WFC, Wells Fargo & Co.
We are a leading financial services company that provides a diversified set of banking, investment and mortgage products and services, as well as consumer and commercial finance, to individuals, businesses and institutions, primarily in the U.S., as well as in countries outside the U.S.
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, read from the numbers in its filings. The quantitative detail is in the sections below; the verdict is left to you.
- What it is
- Revenue is Community Banking (53%), Wholesale Banking (33%) and Wealth and Investment Management (20%).
- What moves the needle
- Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not on an earnings multiple.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 11%, above 12% in 0 of 4 years). It runs at a 66% 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.
Every line here is arithmetic from the company's own filings, not a model's opinion, and each figure appears in full in the sections below.
Where the money comes from
read the 10-K →Revenue spreads across 3 segments, the largest Community Banking at 53%.
- Community Banking53%$45.3B
- Wholesale Banking33%$27.7B
- Wealth And Investment Management20%$17.3B
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, 2016–2019
realized figures from each filing, no estimates| 2016’16 | 2017’17 | 2018’18 | 2019’19 | TTMTTMSep 2020 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RevenueRevenue | $88.3B | $88.4B | $86.4B | $85.1B | $74.3B |
| Net interest incomeNet int. | $47.8B | $49.6B | $50.0B | $47.3B | $48.1B |
| Net incomeNet inc. | $21.9B | $22.2B | $22.4B | $19.7B | $21.7B |
| EPS (diluted)EPS | $4.29 | $4.42 | $4.63 | $4.45 | $6.96 |
| Return on equityROE | 11% | 11% | 11% | 11% | 12% |
| Return on tangible equityROTCE | 13% | 13% | 13% | 12% | 14% |
| Efficiency ratioEffic. | 59% | 66% | 65% | 67% | 65% |
| DepositsDeposits | $1306.1B | $1336.0B | $1286.2B | $1322.6B | $1454.9B |
| Book value / shareBVPS | $39.07 | $41.24 | $40.54 | $42.29 | $57.22 |
| Tangible book / shareTBVPS | $33.04 | $35.34 | $34.67 | $35.91 | $48.83 |
| Dividends / shareDiv/sh | $1.46 | $1.49 | $1.59 | $1.85 | — |
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 12%AdequateNet income $21.3B ÷ equity $181.1B
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.
- Return on tangible equity 14%StrongNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill $25.0B − intangibles $1.3B)
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)
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 $2148.6B
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 $1426.2B ÷ assets $2148.6B
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 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.
Solvent is not the same as cheap; growing is not the same as good. These are vital signs, not a verdict, the judgment is yours, and the filing is one click away.
Management & pay
Two questions Buffett actually asks about pay: is stock compensation, a real expense, whatever the income statement pretends, quietly large, and is the top wildly out of line with the floor. He's no populist about it; he just wants pay that's rational and earned, and comp committees that aren't lapdogs.
- Stock-based compensation$1.5B
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares this year, 2% of revenue. Buffett's oldest accounting fight: this is compensation, compensation is an expense, real whether or not the headline earnings admit it. And note the 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 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. Nothing is stored; the number stays in your browser.
Enter a price above to run it.
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; every point of durable excess return above that is worth paying up for. Raise the cost of equity and the justified multiple falls: that is interest-rate gravity on a bank.
Tangible book $152.2B on 3118M shares, a 13% normalized return on it. This is a lens, not a target. 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.
What the filing emphasizes, FY2025
read the 10-K →Each year a 10-K must name what could go wrong, in the company's own words. Here are the ones Graham and Buffett would stop on, each set against the figure from the same filings that bears on it, anchored to a period you can find in the record above. We point; the judgment is yours.
- Pricing power & competitionBusiness
Whether the company sets its price or takes it. Durable pricing power is the surest mark of a moat; price competition is the surest mark there isn't one.
“Expectations for other roles, including customer-facing, operations, contact center, and non-U.S. based employees, vary by business need. 2 Competition The financial services industry is highly competitive.”
A judgment, not a number, weigh it against the filing yourself. - Regulation & policyBusiness
Rules that can rewrite the economics, tariffs, antitrust, data, export controls.
“The Dodd-Frank Act grants broad authority to federal banking regulators to establish enhanced supervisory and regulatory requirements for systemically important firms.”
A judgment, not a number, weigh it against the filing yourself.
What changed, FY2025 vs FY2024
read the 10-K →Most of a 10-K is boilerplate carried over verbatim; the signal is in what's new. These lines appear this year and weren't there last, figure updates filtered out, so only the language shift remains.
No materially new language flagged this year, the filing reads largely as it did last year.
Classic text analysis over the filing itself, no model wrote a word of this, and every quote is the company's own.
Peers, Banks
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens, compare, don't rank by a single number. ● marks best in the group.