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SYF, Synchrony Financial
We provide a range of credit products through programs we have established with a diverse group of national and regional retailers, local merchants, manufacturers, buying groups, industry associations and healthcare service providers, which, in our business and in this report, we refer to as our "partners."
Some of this information is from industry publications and other third-party sources, and other information is from our own data and market research that we commission.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Next report Est. 10/19–10/26 · 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 pricing power & competition, 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 -6%
What this means
Net income or equity wasn't found in the filing data.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median -6%
What this means
Equity, goodwill or intangibles missing.
- Efficiency ratio 27%Low cost ratio (<58%)Noninterest expense $5.1B ÷ (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 68%Deposit-fundedDeposits $81.1B ÷ assets $119.1B
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) 28%ElevatedProvision for credit losses $5.2B ÷ net interest income $18.5B
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 $396M ÷ deposits $81.1B · pays 4.12% 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 4.45%Heavy lossesCharge-offs net of recoveries $4.6B ÷ loans $103.8B (avg of year-ends) · allowance held at 2.19% 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.
- 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 Income taxes, 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, Capital Markets & Asset Management
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AXPAmerican Express Company | $72.2B | 30% | 35% | 73% | 4.3% | 1% |
| SYFSynchrony Financial | $19.0B | — | — | 27%1y | 15.5%1y | 0% |
| NUNu Holdings Ltd. | $11.5B | -6% | -6% | — | — | — |
| SOFISoFi Technologies | $3.6B | -6% | -9% | 87%2y | 3.6% | 0% |
| KLARKlarna Group plc | $3.5B | -11% | -11% | — | 1.3%2y | — |
| QFINQfin Holdings Inc. | $2.8B | 26% | 26% | — | 0.1% | — |
| BKKTBakkt Inc. | $2.3B | -146% | -1302%2y | — | 0.5% | — |
| GDOTGreen DOT Corp | $2.1B | 5% | 13% | — | -0.1% | 97% |
| Group median | — | — | — | 73% | 1.3% | 1% |
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: ← SYBT its page in the Manual SYK →
Industry order: ← STRK the Capital Markets & Asset Management chapter TIGR →