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BCS, Barclays PLC
A balance-sheet business, read on book value, net interest margin and credit losses rather than an earnings multiple.
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 debt terms & refinancing, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has sat below the cost of equity (median 6%, above 12% in only 0 of 10 years). 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.
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?
- Below the cost of equityNet income £7.2B ÷ equity £77.8BIndustry peers: median 9%
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.
- ModestNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill £4.4B − intangibles £3.9B)Industry peers: median 10%
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.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 51%
What this means
Noninterest expense or revenue missing.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 5.0%ThinEquity £77.8B ÷ assets £1.54T
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 35%Leans on wholesale fundingDeposits £538.1B ÷ assets £1.54T
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) 30%ElevatedProvision for credit losses £4.3B ÷ net interest income £14.5B
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.
The franchise and the credit cycle
- Not enough data
What this means
The deposit mix isn't cleanly tagged in the filings' structured data; the funding read above carries what is.
- Not enough data
What this means
Not derivable from the filings' structured data — some filers carry recoveries only on segment axes, and a gross figure dressed as net would be a wrong number.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
Peers, Banks
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each column names the period it is read over, and a median resting on fewer than three years carries that count beside it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each figure against.
| Company | Revenuelatest FY, USD | ROEmedian over the record | ROTCEmedian over the record | Efficiencymedian over the record | NII / assetsmedian over the record |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| MUFGMitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. | $43.8B | 6% | 7% | 71% | 0.7% |
| BBVABanco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A. | $40.2B | 10% | 11% | 38% | 2.3% |
| BCSBarclays PLC | $35.0B | 6% | 7% | — | 0.8% |
| RYRoyal Bank Of Canada | $26.6B | 15% | 18% | — | 1.3% |
| SMFGSUMITOMO MITSUI FINANCIAL GROUP, INC. | $26.1B | 5% | 6% | — | 0.7% |
| LYGLloyds Banking Group Plc | $22.2B | 9% | 10% | 78%2y | 1.3% |
| NWGNatWest Group plc | $21.8B | 8% | 9% | 40% | 1.2% |
| BMOBank Of Montreal | $16.4B | 11% | 13% | — | 1.5% |
| Group median | — | 8% | 10% | — | 1.3% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookEnter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Per the filing's own cover, “American Depositary Shares, each representing four 25p ordinary”; Barclays PLC reports in GBP, so every figure in this tool is stated per ADS and translated at GBP 1 = $1.359 (2026-08-20, reference rate) so your dollar quote reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed, in GBP.
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 Barclays PLC’s record justifies.
Tangible book / share, delivered8%/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.
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 $94.4B on 3467M shares, a 7% 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.
Manual order: ← BCE its page in the Manual BDMD →
Industry order: ← BCML the Banks chapter BFC →