BWB

Bridgewater is a $5.41B-asset commercial bank whose FY2025 earnings snapped back hard — net income $46.1M (+40.4%) and diluted EPS $1.49 (+44.7%) — after a two-year slide from the FY2022 peak of $53.4M through $40.0M (FY2023) and a $32.8M trough (FY2024). That trajectory is the whole story: this is a rate-cycle-sensitive spread lender, not a compounder, and FY2025 is a recovery back toward, not beyond, prior highs. Total assets grew 6.7% on 11.4% gross loan growth to $4.31B, and equity rose 12.9% to $517M — book value roughly $18.60/share, so at $21.46 the stock trades near 1.15x book. For an 8.9% ROE that is a full, not cheap, price, and the 14.4x P/E on freshly-recovered EPS assumes the rebound holds.

The balance sheet is sound but the risk is concentrated exactly where the MD&A points. The book is 79.7% real estate, with multifamily at 36.8% ($1.59B) and CRE nonowner-occupied at 27.0% ($1.17B); investor CRE totals $3.01B — nearly 6x equity — all anchored to a single metro, the Twin Cities MSA. Construction and land development loans exploded 122.3% in the year, the fastest-growing and riskiest bucket. Allowance for credit losses is $56.4M, about 1.3% of gross loans; that is adequate today but thin cushion if CRE stress materializes, and the 10-K's risk factors lead with interest-rate risk, CRE concentration, and reliance on large, above-FDIC-limit deposits and non-core/brokered funding. Cash fell 46.2% to $124M and operating cash flow dropped 40% to $27.8M as loan growth absorbed liquidity — worth watching, though not alarming for a growing bank funding organically.