$16.98
$34.91
bear $16.98
base $27.77
bull $34.91
margin of safety $15.00
market price* $17.23
F.N.B. Corporation is a Pittsburgh-based bank holding company, founded in 1864, operating about 355 branches across Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Washington, D.C., with $38.7 billion of deposits at June 30, 2026. It earns most of its money from the spread between what it pays depositors and what it earns on loans and securities (net interest income of $1.40 billion in 2025), plus fees from wealth management, insurance, mortgage banking and capital markets. For a bank, deposits and borrowings are the raw material of the business and interest is an operating cost, so we value owner earnings after interest directly and do not subtract deposits or borrowings. How we measured earnings. Owner earnings are operating cash flow with the timing swings removed (loans held for sale, accrued interest and the large 'other, net' line), less stock compensation, less the provision for credit losses and less the maintenance portion of capital spending. Two judgements matter. We charge the provision for credit losses as a real, recurring cost of lending rather than adding it back as a non-cash item. And because the cash flow statement does not show stock compensation (about $17 million a year) on its own line, we removed the whole 'other, net' line, which leaves stock compensation charged. Securities losses from selling low-yielding bonds in 2023 and 2024 were treated as one-time. Acquisition intangibles other than goodwill are small ($30 million) and goodwill has been steady at about $2.48 billion with no write-downs, so wasting intangibles do not distort the picture. On this basis owner earnings per diluted share were $0.89, $1.22, $1.50, $1.30, $0.69, $1.15, $1.24, $1.55, $1.34 and $1.62 for 2016 through 2025. The 2020 figure carries the $123 million pandemic provision. Starting level. We start from $1.45 per share, the median of 2022 to 2025, about $520 million a year. The 2022 acquisitions (Howard Bancorp and UB Bancorp) made this a larger bank operating in a different rate setting from 2016 to 2021, so earlier years describe a different business. 2025's $1.62 sits above that level; first-half 2026 net income of $286 million ($0.80 per diluted share, against $247 million and $0.68 a year earlier) supports 2025 not being a fluke, but two quarters are not enough to lift the starting level. Growth. Owner earnings per share rose 21% in 2025, a rebound from a 2024 weighed down by bond-sale losses. The base case assumes only 2% in year one, below that trailing rate. The only growth we credit is from retained earnings: the bank pays out roughly a third of its profit as dividends ($0.48 in 2025, now $0.13 a quarter) and tangible book value per share has risen from about $11.87 at year-end 2025 to about $12.11 at June 30, 2026, even after $82 million of buybacks in the first half. We credit no growth from future acquisitions, buybacks, wider margins, rate moves or new fee lines. The company has been a serial acquirer (diluted shares rose from 208 million in 2016 to about 357 million) yet owner earnings per share rose only about 1% a year from 2018 to 2025, so buying other banks has not demonstrably raised per-share value and is left out. Base case: $27.77 per share. Owner earnings start at $1.45 and grow 2% a year, reaching about $1.77 by year ten, with one ordinary credit setback in year five that cuts that year to $0.95, the same kind of hit the bank took in 2020. After year ten earnings stay flat at about $1.77. What sustains them is the deposit franchise itself: about 355 branches and a core deposit base that kept the bank profitable in every year of the record, including 2020. About $11 of the value comes from the first ten years and about $16 from what follows. As a bank, nothing is deducted for deposits or borrowings, so the business value and the per-share value are the same, $27.77. Bear case: $16.98 per share. This case is built on the 2008 to 2010 regional bank credit cycle, the worst the industry has had in modern times, rather than the milder 2020 episode. In that cycle regional banks with heavy commercial real estate books saw net charge-offs of roughly 1.5% to 2% of loans for two years, against F.N.B.'s 0.20% in 2025. On about $35 billion of loans that implies $350 million to $500 million a year of extra losses and reserve building, which consumes most of a year's earnings. We model owner earnings of $0.45 and $0.50 per share in years one and two, $0.90 in year three and $1.05 in year four, then $1.10 per share with no growth for good, below the $1.15 earned in 2021, the weakest normal year in the record, to allow for a lasting loss of loan demand and margin after the cycle. Capital: shareholders' equity of $6.84 billion and tangible common equity of about $4.3 billion would absorb two years of near-breakeven earnings without falling below regulatory minimums, so we do not assume a forced share sale at trough prices; the dividend would likely be cut. The bear value sits above tangible book value of about $12.11 per share because the franchise still earns about $1.10 a share on its deposit base after the cycle, which is a return on that capital the bank's own record supports. The business is worth $16.98 per share and nothing is deducted for deposits or borrowings. Bull case: $34.91 per share. Owner earnings start from the $1.62 already earned in 2025 and grow 3.5% a year, just below the 3.8% annual rate achieved from 2019 to 2025, to about $2.29 by year ten, with one 2020-style credit year in year six at $1.15. After year ten earnings stay flat. The business is worth $34.91 per share with nothing deducted for deposits or borrowings. Change since our previous analysis. Our earlier estimate ($18.35 bear, $26.56 base, $31.68 bull) is broadly similar. The bear case is now built on a deeper credit cycle (2008 to 2010) than the 2020 episode it used before, which lowers it, while the base and bull cases now carry one ordinary credit setback inside the ten years and the base also reflects the slightly higher tangible book and continued earnings strength in the first half of 2026. The net effect is a slightly lower bear value and slightly higher base and bull values. How we set the margin-of-safety price. We are fairly confident of the earnings level: the 2022 to 2025 years all fall between $1.24 and $1.62, and first-half 2026 is running above that. The worst plausible outcome is a commercial real estate credit cycle as bad as 2008 to 2010, or worse in this footprint, combined with falling rates squeezing the margin. The bank's structure would survive it: losses would come out of earnings first, then out of $4.3 billion of tangible capital, and the deposit base is granular community and commercial funding rather than a single concentrated source. If we are wrong on the two things most likely to go wrong, credit losses and a durably lower margin, the shares would be worth something near the bear value of about $17, and in a bad year the market could price them near tangible book of about $12. The price assumes a three-to-five-year holding period, during which the bank pays about $0.52 a year in dividends, roughly 3.5% of a $15 price, while retaining the rest to build book value. From $15.00 the base case implies well over 20% a year as earnings near $1.50 a share are recognised, and the bear case, ending near $17 within a few years, plus dividends, implies a small positive return with tangible book of $12 underneath. The margin-of-safety price is $15.00 and no higher, because above that level the bear case no longer covers the price. What could make us wrong. A commercial real estate downturn deeper than the 2008 to 2010 pattern, a sustained narrowing of the spread as rates fall, or another large acquisition that dilutes per-share earnings would each lower these values.