consumer side, and larger loans and banking services to companies on the wholesale side — earning the spread between what it pays depositors and what it charges borrowers. It also manages money for wealthier clients and collects fees across the franchise; the consumer bank is the largest piece, ahead of the wholesale bank and wealth management.
We provide consumer financial products and services including checking and savings accounts, credit and debit cards, and home, auto, personal, and small business lending.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
$83.7B
+1.7% YoY · 2% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average
Revenue $85.0B 5-yr avg $80.4B
Revenue $21.4B +6.4% vs yr-ago qtr
Net income $5.0B yr-ago $4.6B
Net margin 23.3% yr-ago 22.9%
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 is a spread business sitting on borrowed money, so the outcome turns on two things a value investor watches: the cost of its funding and the quality of its lending. The test of the franchise is whether the deposit base is cheap and sticky enough that the bank funds itself below its rivals, and whether it underwrites with enough discipline that the loans come back through a full credit cycle rather than only a calm one. The bad case is the standing one for any lender: bad loans surface all at once while cheap deposits leave, and leverage turns a small mistake into a large loss. This is also among the most regulated businesses there is — the filing leans on the broad authority bank regulators hold over a firm this size, which can cap what owners are allowed to earn. See the record below for the funding cost, the loss history, and the returns on capital.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 11%, above 12% in 0 of 10 years). It runs at a 65% efficiency ratio, about average. 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, 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 | |||||||||||
| $88.3B | $88.4B | $86.4B | $86.8B | $74.3B | $79.2B | $74.4B | $82.6B | $82.3B | $83.7B | $85.0B | RevenueRevenue |
| $47.8B | $49.6B | $50.0B | $47.3B | $40.0B | $35.8B | $45.0B | $52.4B | $47.7B | $47.5B | $48.1B | Net interest incomeNet int. |
| $40.5B | $38.8B | $36.4B | $39.5B | $34.3B | $43.4B | $29.4B | $30.2B | $34.6B | $36.2B | $36.9B | Noninterest incomeFee inc. |
| $3.8B | $2.5B | $1.7B | $2.7B | $14.1B | ($4.2B) | $1.5B | $5.4B | $4.3B | $3.7B | $3.9B | Credit-loss provisionProvision |
| $21.9B | $22.2B | $22.4B | $19.7B | $3.4B | $22.1B | $13.7B | $19.1B | $19.7B | $21.3B | $21.7B | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 31% | 18% | 20% | 23% | — | 21% | 14% | 12% | 15% | 15% | 16% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | |||||||||||
| 1.1% | 1.1% | 1.2% | 1.0% | 0.2% | 1.1% | 0.7% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 1.0% | Return on assetsROA |
| 11% | 11% | 11% | 11% | 2% | 12% | 8% | 10% | 11% | 12% | 12% | Return on equityROE |
| 7% | 7% | 7% | 6% | −1% | 10% | 5% | 8% | 8% | 9% | 9% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| 13% | 13% | 13% | 12% | 2% | 14% | 9% | 12% | 13% | 14% | 14% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| 59% | 66% | 65% | 67% | 78% | 68% | 77% | 67% | 66% | 66% | 65% | Efficiency ratioEffic. |
| Balance sheet | |||||||||||
| $1.93T | $1.95T | $1.90T | $1.93T | $1.95T | $1.95T | $1.88T | $1.93T | $1.93T | $2.15T | $2.21T | Total assetsAssets |
| $1.31T | $1.34T | $1.29T | $1.32T | $1.40T | $1.48T | $1.38T | $1.36T | $1.37T | $1.43T | $1.45T | DepositsDeposits |
| $26.7B | $26.6B | $26.4B | $26.4B | $26.4B | $25.2B | $25.2B | $25.2B | $25.2B | $25.0B | $25.0B | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $199.6B | $206.9B | $196.2B | $187.1B | $184.7B | $187.6B | $180.2B | $185.7B | $179.1B | $181.1B | $178.4B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | |||||||||||
| 5.11B | 5.02B | 4.84B | 4.43B | 4.13B | 4.10B | 3.84B | 3.72B | 3.47B | 3.24B | 3.12B | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $4.29 | $4.42 | $4.63 | $4.45 | $0.82 | $5.40 | $3.56 | $5.15 | $5.69 | $6.58 | $6.96 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $1.46 | $1.49 | $1.59 | $1.85 | $1.17 | $0.59 | $1.09 | $1.29 | $1.48 | $1.68 | $1.77 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $39.07 | $41.24 | $40.54 | $42.29 | $44.67 | $45.80 | $46.97 | $49.92 | $51.66 | $55.86 | $57.22 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $33.04 | $35.34 | $34.67 | $35.91 | $37.89 | $39.29 | $40.07 | $43.16 | $44.40 | $48.16 | $48.83 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +4.6%/yr | +7.5%/yr |
| EPS | +4.9%/yr | +51.8%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +1.5%/yr | +7.4%/yr |
| Book value / share | +4.1%/yr | +4.6%/yr |
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
$83.7Blow FY2020
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 12%AdequateNet income $21.3B ÷ equity $181.1BIndustry 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 $25.0B − intangibles $1.3B)Industry peers: median 12%
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 66%AverageNoninterest expense $54.8B ÷ (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) 8.4%AdequateEquity $181.1B ÷ assets $2.15T
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 66%Deposit-fundedDeposits $1.43T ÷ assets $2.15T
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) 8%LowProvision for credit losses $3.7B ÷ net interest income $47.5B
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 Framed as a capability
The filing positions AI as something the company uses, not something it fears.
“Saul Van Beurden (age 56) Senior Executive Vice President, Co-CEO of Consumer Banking and Lending, and Head of Artificial Intelligence since November 2025; Senior Executive Vice President and CEO of Consumer, Small and Business Banking from May 2023 to November 2025; Senior Execu…”
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, beside what the business earned for its owners in the same years.
| Fiscal year | Chief executive | Pay, as filed | “Actually paid” | Net income |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Mr. Scharf | $21.4M | $46.8M | $22.1B |
| 2022 | Mr. Scharf | $24.6M | $16.0M | $13.7B |
| 2023 | Mr. Scharf | $26.0M | $36.4M | $19.1B |
| 2024 | Mr. Scharf | $30.3M | $70.4M | $19.7B |
| 2025 | Mr. Scharf | $94.5M | $136.2M | $21.3B |
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.
- Stock-based compensation$1.5B
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue, equal to 3% 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, 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% |
| PNCPNC Financial Services Group Inc. (The) | $23.1B | 10% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
| TFCTruist Financial Corporation | $20.3B | 8% | 11% | 63% | 2.7% |
| Group median | — | 10% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
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 Wells Fargo & Co.’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered5%/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 equity13%
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 $152.2B on 3060M shares, a 13% 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, "Wells Fargo & Co. (WFC), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/WFC, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← WEYS its page in the Manual WFRD →
Industry order: ← WF the Banks chapter WSBC →