Itaú Unibanco Holding S.A. ITUB

The business

Itaú Unibanco sells banking to Brazil: loans, cards, deposits, insurance, and asset management for individuals, small business, and corporates, with smaller operations in Chile, Colombia, and the Southern Cone. The engine is the financial margin with clients, R$32.6B of the R$44.5B second-quarter top line, 73%, earned on a R$1.5T credit portfolio growing 9.6% year over year. Fees and insurance add R$11.0B a quarter and are the soft spot: up 2.3% year over year in Q2, with the 2026 fee guide cut in August from 5-9% growth to 2-5%. Scale plus a 35.5% Brazil efficiency ratio is the moat in one sentence; whether it survives Brazil's fintech assault is a different memo.

What the financials do not show is the mix shift doing the work under the surface. Growth is running through collateralized product: payroll loans up 90.1% year over year and R$36B of mortgage origination over twelve months at a 55% share among private banks, which is how the book grows 9.6% at a 14.00% Selic without credit stress. The macro is the whole tape right now: the central bank has cut four times from 15.00%, a fiscal-credibility warning from sell-side desks hit Brazilian banks the week of August 12, and the presidential election lands in October. The ADR is 24% off its 52-week high on none of it being company-specific. Control sits with the Setubal and Moreira Salles families through IUPAR and Itaúsa; the ADR is non-voting preferred stock.