Numbers

The Numbers

Figures converted from EUR at historical FX rates — see data/company.json.fx_rates. Ratios, margins, and multiples are unitless and unchanged.

BAWAG is a small Vienna-listed retail-and-SME bank that earns mid-20s% RoTCE while peers run at 8–13%. The 2.99x price-to-tangible-book multiple at year-end 2025 — almost double its own pre-2023 average — is what the entire investment debate hinges on. The single metric most likely to rerate or derate the stock is post-deal RoTCE durability as Knab (NL, closed Nov-2024), Barclays Consumer Bank Europe (closed Feb-2025), and the just-announced PTSB acquisition (Apr-2026) move from integration drag to full earnings contribution.

Snapshot

Consensus 12-month target $204.50 (13 sell-side analysts; 12 Buy/Outperform, 1 Hold). All operating ratios reflect Q1-2026 results released 21-Apr-2026.

Quality scorecard — is this a well-run bank that survives the cycle?

Every gate is green. The bank earns more than twice the eurozone-peer average return while running with a sub-37% cost ratio, NPL under 1%, and customer deposits funding 122% of customer loans. There is no obvious quality break in the FY2025 print.

Earnings power — seven-year trajectory

The 2022 net profit shown above is adjusted for the $271M one-off City of Linz swap-receivable write-off; reported FY2022 net profit was $339M. Two structural inflections stand out: NIM jumped from 2.4% (2022) to 3.29% (2025) as ECB rate hikes repriced the asset book, and three back-to-back acquisitions lifted FY2025 operating income +36% YoY despite no comparable rate move. RoTCE crossed the 25% mark in 2023 and has held there for three consecutive years.

Recent quarters — is the trajectory still up?

NII stepped up materially in 4Q24 (Knab two-month contribution) and again in 1Q25 (Barclays Consumer Bank Europe two-month contribution). Each subsequent quarter has expanded modestly on organic loan growth. RoTCE has stayed in a 25–28% band for six straight quarters — the underlying franchise is not flattering itself with one good quarter.

Capital allocation — where the cash actually goes

Cumulative shareholder return FY2021–FY2025: $2,059M dividends + $746M buybacks ≈ $2.8B, against ~$3.6B of net profit over the same window — roughly a 70% payout. The 2022 buyback ($347M, 7% of share count cancelled) is the textbook example: management bought back stock at $53 that now trades at $170+. The FY2025 dividend of $7.34 lifts the dividend yield at year-end close to 4.84%.

Balance sheet — growing fast, capital still strong

The deposit step-up in FY2024 (+$16.6B) is Knab. Customer funding has consistently exceeded customer loans every year — BAWAG funds itself on retail deposits, not wholesale. CET1 absorbed the M&A — including ~140 bp of deal capital in 2024 alone — and still sits at 14.2% (proforma 14.6%) versus a 12.25% supervisory requirement. The buffer is real but is now being deployed into PTSB.

Valuation — current vs its own seven-year history

The chart is the entire valuation story: BAWAG traded at roughly 1.3x tangible book between IPO (2017) and 2022 — through a 16% RoTCE regime. Once RoTCE crossed 20%, the market re-rated steadily; year-end-2025 close of $151.6 implied 2.99x tangible book, the current $170.3 price implies ~3.3x. The earnings multiple, however, is only 12.8x — modest for a 27% RoTCE bank. The market is paying up on book but is still cautious on the run-rate of profit.

Peer comparison — who else delivers these returns?

The premium is not gratuitous. BAWAG earns roughly 6 percentage points more RoE than Erste, the next-best name on this list, and roughly 10 points more than the median Dutch/German peer. Even allowing for a fair RoE-to-P/B regression line (every 5 points of RoE buys ~0.4x book), BAWAG's 2.90x is closer to where a 26%-RoE bank ought to sit than to the peer middle. The cheap names — ABN at 0.91x, RBI at 0.78x — are cheap because their RoE is nowhere close. Commerzbank is the genuine outlier (1.31x P/B on 8% RoE) and that reflects a UniCredit takeover overhang, not fundamentals.

Fair value — three scenarios

The base case sits within a few dollars of the published consensus mean of $204.50. The asymmetry favours bulls: the bear-case haircut requires both an RoTCE reset and a multiple compression, while the bull case only requires successful PTSB integration — a deal management has been preparing for since the 2023 attempt was withdrawn.

What changes the thesis next quarter

The numbers confirm the BAWAG story: a small bank running unusually large returns, paid for in cash to shareholders every year, with capital headroom to keep buying scale. They contradict the narrative that BAWAG is "expensive" — at 12.8x earnings on a 27% RoTCE bank, the multiple is modest; the optical 2.99x tangible book exists only because the denominator has been compounded down by buybacks. Watch FY2026 NIM (the deposit beta question), the Q3 2026 PTSB closing milestone, and whether RoTCE stays north of 25% as Knab and Barclays integration costs roll off — any one of those slipping is what flips the multiple back to historical norms.