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SLM, SLM Corporation
A balance-sheet business, read on book value, net interest margin and credit losses rather than an earnings multiple.
As an education solutions company, we provide students and their families with the products and services needed to confidently and successfully navigate their higher education journey.
Our primary business is to originate and service high-quality Private Education Loans.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report Est. 10/20–10/26 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late September · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~23 days after · the wire records it on arrival
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 concentrated dependence, 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?
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 8%
What this means
Net income or equity wasn't found in the filing data.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 8%
What this means
Equity, goodwill or intangibles missing.
- Efficiency ratio 33%Low cost ratio (<58%)Noninterest expense $659M ÷ (net interest income + fees)
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 cushion —Not enough data
What this means
Equity or total assets missing.
- Deposit funding 71%Deposit-fundedDeposits $21.1B ÷ assets $29.7B
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) 24%ElevatedProvision for credit losses $361M ÷ net interest income $1.5B
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
- Rate-sensitive fundingNoninterest-bearing deposits $184K ÷ deposits $21.1B · pays 3.84% on the interest-bearing rest (avg of year-ends)
What this means
The share of deposits the bank pays nothing for — checking accounts that stay through rate cycles. This is the deposit moat in one number: a high share means cheap, sticky raw material for lending; a low share means the funding reprices with every rate move. Buffett's Wells letter is built on exactly this economics.
- Net charge-offs 16.73%Heavy lossesCharge-offs net of recoveries $390M ÷ loans $2.3B (avg of year-ends) · allowance held at 61.45% of loans
What this means
Loans actually written off, net of what was later recovered — the realized truth the provisions were guessing at. Graham's rule applies doubly here: the worst year in the record, not the average, is the read, because a loan book's sins are committed in the good years and confessed in the bad ones.
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. Witter | $7.0M | $19.6M | — |
| 2022 | Mr. Witter | $7.8M | $3.2M | — |
| 2023 | Mr. Witter | $9.4M | $14.5M | — |
| 2024 | Mr. Witter | $11.8M | $25.2M | — |
| 2025 | Mr. Witter | $11.3M | $8.2M | — |
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 ownership1.4%
The stake all directors and executive officers hold together, per the 2026 proxy: skin in the game, the first thing Munger reads.
- CEO pay ratio102:1
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.
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, Consumer Finance
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 | Noninterest-bearing sharelatest FY |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DFSDiscover Financial Services | $17.9B | 25% | 26% | 39% | 8.6% | 1% |
| ALLYAlly Financial Inc. | $7.9B | 8% | 8% | — | — | — |
| OMFOneMain Holdings Inc. | $4.9B | — | — | 39%1y | 15.3%1y | — |
| SLMSLM Corporation | $2.0B | — | — | 33%1y | 5.0%1y | 0% |
| TROOTROOPS Inc. Ordinary Shares | $17M | -14% | -22% | — | 0.0%4y | — |
| Group median | — | — | — | 39% | 6.8% | — |
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: ← SLGN its page in the Manual SLMBP →
Industry order: ← RM the Consumer Finance chapter SLMBP →