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Columbia Banking System

COLB on Nasdaq. Columbia Banking System sells loans and bank accounts to people and businesses. Market value $8.2bn.

Watch this stockFree. We tell you when something changes.

Price checks use the past 12 months to June 2026. Some use the latest annual report instead, as marked. Quality checks use five annual reports, the latest for the year to December 2025.

We can't read total debt from the filing, so debt is left out.

Cash flow or capital spending isn't reported, so free cash flow is unknown.

Should I look at this?

Worth a closer look

Why it could be worth it

What to watch out for

Nothing stood out in the numbers we check.

Read what could go wrong

This is not advice. Check the numbers below.

Compare with another stock

Return on equity
five annual reports to December 2025
10.6%five-year median

Yearly profit per dollar of owners' money: 11 cents. Above 10 is good.

Price to book
quarterly report to June 2026
1.1×

What you pay for each dollar of net assets: $1.08.

Earnings yield
past 12 months to June 2026
8.7%

Profit per $100 you pay: $8.71.

Quality score: 90 of 100. Price score: 97 of 100. Our list needs 70 on quality and 60 on price.

$28.84 a share, 21% above its 1-year low

Over the past year the price has ranged from $23.83 to $33.68.

Dividend: 4.1% a year

Paid every year for at least 5 years

Payouts have jumped around in recent years, so this may not repeat.

Prices from Monday’s close (5 October).

Five years of cash, in billions

n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
n/a
20212022202320242025
Revenue
$83m$86m$134m$149m$177m
Operating margin
n/an/an/an/an/a
Debt to equity
n/an/an/an/an/a
Shares outstanding
0.08bn0.21bn0.21bn0.30bn0.28bn

Health checks

  • Free cash flow positiveDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • Accounting checksDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • DebtDoesn't apply to banks and insurers
  • Revenue growth, five yearsStrong, 20.7% a year
  • Buying back its own sharesNo, 260% more shares since 2021

The quarter to June 2026

How the business did, compared with the same quarter a year earlier.

  • Profit: $208 million, up 37% on a year ago.
  • 36% more shares than a year ago. Each share owns a bit less of the company.
Profit by quarter
Profit by quarter
Quarter toAmount
September 2024$146m
December 2024$143m
March 2025$87m
June 2025$152m
September 2025$96m
December 2025$215m
March 2026$192m
June 2026$208m

From the company's quarterly reports to the SEC.

Dates

Next results (estimated)
n/a
Last annual report (10-K)
26 February 2026
Next quarterly (estimated, 10-Q)
3 November 2026

Who owns it

6 long-term investors we follow own it, unchanged from 6 last quarter. 553 funds in all.

Jun '25
Dec '25
Jun '26
Largest holders overall

From 13F filings for the quarter ended 30 June 2026.

Big holders and activists

3 investors own more than 5%.

From Schedule 13D and 13G filings: anyone owning more than 5% must file one.

What insiders did

In the last 12 months, 1 insider bought $22,478 of shares on the open market. 3 sold $647,167, $127,932 of it under preset trading plans.

  • Deer Aaron James
    EVP Chief Strategy/Innov Offcr
    Bought
    Date
    30 June 2026
    Shares
    886
    Price
    $25.37
    Value
    $22,478
  • Moore Devine David
    EVP Chief Marketing Officer
    Sold
    Date
    8 June 2026
    Shares
    3,872
    Price
    $29.78
    Value
    $115,308
  • Nixon Torran B
    Senior Executive VP
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    4 March 2026
    Shares
    2,240
    Price
    $28.85
    Value
    $64,624
  • Nixon Torran B
    Senior Executive VP
    Sold
    under a preset trading plan
    Date
    3 March 2026
    Shares
    2,241
    Price
    $28.25
    Value
    $63,308
  • GARDNER STEVEN R
    Director
    Sold
    Date
    30 January 2026
    Shares
    13,725
    Price
    $29.43
    Value
    $403,927

From Form 4 filings: insiders must report trades in their own company's shares within two days.

Warning signs in its filings

Problems the company itself reported to the SEC, in its own words.

None of the warning signs we check for were found.

We look for five warning signs: doubt it can keep going, weak checks on its own accounts, a notice that its past accounts can't be relied on, a change of auditor, and one customer bringing in a big share of sales. We don't check lawsuits, investigations or debt yet.

We checked the auditor's report, internal controls, restatement notices, auditor changes and big customers in the 10-K filed 26 Feb 2026, plus the 10-Q filed 4 Aug 2026 and 9 later 8-Ks.

A 10-K is the yearly report every US company files with the SEC. An 8-K is a short notice of a big event.

What could go wrong

Cheap for a reason is the question the numbers cannot answer.

Whether the price already reflects the risks is what the deep dive is for.

The deep dive

Everything above is arithmetic on public filings. The deep dive reads the last ten years of annual reports, the proxy statements, and the earnings calls, then argues the case the way Buffett, Klarman, and Hohn would, and checks every claim against the source.

  • What the business is worth, as a range, and the margin of safety at today’s price
  • Prices to start buying, buy, and buy hard
  • The three things that would make this a mistake
  • Every number footnoted to the filing it came from
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What a finished deep dive looks like

Not advice. Numbers on this page come from SEC filings and are updated each night; prices are updated again after the US market closes. The five-year figures are rounded.