Associated Banc-Corp

Price story Before the numbers, the tape. A stock price moves through four repeating seasons: a flat base (stage 1), an advance (2), a top (3), a decline (4). Where the price sits in that cycle frames everything below.

Associated Banc-Corp trades at $31.8, in a confirmed uptrend and 19 weeks into that stage. That is +16.1% against its own 200-day average. It sits at 100% of a 52-week range of $24 to $32. On relative strength it has been ahead of the S&P 500 on a trailing-13-week view for 10 straight weeks.

Today the stock is in a confirmed uptrend — week 19 of stage 2. At $31.8 it trades +16.1% versus its 200-day average and sits at 100% of its 52-week range ($24–$32).

Against the market, two honest reads. Cumulative: over the last 10.1 years the stock moved +86% while the S&P 500 moved +263% — behind the index over the full window. Recent form: on a trailing-13-week view the stock has been ahead for 10 straight weeks — the ribbon below is that same metric, week by week.

What would end the trend, mechanically: two Friday closes in a row below the 200-day line. That is the exit rule — no debates.

Valuation For a bank we price the book, not the earnings: P/BV is what the market pays for each $1 of the bank's net worth. A bank below 1× book is priced below the value of what it owns, net of what it owes.

Associated Banc-Corp trades at 1.1× P/BV, about the priciest it has ever traded. Its long-run median P/BV is 0.8×, measured across 5.1 years of weekly readings. This places the multiple against the stock’s own record, and says nothing about what the business is worth.

Today's P/BV of 1.1× is about the priciest it has ever traded, against a long-run median of 0.8× measured over 5.1 years of weekly readings. This is a comparison against the stock's own history — not a claim about what it is worth.

The honest context for that discount: a bank earning about 10% on its equity is worth less per dollar of book, and the market has priced that in rather than overlooked it. The discount closes only if the returns themselves improve.

Why the multiple sits where it does: over the past year book value grew while the price moved +31.8% — the price ran ahead of the book, pushing the multiple up its own range.

The price move, decomposed: over 5y, of the +8.9%/yr price move, ~+2.9%/yr came from book-value growth and ~+6.0 pp from the multiple (expanding). The split is the honest approximate (price return minus book-value growth); it makes the rally itself visible instead of hiding it behind the percentile.

Put together: the multiple is full against its own past, so the story rests on the book-value line underneath it, not the multiple.

Stage: Improving Every business sits somewhere on a fundamental arc, and this page names the spot before anything else. The last twelve quarters of revenue, profit and EPS growth — plus the return the business earns on its capital — are read as curves: Deteriorating (the curves are falling), Turning around (a trough has just formed and the last few quarters lift off it), Improving (the climb off the trough is sustained), Consistent (steadily positive with healthy returns), Topping out (still high but decelerating from the peak). When the curves genuinely disagree the read is Mixed; too little history is No read. CAGR (compound annual growth rate) is the smooth yearly pace that turns the starting value into the latest one — the fairest way to compare growth across different time spans. Read the columns together: if the 1-year number towers over the 10-year, recent growth is running hotter than the long-run trend. A dash means that window is not held, or the base year was a loss (where a growth rate is not meaningful).

Associated Banc-Corp reads as improving on its fundamental arc. Improving — profit growth bottomed 7 quarters ago at −52.5% and has held its recovery at +226.7%, ROE lifting at 9.8%. The read is built from 12 quarters across 4 curves, on full evidence.

Why it matters: a sustained climb off the trough is the setup this page is built to catch — the question moves to what you pay for it.

4-Factor Sector Score

No sector-relative score — Associated Banc-Corp is not among the largest members shown in this industry comparison for Banks - Regional.

The score is a rank WITHIN a peer set: every metric is scored by percentile against the other members. Without the peer set there is no score to state, so none is invented here.

Revenue For a bank, revenue is everything the franchise earns — interest on the loan book plus fees from its businesses.

Associated Banc-Corp reported $0.4 B of income in the Mar 26 quarter, +5.7% year on year. That is the 7th straight quarter of year-on-year growth. Over 4 years it has compounded at 6.4% a year. The last full year, FY25, came in at $1.4 B. The last four reported quarters add to $1.5 B.

FY25 revenue came in at $1.4 B (+19.8% on the year), capping 4 years at 6.4% compound. The latest quarter (Mar 26) printed $0.4 B, +5.7% year on year — the 7th consecutive quarter of year-over-year growth.

Pace check: the last four quarters averaged +16.1% growth against the decade's 6.4% — the current year is running faster than its own long-run rate.

Acceleration check: trailing-twelve-month revenue grew +15.7% over the last 4 quarters against +13.6%/yr over the last 8 — stabilising; TTM profit +226.7% vs +75.0%/yr — accelerating.

Net margin Net margin — what the bank keeps of every $100 of revenue after every cost, provision and tax. With big fee businesses in the mix, it is the cleanest margin we can read for this bank.

Associated Banc-Corp's net margin is 32.4% in the Mar 26 quarter, +3.8 percentage points against the same quarter a year ago. That is the widest this company has ever printed on a full-year basis. Across 5 fiscal years the net margin has ranged 9.9% to 32.4%. The current quarter sits inside that band.

The latest quarter's net margin is 32.4%, +3.8 pp against the same quarter a year ago. Across 5 fiscal years the net margin has ranged 9.9%–32.4%, and FY25's 32.4% is the top of that band — a record year.

Why: the numbers show the net margin move clearly, but the cost lines behind it sit below what we hold — so we state the move without inventing its driver.

Worth repeating from the valuation section: cheap against its own history on record margins is not the same thing as cheap — a record margin flatters every ratio built on top of it.

Net profit Net profit is what survives every cost, interest and tax — the number EPS, dividends and book value all grow from.

Associated Banc-Corp earned $0.1 B of net profit in the Mar 26 quarter, +20.0% year on year. Full-year FY25 profit was $0.5 B. The 4-year compound rate is 7.6%. That is 32.4% of the quarter's revenue. The same quarter a year earlier earned $0.1 B. 2 of the last 12 reported quarters were loss-making.

Mar 26 profit was $0.1 B, +20.0% year on year. On the full year, FY25 printed $0.5 B (+291.7%), and the 4-year compound rate is 7.6%.

Why profit moved: revenue contributed +5.7% and the margin +3.8 pp — the quarter was margin-led: most of the profit growth came from keeping more of each sale.

Pace comparison, last four quarters: profit +15.0% vs revenue +16.1%. Profit and revenue are moving roughly in step.

Asset quality — the ladder Gross NPA is the slice of the loan book where repayments have stopped. Net NPA is what remains after the money already set aside against those loans. Falling is healing; rising is damage arriving.

Loan-book quality history is not available for Associated Banc-Corp, so this section names the gap rather than estimating a ratio. No gross or net non-performing-asset series is filed in a form this page can read, and none is inferred from the profit line. The income, margin and return sections above carry the evidence this business does report.

We do not hold quarterly loan-book quality numbers for this bank, so this section states that plainly rather than working around it.

Why: loan-book quality is the engine room of a bank, and its drivers — slippages, recoveries, provisioning — sit below what we hold for this name; the sections around it carry the reads we can stand behind.

The loan book We read the loan book through revenue — when the book and the businesses grow, revenue grows with them. It is a rough proxy, and we say so: rate moves and fee swings can shift it a few points in any one year.

Associated Banc-Corp's revenue grew +19.8% in FY25 to $1.4 B, so the book is growing. The latest quarter ran +5.7% year on year. The net margin on that income is 32.4%, +3.8 percentage points against a year ago. Interest income is a proxy for the book; rate moves can shift it a few points in any one year.

FY25 revenue was $1.4 B, +19.8% on the year, and the latest quarter ran +5.7% year on year. The net margin on that revenue is 32.4% this quarter (+3.8 pp YoY) — growth with a widening margin on it.

The synthesis: a lender compounds when the book grows while the margin holds and the loan book stays clean — with quarterly loan-quality numbers missing here, revenue growth and margin are the two we watch.

Returns on equity and assets Two numbers rate a bank: ROE — what it earns on shareholder money — and ROA — what it earns on everything it deploys. ROE above ~13–15% earns its keep; below that, growth builds book slowly.

Associated Banc-Corp earns a return on equity of 9% in FY25. Its trough over the ladder below was 3% in FY24. On the asset side every $100 of the balance sheet earned about $1.05, which is the return before leverage is applied.

FY25 ROE came in at 9%, recovered from a FY24 trough of 3%. On assets, the latest reading is about 1.05% — every $100 the bank deploys earns roughly $1.05 a year. That return is below the bar a bank must clear to compound book value quickly — which is also the honest reason the stock trades where it does.

Why ROE moved: profit compounded 7.6% a year over 4 years while the equity base grew more slowly — earnings recovering faster than book value builds is what lifts ROE off a trough.

Dividend A dividend is cash paid out per share. Dividend per share is the declared amount for the period; the trailing twelve-month total is the four most recent quarters added together.

Associated Banc-Corp paid $0.94 per share over the last four reported quarters, up 4.3% on a year ago. The most recent declaration was $0.24 for Mar 26. Against the current price of $31.8 that is a trailing yield of 2.96%, measured on dividends already paid rather than on a forecast.

Associated Banc-Corp paid $0.94 per share across the last four reported quarters, most recently $0.24 for Mar 26. That is up 4.3% against the same quarter a year earlier. Against the current price of $31.8 the trailing twelve months work out to 2.96% — trailing dividends measured against today's price, not a forward estimate.

Debt

For a bank, borrowings are raw material, not a warning sign — solvency is read through the returns and the loan book. A manufacturer’s debt is a claim against its profits, so the debt-to-equity lens that works everywhere else misleads on a lender and is not applied here.

A manufacturer’s debt is a claim against its profits; a bank’s borrowings are its inventory — money taken in to be lent out. The debt lens that works everywhere else misleads here, so this page does not apply it. The solvency questions for a bank — is the loan book sound, is the equity earning — are read through the loan-book and returns sections above.

Ownership There is no quarter-by-quarter holder register to read here, so we read the crowd through short interest — the slice of tradable shares currently sold short, positioned for a fall.

0.0% of Associated Banc-Corp's tradable float is currently sold short — the crowd is not positioned against this stock. There is no quarter-by-quarter holder register to read for this filer, so the crowd is read through short interest instead. It is a single point-in-time reading, and its history is not held.

The latest reading: 0.0% of the float is sold short. The crowd is not positioned against this stock. This is a single point-in-time reading — we do not yet hold its history, so we show no trend chart.

Why it sits there: who is doing the shorting, and why, does not travel with the number — the level is shown without inventing its story.

Safety line The Z-score estimates how far a company sits from balance-sheet distress — above roughly 3 is safe, below roughly 1.8 is the danger zone. It was built for manufacturers, so it is not applied to banks and lenders.

Associated Banc-Corp: the Z-score is omitted — it was built for manufacturers, not banks, and applying it here would be theatre. The Z-score was built for manufacturers and is not applied to banks and lenders, so solvency here is read from the capital and asset-quality lines instead.

The safety line in one sentence: the Z-score is omitted — it was built for manufacturers, not banks, and applying it here would be theatre.

Frequently asked questions