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ASB, Associated Banc-Corp
Services Through Associated Bank and various nonbanking subsidiaries, we provide a broad array of banking and nonbanking products and services to individuals and businesses through 184 banking branches as of December 31, 2025, serving more than 100 communities, primarily within our four-state branch footprint.
By strengthening our workforce and providing opportunities for colleagues to apply their talent and grow as professionals, we strive to foster pride in working for Associated and to be recognized as the employer of choice among Midwestern financial services firms.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report By 8/9 · the 10-Q for the quarter ended late June · due within 40 days of period end · has filed ~29 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 pricing power & competition, 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 8%, above 12% in only 0 of 10 years). It runs at a 58% efficiency ratio, lean. 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.
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 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Income statement | ||||||||||
| $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.3B | $1.1B | $1.2B | $1.1B | $1.0B | $1.5B | RevenueRevenue |
| $792M | $887M | $1.2B | $1.2B | $913M | $798M | $1.1B | $2.0B | $2.1B | $2.2B | Interest incomeInt. inc. |
| $84M | $145M | $275M | $337M | $150M | $72M | $188M | $918M | $1.1B | $972M | Interest expenseInt. exp. |
| $707M | $741M | $880M | $836M | $763M | $726M | $957M | $1.0B | $1.0B | $1.2B | Net interest incomeNet int. |
| $353M | $333M | $356M | $381M | $514M | $332M | $282M | $63M | ($9M) | $286M | Noninterest incomeFee inc. |
| $70M | $26M | $0 | $16M | $174M | ($88M) | $33M | $83M | $85M | $54M | Credit-loss provisionProvision |
| $288M | $339M | $413M | $407M | $327M | $436M | $460M | $206M | $134M | $578M | Pretax incomePretax |
| $200M | $229M | $334M | $327M | $307M | $351M | $366M | $183M | $123M | $475M | Net incomeNet inc. |
| 30% | 32% | 19% | 20% | 6% | 20% | 20% | 11% | 8% | 18% | Effective tax rateTax rate |
| Cash flow & returns | ||||||||||
| 0.7% | 0.8% | 1.0% | 1.0% | 0.9% | 1.0% | 0.9% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 1.1% | Return on assetsROA |
| 6% | 7% | 9% | 8% | 7% | 9% | 9% | 4% | 3% | 10% | Return on equityROE |
| 4% | 5% | 6% | 5% | 5% | 6% | 6% | 1% | −0% | 6% | Retained to equityRetained/eq |
| 10% | 10% | 13% | 12% | 11% | 12% | 13% | 6% | 4% | 12% | Return on tangible equityROTCE |
| 66% | 66% | 67% | 65% | 61% | 67% | 60% | 74% | — | 58% | Efficiency ratioEffic. |
| $68M | $76M | $106M | $112M | $112M | $116M | $123M | $130M | $139M | $156M | Dividends paidDiv. paid |
| ($1.7B) | ($1.4B) | ($381M) | $1.6B | ($794M) | ($1.6B) | ($5.3B) | ($1.4B) | ($2.2B) | ($1.6B) | Investing cash flowInv. cash |
| $1.2B | $1.0B | $45M | ($2.5B) | $371M | $1.4B | $4.0B | $1.3B | $1.7B | $1.7B | Financing cash flowFin. cash |
| $169M | $74M | $161M | ($288M) | $127M | $309M | ($404M) | $302M | $96M | $701M | Change in cashΔ cash |
| Balance sheet | ||||||||||
| $20.1B | $20.8B | $22.9B | $22.8B | $24.5B | $24.2B | $28.8B | $29.2B | $29.8B | $31.2B | Loans held for investmentLoans |
| $29.1B | $30.5B | $33.6B | $32.4B | $33.4B | $35.1B | $39.4B | $41.0B | $43.0B | $45.2B | Total assetsAssets |
| $21.9B | $22.8B | $24.9B | $23.8B | $26.5B | $28.5B | $29.6B | $33.4B | $34.6B | $35.6B | DepositsDeposits |
| $972M | $976M | $1.2B | $1.2B | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | $1.1B | GoodwillGoodwill |
| $26.0B | $27.2B | $29.8B | $28.5B | $29.3B | $31.1B | $35.4B | $36.8B | $38.4B | $40.2B | Total liabilitiesTotal liab. |
| $3.1B | $3.2B | $3.8B | $3.9B | $4.1B | $4.0B | $4.0B | $4.2B | $4.6B | $5.0B | Shareholders’ equityEquity |
| Per share | ||||||||||
| 150M | 154M | 170M | 162M | 154M | 152M | 150M | 151M | 153M | 167M | Shares out (diluted)Shares |
| $1.34 | $1.49 | $1.97 | $2.02 | $2.00 | $2.31 | $2.43 | $1.21 | $0.80 | $2.85 | EPS (diluted)EPS |
| $0.45 | $0.50 | $0.62 | $0.69 | $0.73 | $0.76 | $0.82 | $0.86 | $0.91 | $0.93 | Dividends / shareDiv/sh |
| $20.61 | $21.07 | $22.28 | $24.22 | $26.63 | $26.48 | $26.68 | $27.67 | $30.03 | $29.86 | Book value / shareBVPS |
| $14.03 | $14.62 | $14.94 | $16.41 | $18.96 | $18.83 | $19.01 | $20.07 | $22.62 | $23.09 | Tangible book / shareTBVPS |
| 9-yr | 5-yr | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue / share | +2.6%/yr | +1.4%/yr |
| EPS | +8.8%/yr | +7.4%/yr |
| Dividends / share | +8.4%/yr | +5.1%/yr |
| Book value / share | +4.2%/yr | +2.3%/yr |
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
Is it a good business?
- Return on equity 10%Below the cost of equityNet income $475M ÷ equity $5.0BIndustry peers: median 8%
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 $1.1B − intangibles $23M)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 58%Low cost ratio (<58%)Noninterest expense $856M ÷ (net interest income + fees)Industry peers: median 60%
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) 11.0%Well capitalizedEquity $5.0B ÷ assets $45.2B
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 79%Deposit-fundedDeposits $35.6B ÷ assets $45.2B
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) 4%LowProvision for credit losses $54M ÷ net interest income $1.2B
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 $6.1B ÷ deposits $35.6B · pays 2.76% 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.
- 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.
- ManageableHTM at cost $3.6B − fair value $3.2B = $412M, against tangible equity $3.8B
What this means
Bonds held to maturity are carried at cost, so rate rises open a gap between the books and reality that only shows in this disclosure. The gap never hits earnings if the bank can hold on — which is precisely why the reader checks whether it could be forced to sell: the 2023 bank failures were this number meeting deposit flight.
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 | Andrew J. Harmening and Philip B. Flynn | $11.3M | $11.3M | $351M |
| 2021 | — | $3.4M | $5.0M | $351M |
| 2022 | Andrew J. Harmening | $6.1M | $6.4M | $366M |
| 2023 | Andrew J. Harmening | $4.7M | $2.8M | $183M |
| 2024 | Andrew J. Harmening | $5.5M | $7.4M | $123M |
| 2025 | Andrew J. Harmening | $6.4M | $7.0M | $475M |
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. A dash under the name means the filing tags the figure without naming the officer.
- 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 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, Banks
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each column names the period it is read over; 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CBSHCommerce Bancshares | $1.8B | 15% | 16% | 57% | 3.1% | 32% |
| HWCHancock Whitney | $1.5B | 10% | 14% | 62% | 3.0% | 35% |
| ASBAssociated Banc-Corp | $1.5B | 8% | 11% | 66% | 2.4% | 17% |
| AUBAtlantic Union Bankshares Corporation | $1.4B | 8% | 12% | 62% | 2.9% | 22% |
| HTHHilltop Holdings Inc. | $1.3B | 7% | 8% | 84% | 2.8% | 26% |
| TCBITexas Capital Bancshares | $1.3B | 8% | 8% | 60% | 3.0% | 26% |
| FBPFirst BanCorp | $1.3B | 12% | 12% | 58% | 4.2% | 33% |
| PBProsperity Bancshares | $1.2B | 7% | 15% | 43% | 2.7% | 33% |
| Group median | — | 8% | 12% | 61% | 2.9% | 29% |
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 Associated Banc-Corp’s record justifies.
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.
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 $3.8B on 166M shares, a 11% 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: ← ASAN its page in the Manual ASBA →
Industry order: ← AMTB the Banks chapter ASBA →