GLACIER BANCORP, INC. (GBCI) stock intrinsic value fair value estimate & owner earnings analysis

Glacier Bancorp is a group of community banks across Montana, Idaho, Utah, Washington, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona and Nevada, and since October 2025 east Texas. Each bank trades under its own local name (Glacier Bank, First Security, Mountain West, Altabank, Bank of Idaho, Guaranty Bank & Trust and others) on a shared credit and operations platform. It makes money the ordinary way, gathering low-cost local deposits and lending them out, plus mortgage banking and service fees. At June 2026 it had about $31.6 billion of assets and $21.4 billion of loans. How we measure earnings. We start from the cash the business generates and strip out timing swings: the mortgage loans it makes and sells within weeks, and movements in accrued interest. For a lender, some charges the cash-flow statement treats as non-cash are real ongoing costs. These are credit-loss provisions, amortisation of bond premiums, and write-down of the affordable-housing tax-credit investments that lower its tax bill. We charge all of them. We also charge share-based pay and the cost of keeping branches and systems up to date. We add back amortisation of the core-deposit intangibles created by acquisitions, about $16 million in 2025, because it is an accounting allocation of purchase price, not a cash cost. Acquired deposits do run off over time, so the cases credit no growth from existing acquisitions, and the bear case credits no growth at all. On this basis, owner earnings per share were $2.34 in 2018 and 2019 and $2.94-2.99 in 2020-2021, when they were flattered by pandemic-era PPP loan fees and a mortgage refinancing boom. They were $2.86 in 2022, then fell to $1.86 in 2023 and $1.68 in 2024 as deposit costs rose much faster than loan yields. They recovered to $2.19 in 2025. The 2025 figure is held down by a one-time $43.9 million provision booked on the loans acquired with Bank of Idaho and Guaranty. Without it, 2025 would have been about $2.48. The earning level. The median of 2018-2025, a full rate cycle, is $2.34. Recent results sit above that. The first half of 2026 produced $180 million of net income on 130.3 million shares, about $1.38 a share. Each quarter improved on the last ($82 million in the first quarter, $98 million in the second). The cause is visible in the filings. Net interest margin rose from 2.77% in 2024 to 3.32% in 2025 as low-yield securities matured and were reinvested in loans. The bank also repaid all $1.8 billion of its Federal Home Loan Bank term advances by June 2026. Owner earnings grew 30% in 2025. Our base case assumes about 21% for 2026 to roughly $2.65, below the trailing rate and already largely earned in the first half. What growth we credit. Total profit has grown about 8% a year over the past decade, but almost all of that came from buying banks with newly issued shares. Diluted shares went from 76 million in 2016 to 130 million today, and owner earnings per share grew only about 2.5% a year. The acquisition programme has run for more than 25 years, through the 2008-2011 downturn, in steps small relative to the whole. So we credit per-share growth of 2% a year in the base case and 3% in the bull case, both at or below that record. Only the earnings left after funding that growth are counted as cash to owners. We do not credit further margin expansion, market growth in the Mountain West, or the Texas entry turning into a larger platform. Base case, about $48.50 a share. Owner earnings are about $2.65 in 2027 and $2.70 in 2028. The base case then includes an ordinary credit slowdown in 2029-2030 that cuts earnings to about $2.30 before they recover to $2.85. After that they grow 2% a year. The deposit franchise is the evidence that earnings continue past year ten. These are small-town and regional core deposits gathered over decades by local banks, and they held through 2008-2011 and 2023. On those figures the business earns about 12.5% on tangible equity of roughly $21.70 a share. Bear case, about $31.25 a share. It includes one full credit cycle on the scale Glacier itself went through in 2009-2011. Then, provisions totalled about $274 million over three years on a loan book of roughly $4 billion, and net income fell from about $65 million in 2008 to $34 million, $42 million and $17 million. Applied to today's $21.4 billion book, with margins squeezed as in 2023-2024, owner earnings drop to $0.85, $0.45 and $0.85 over 2028-2030, from a normal $2.40. That is roughly $6 a share of after-tax losses and lost earnings. Earnings then recover only to $2.00, about the 2023-2024 level, with no growth. The bank stays profitable every year and its capital absorbs the losses (tangible equity was 8.95% of tangible assets at year-end 2025), so we assume no dilution. The bear value is above tangible book because Glacier earned money through every year of the worst regional credit cycle in its history. Its deposit base kept earning about 9% on tangible equity even at the 2024 trough, so the franchise is worth more than its capital in a downturn. Bull case, about $56.80 a share. Second-quarter 2026 earnings annualise to about $3.00. The bull case holds that level as remaining low-yield assets reprice, with only a mild credit dip, and the proven acquisition machine adds 3% a year per share. Debt. For a bank, deposits and borrowings are the raw material of the business, and their interest is already charged in owner earnings, so nothing further is subtracted in any case. The only capital-market debt is about $189 million of subordinated debentures, and term advances have been repaid. All values are at a 6% rate. Previous estimates were made on a different basis and are not comparable. Margin-of-safety price. We are fairly confident the bank earns between $2.30 and $2.80 a share in normal conditions, and its record of staying profitable through 2009-2011 makes the credit side well understood. The worst plausible event no case fully models is a regional commercial real estate bust concentrated in the Mountain West or Texas, or a large acquisition with hidden credit problems. That risk grows with each deal paid for in stock, as the 2025 day-one provision showed. The structure would survive that: no holding-company leverage of note, granular local deposits, and a dividend kept at $0.52 through the last crisis. The things we are most likely wrong about are the margin, if it slides back toward 2024's 2.77%, and the acquisitions continuing to add little per share. If both go against us, the shares are worth around the bear case, in the low $30s. Dividends of $1.32 a year are paid while waiting, about 5% at the margin-of-safety price. From $27, assuming a three-year holding period that ends near base value, the base case implies over 20% a year including dividends. If the bear case arrives instead, it implies roughly breaking even with a small positive return rather than a permanent loss. That asymmetry is why the margin-of-safety price is $27.