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CFR, Cullen/Frost Bankers

Banks financial

The Corporation Cullen/Frost Bankers, Inc. is a financial holding company and a bank holding company headquartered in San Antonio, Texas that provides, through its subsidiaries, a broad array of products and services throughout numerous Texas markets.

We offer commercial and consumer banking services, as well as trust and investment management, insurance, brokerage, mutual funds, leasing, treasury management, capital markets advisory and item processing services.

Our philosophy is to grow and prosper, building long-term relationships based on top quality service, high ethical standards, and safe, sound assets.

Latest annual: FY2025 10-K

CFR · Cullen/Frost Bankers

The business

What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.

Revenue · FY2025

$2.2B

+8.3% YoY · 9% 5-yr CAGR

Vital signs · TTM, with 5-yr average

Revenue $2.3B 5-yr avg $1.9B

Return on equity 15% 5-yr avg 15%

Return on tangible equity 17% 5-yr avg 16%

Efficiency ratio 63% 5-yr avg 63%

Equity / assets 8.6% 5-yr avg 7.6%

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 hovered around the cost of equity (median 12%, above 12% in 5 of 10 years). It runs at a 63% efficiency ratio, about average. A bank that earns above its cost of equity through the cycle compounds book value; whether this one did it by underwriting discipline or by reaching for risk is what the 10-K, and the worst years in the record, will tell you.

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.

Most recent quarterly filing 10-Q filed Jul 30, 2026 Source at SEC EDGAR →

Revenue up 5.3% year over year; operating income down 2.1%

figures computed from the filing's XBRL

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	TTMTTMJun 2026
											Income statement
$1.1B	$1.2B	$1.3B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.4B	$1.7B	$2.0B	$2.1B	$2.2B	$2.3B	RevenueRevenue
$788M	$893M	$1.1B	$1.1B	$1.0B	$1.0B	$1.5B	$2.2B	$2.4B	$2.4B	—	Interest incomeInt. inc.
$12M	$27M	$93M	$130M	$45M	$24M	$184M	$659M	$786M	$685M	—	Interest expenseInt. exp.
$776M	$866M	$958M	$1.0B	$976M	$985M	$1.3B	$1.6B	$1.6B	$1.7B	$1.8B	Net interest incomeNet int.
$350M	$336M	$351M	$364M	$465M	$387M	$405M	$429M	$459M	$499M	$522M	Noninterest incomeFee inc.
$52M	$35M	$22M	$34M	$241M	$63K	$3M	$46M	$65M	$44M	$35M	Credit-loss provisionProvision
$341M	$408M	$509M	$499M	$351M	$490M	$669M	$712M	$696M	$772M	—	Pretax incomePretax
$304M	$364M	$455M	$444M	$331M	$443M	$579M	$598M	$583M	$649M	$684M	Net incomeNet inc.
11%	11%	11%	11%	6%	9%	13%	16%	16%	16%	16%	Effective tax rateTax rate
											Cash flow & returns
1.0%	1.1%	1.4%	1.3%	0.8%	0.9%	1.1%	1.2%	1.1%	1.2%	1.3%	Return on assetsROA
10%	11%	14%	11%	8%	10%	18%	16%	15%	14%	15%	Return on equityROE
6%	7%	9%	7%	4%	6%	12%	10%	9%	9%	9%	Retained to equityRetained/eq
13%	14%	17%	14%	9%	12%	23%	16%	15%	14%	17%	Return on tangible equityROTCE
65%	63%	59%	61%	59%	64%	60%	62%	63%	63%	63%	Efficiency ratioEffic.
$135M	$144M	$165M	$177M	$181M	$189M	$210M	$232M	$242M	$255M	$258M	Dividends paidDiv. paid
$1M	$101M	$101M	$69M	$16M	$4M	$4M	$43M	$61M	$158M	—	BuybacksBuybacks
($1.4B)	($671M)	($1.9B)	($1.4B)	($1.6B)	($2.5B)	($8.3B)	($943M)	($181M)	($1.6B)	—	Investing cash flowInv. cash
$1.5B	$1.0B	$254M	$585M	$7.6B	$8.2B	$3.0B	($2.9B)	$738M	($33M)	—	Financing cash flowFin. cash
$550M	$912M	($1.1B)	($168M)	$6.5B	$6.3B	($4.6B)	($3.3B)	$1.5B	($1.4B)	—	Change in cashΔ cash
											Balance sheet
$12.0B	$13.1B	$14.1B	$14.8B	$17.5B	$16.3B	$17.2B	$18.8B	$20.8B	$21.9B	—	Loans held for investmentLoans
$153M	$155M	$132M	$132M	$263M	$249M	$228M	$246M	$270M	$281M	—	Credit-loss allowanceAllowance
$30.2B	$31.7B	$32.3B	$34.0B	$42.4B	$50.9B	$52.9B	$50.8B	$52.5B	$53.0B	$53.9B	Total assetsAssets
$25.8B	$26.9B	$27.1B	$27.6B	$35.0B	$42.7B	$44.0B	$41.9B	$42.7B	$42.9B	$43.3B	DepositsDeposits
$655M	$655M	$655M	$655M	$655M	$655M	$655M	—	—	—	$655M	GoodwillGoodwill
$27.2B	$28.5B	$28.9B	$30.1B	$38.1B	$46.4B	$49.8B	$47.1B	$48.6B	$48.5B	—	Total liabilitiesTotal liab.
$3.0B	$3.3B	$3.4B	$3.9B	$4.3B	$4.4B	$3.1B	$3.7B	$3.9B	$4.6B	$4.6B	Shareholders’ equityEquity
											Per share
63.0M	64.7M	64.7M	63.4M	63.0M	64.1M	64.5M	64.4M	64.3M	64.1M	62.8M	Shares out (diluted)Shares
$4.83	$5.63	$7.03	$6.99	$5.26	$6.91	$8.98	$9.28	$9.07	$10.12	$10.89	EPS (diluted)EPS
$2.14	$2.23	$2.56	$2.79	$2.87	$2.95	$3.25	$3.61	$3.77	$3.98	$4.10	Dividends / shareDiv/sh
$47.68	$51.00	$52.08	$61.66	$68.14	$69.26	$48.62	$57.70	$60.67	$71.34	$73.64	Book value / shareBVPS
$37.17	$40.79	$41.90	$51.29	$57.72	$59.03	$38.47	$57.70	$60.67	$71.34	$63.20	Tangible book / shareTBVPS

Per-share growththe realized rate an owner's share compounded

	9-yr	5-yr
Revenue / share	+7.7%/yr	+8.8%/yr
Owner earnings / share	−7.9%/yr	−16.8%/yr
EPS	+8.6%/yr	+14.0%/yr
Dividends / share	+7.1%/yr	+6.8%/yr
Capital spending / share	+11.6%/yr	+8.6%/yr
Book value / share	+4.6%/yr	+0.9%/yr

The year, in the company's words

the filing →

Verbatim from the 10-K's management discussion. Each sentence is shown only because its subject, direction, and stated figures check out against the filed numbers on this page. The words are the company's; the arithmetic is the record's.

Net interest income+8.2%
“Net interest income for 2025 increased $130.3 million, or 8.1%, compared to 2024. The increase was primarily related to decreases in the average costs of interest-bearing deposit accounts and repurchase agreements combined with an increase in the average volume of loans, and increases in the average yield on and volume of taxable securities, and, to a lesser extent, tax-exempt securities, among other things.”
✓ figure matches the filed record

III

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 14%

Strong

Net income $649M ÷ equity $4.6B

Industry 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.
Return on tangible equity 14%

Solid

Net income ÷ (equity − goodwill $0 − intangibles $0)

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 63%

Efficient (<65%)

Noninterest expense $1.4B ÷ (net interest income + fees)

Industry peers: median 59%

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) 8.6%

Adequate

Equity $4.6B ÷ assets $53.0B

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 81%

Deposit-funded

Deposits $42.9B ÷ assets $53.0B

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) 3%

Low

Provision for credit losses $44M ÷ net interest income $1.7B

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

Deposit franchise 33%

A true franchise

Noninterest-bearing deposits $14.1B ÷ deposits $42.9B · pays 1.87% 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 —

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.
Held-to-maturity marks 3%

Marks are small

HTM at cost $3.4B − fair value $3.3B = $136M, against tangible equity $4.6B

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”	Owner earnings
2021	Mr. Green	$5.2M	$8.1M	$582M
2022	Mr. Green	$6.4M	$7.6M	$651M
2023	Mr. Green	$6.5M	$6.8M	$402M
2024	Mr. Green	$6.7M	$7.7M	$907M
2025	Mr. Green	$7.6M	$7.4M	$186M

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. Owner earnings are the whole business's, from the record above, 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$25M
The slice of the business handed to employees in shares in fiscal 2025, 1.1% of revenue, equal to 1.7% 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.

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, 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
UMBFUMB Financial	$2.7B	10%	12%	67%	2.4%	28%
ONBOld National Bancorp	$2.5B	8%	13%	63%	2.8%	24%
CFRCullen/Frost Bankers	$2.2B	12%	14%	62%	2.8%	33%
BOKFBOK Financial	$2.2B	10%	13%	64%	2.5%	20%
PNFPPinnacle Financial Partners	$2.1B	9%	10%	57%	2.6%2y	—
VLYValley National Bancorp	$2.0B	8%	11%	58%	2.7%	23%
SNVSynovus Financial	$2.0B	10%	11%	59%	3.0%	23%
FNBF.N.B.	$1.8B	8%	14%	59%	2.7%	26%
Group median	—	10%	12%	61%	2.7%	24%

The price

What a price has to assume.

What the price implies

price / tangible book

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 Cullen/Frost Bankers’s record justifies.

Today’s price $

The assumptions Cost of equity 10% Long-term growth 3%

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 equity14%

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.

Tangible book $4.0B on 62M shares, a 14% 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.

Weigh CFR against another business →

Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Cullen/Frost Bankers (CFR), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/CFR, data as of 2026-07-18.

Manual order: ← CFLT its page in the Manual CG →

Industry order: ← CFG the Banks chapter CHCO →