Columbia Banking System, Inc. (COLB)

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Like most regional banks, Columbia earns the large majority of its revenue from net interest income — the spread between interest on loans, leases and securities and what it pays on deposits and borrowings. In fiscal 2025 total interest income was $2,916 million, interest expense $913 million and net interest income $2,003 million, with a net interest margin of 3.83% on a tax-equivalent basis, up from 3.57% in 2024. Fee income is a much smaller second leg: non-interest income was $298 million in 2025 (against $211 million in 2024), made up mainly of service charges on deposits ($84 million), card-based fees ($58 million), financial services and trust revenue ($35 million), residential mortgage banking revenue ($31 million), bank-owned life insurance income ($25 million) and other items. Profitability therefore depends on loan growth, credit costs (the 2025 provision for credit losses was $150 million) and the cost of funding the $54.2 billion deposit base.

Columbia's advantage is a dense deposit franchise in its home markets rather than anything proprietary: it holds 16.39% of deposits in Oregon (second in the state) with 109 branches and 7.79% in Washington (fifth) with 111 branches as of 30 June 2025. Core operating accounts, treasury management and trust relationships are slow and inconvenient for businesses to move, which gives a cheaper and stickier funding base than a pure price competitor would have. The limits are visible in the filing itself: major national banks generally hold the top market share positions in every state Columbia operates in, credit unions can price loans and deposits more aggressively because of their tax exemption, and fintechs and online providers can reach the same customers without branches. Outside Oregon the franchise is small — 1.14% share in California, 0.49% in Nevada, 0.23% in Arizona — so the advantage does not travel well.

A commercial bank earns on the volume of credit and on the spread, and both follow the economic cycle. Loan demand rises when businesses invest, build and buy property, and falls when they postpone; at the same time credit costs go the other way, so provisions grow just as new lending slows. The filing itself lists what a downturn in its markets would bring: more delinquencies, more foreclosures, falling collateral values, fewer low-cost deposits and weaker demand for its products. Rates add a second, partly independent cycle — the margin widened to 3.83% in 2025 from 3.57% in 2024 mainly because funding costs fell. With 76% of loans secured by real estate and 22% of the book in multifamily, the property cycle in the western United States matters more here than the general consumer cycle.

प्रमुख जोखिम

• Concentration in commercial real estate and commercial loans — The company states that its portfolio, while diversified across business sectors, is concentrated in CRE and commercial business loans, which are generally viewed as carrying more default risk than residential mortgages. At 31 December 2025, 76% of total gross loans were secured by real estate; multifamily alone was 22% of the portfolio and non-owner occupied CRE term loans 17%. Because these loans carry relatively large balances, the deterioration of only a few of them can cause a significant increase in non-performing loans, and CRE valuations can move quickly with work-from-home patterns, online shopping and occupancy trends.
• Integration of the Pacific Premier acquisition — The filing devotes a dedicated risk section to the 31 August 2025 acquisition: combining the two banks may be more difficult, costly or time-consuming than expected, cost savings and revenue synergies may be smaller or slower than anticipated, and the integration may cause loss of key employees or push customers to competing institutions. Columbia also warns more generally that acquisitions can bring unexpected contingent liabilities, misjudged asset quality and dilution for existing shareholders.
• Interest rate movements and deposit migration — Profitability depends heavily on the spread between interest-earning assets and interest-bearing liabilities, and assets and liabilities do not reprice symmetrically. Rising rates can strain floating-rate borrowers and push customers out of non-interest-bearing accounts; falling rates can accelerate prepayments and make deposits less attractive, forcing the bank to hold deposit rates high or use more expensive funding. The company also flags that deposits can now move very fast — as in the 2023 bank failures — and that social media rumours can amplify outflows.
• Dependence on the economies of the western United States — Substantially all loan and deposit customers are businesses and individuals in Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Utah and Washington. A weakening of those local economies could raise delinquencies and foreclosures, reduce collateral values and borrowing capacity, shrink low-cost and non-interest-bearing deposits and cut demand for loans and other products. The company notes that economic softening in Arizona, Colorado, Texas and Utah would also hinder the expansion it is planning there.
• Cyberattacks and failures at technology providers — Operations rely on the secure processing and storage of confidential data, and the company states it cannot anticipate or prevent every threat, particularly since attack techniques change constantly and can originate with third-party providers. It cites a concrete case: in 2023 a technology vendor informed the bank that the MOVEit file-transfer incident had exposed the names and social security or tax identification numbers of certain consumer and small business customers; approximately 429,000 affected customers were notified.
• Unrealized losses in the securities portfolio — The company discloses that its securities portfolio held $380 million of gross unrealized losses as of 31 December 2025 and that further declines in fair value are possible. It warns it may in future be required to recognise a credit loss on these securities, and separately notes that securities issued by some states and municipalities may come under scrutiny over credit quality.

The 10-K does not disclose any concentration of revenue in a small number of customers, and for a bank with a $54.2 billion retail and commercial deposit base spread across eight states that is what one would expect. What the filing does disclose is concentration of credit: 76% of gross loans secured by real estate at 31 December 2025, multifamily at 22% of the portfolio, non-owner occupied CRE term at 17%, owner occupied CRE at 15% and commercial term loans at 14%. Geography is the other concentration — substantially all borrowers and depositors are in the western states the bank serves. The filing points to the notes on concentrations of credit risk rather than to any single-name exposure.