Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida (SBCF): what the price assumes

In the published model solve dated 2026-Q2, anchored at $35.01, Seacoast Banking Corporation of Florida (SBCF) is priced for more than 12.2% return on equity. boothcheck publishes no house fair value, target price, or buy/sell rating; individual model outputs and user-controlled scenarios are analytical inputs, not Boothcheck targets. Narrative composed 2026-06-28.

Generated: 2026-08-10 · Exported: 2026-08-12 · Source: https://boothcheck.com/report/SBCF

Headline

FieldValue
TickerSBCF
CompanySeacoast Banking Corporation of Florida
Current price$35.01/sh

What The Price Assumes (Inversion)

The assumption today's price embeds, recovered by inverting the valuation.

FieldValue
Inversion basisfinancials
Price-to-book1.25x
Return on equity now2.8%

The implied return on book is non-physical at this price-to-book and is suppressed as misleading. The price sits beyond a 11.7% return on equity sustained for 40 years and is not resolvable as a sustainable-ROE point. The rarity read below is the honest signal.

Solve inputs: computed at a 10.5% cost of equity; ROE searched up to the 11.7% ROE ceiling.

Reconcile: at the x-ray's 9.3% required return this reads ~10.6%; the models below use their own rates.

How unusual the bet is: n/a

ReferenceValue
vs own history+2.28σ
cohort percentile (of 166 peers)42
sustained it ~10 years at this level69%
implied end-window share0%

Valuation X-Ray

Every valuation family lands below the price. The price therefore sits beyond what those standard frames encode.

How the valuation models price the stock relative to the market price. Price/FV above 1.0 means the market pays more than that lens defends (expensive); at or below 1.0 the lens can defend the price.

FamilyMedian price/FVModelsReads
Asset2.18x3expensive
Earnings2.17x1expensive
Relative—0—
Growth—0—

Families that call it expensive: Asset, Earnings

The models below discount at their own flat-beta convention rates (cost of equity 9.3%, WACC 9.1%); the inversion above states its own rate.

Per-Model Detail (n=4)

ModelFamilyFVPrice/FVApplicableMethodology
DCF Perpetual GrowthGrowth——no—
Bank Fair Value (P/TBV)—$7.304.80xyesTBVPS $15.31 × 0.48x (ROE (TTM) 5.3% / CoE 9.3%, g=3.5% (sustainable: 65% retention × ROE, 5% cap; not the terminal-growth assumption), credit 1.41% allowance/loans → ×0.95)
Relative ValuationRelative——noP/E 14.07x (blended: static sector reference 10x + trailing (TTM) 24x), scenarios: 11.3x / 14.1x / 16.9x (bear / base = reference held flat / bull), EV/EBITDA N/Ax
Simple DDMGrowth——no—
Two-Stage DDMGrowth——no—
Simple Excess ReturnAsset$16.062.18xyesBV/sh $27.78, ROE (TTM) 5.3%, ke 9.3%
Two-Stage Excess ReturnAsset$11.603.02xyes5yr excess ROE then converge to ke=9.3%
Discounted Future Market CapGrowth——noRev $0.6B, growth 30% (input: historical growth; tapered), Terminal P/S: 4.5x / 5.6x / 6.7x (bear / base = today's held flat / bull, cap 12x)
Peter Lynch Fair ValueRelative——noEPS $1.49, growth 1% (input: historical EPS growth), PEG=16.46 (Overvalued)
Margin TrajectoryGrowth——no—
Earnings Power ValueEarnings——no—
Residual IncomeAsset——no—
Graham NumberAsset$30.521.15xyes√(22.5 × EPS $1.49 × BVPS $27.78) — Graham's conservative floor
EV/EBITDA RelativeRelative——no—
FCF YieldEarnings——no—
SBC-Adj FCF YieldEarnings——no—
Ben Graham FormulaEarnings——noEPS $1.49 × (8.5 + 2×1.4%) × (4.4 / 5.3%)
ROIC-Justified P/BAsset——no—
P/Sales SectorRelative——no—
PEG Fair ValueRelative——noEPS $1.49 × (PEG 1.5 × growth 1.4% (input: historical EPS growth)) → PE 2.1x
Earnings YieldEarnings$16.112.17xyesEPS $1.49 / required return 9.3% (Rf 4.3% + ERP 5.0%)
Funds From Operations MultipleRelative——no—
Clinical Phase NPVGrowth——no—
MertonAsset——no—
V5 Mechanical———no—

Economic-Unit Decomposition (Sum Of The Parts)

The issuer is a funded financial business. Debt, interest, and cash flows are operating inputs, so industrial EV, net-debt, WACC, and free-cash-flow lenses do not apply; value the common-equity claim with book, earnings, capital, and payout economics.

UnitRoleValuation basisRevenueReported profitValue evidenceStatus
Seacoast Banking (consolidated)financialequity0.7B reported-currency—withheldunresolved standalone equity facts required

No unit-level total common-equity value is stated. Each financial unit requires supported standalone common equity, normalized earnings, capital adequacy, and payout capacity. Consolidated debt, interest, and cash are operating balances, not an enterprise-to-equity bridge; company-level book, earnings, capital, and payout lenses remain the coherent cross-checks.

Solvency

FieldValue
Share count CAGR (dilution)12.2%

Deposit/float-funded balance sheet: debt is funding, not corporate leverage, and GAAP operating cash flow follows loan flows. Net-debt, interest-coverage, and cash-burn lenses do not apply. The solvency frame for a financial is regulatory capital and payout capacity (CET1, stress buffer, dividends plus buybacks against earnings).

Bullet Takeaways

Bull Case

Frame Seacoast for what it is: a growth-stage regional bank in the middle of a roll-up of the Florida market, and that stage is the key to reading every number. A static snapshot of trailing return on equity, about 5.3%, or the even lower recent figure near 2.8%, makes the bank look unprofitable. But that trailing number is depressed by deliberate action: the first quarter included a $39.5 million loss from a strategic sale of low-yield securities, a one-time repositioning, and adjusted net income was $67.8 million, or $0.62 per share, beating estimates (web research). Stripped of the repositioning, the bank is earning a normal return and improving it. The price at 1.1x book implies a sustained roughly 11.3% return on equity, which is above the trailing figure but exactly the level a well-run Florida bank reaches once integration and margin normalization play out.

The core franchise is strengthening on the metrics that matter for a bank. The 10-K reports net interest income grew 28% to $553.5 million with net interest margin expanding 34 basis points to 3.58%, alongside 9% organic loan growth reflecting "investments made in recent years to attract talent and expand the commercial banking team" (accession 0001628280-26-012787). The first quarter pushed margin further, to 3.83%, as deposit costs fell to 1.54%, organic deposits grew 7% annualized, and noninterest-bearing demand deposits grew 29% annualized (web research). A widening margin funded by cheap, growing core deposits is the engine of bank profitability, and it is moving the right way as rate pressure eases.

The acquisitions are the growth layer the price is paying for, and they are concrete and accretive. Seacoast completed the $111.2 million Heartland Bancshares deal, adding deposits and the top deposit share in its region, and agreed to acquire Villages Bancorporation for about $710.8 million, which the 10-K notes brings "$3.5 billion in deposits, along with 19 branches" and a low loan-to-deposit ratio that provides "significant opportunity for expansive growth throughout the Seacoast footprint" (accession 0001628280-26-012787, web research). Combined, the deals take Seacoast toward roughly $21 billion in assets, and management expects the Villages transaction to be about 22% accretive to 2026 earnings per share (web research). A growth-stage bank deepening its hold on a fast-growing Florida market, with margin expanding and acquisitions adding low-cost deposits, is the durable compounding the growth-DCF reaches for and the static frames cannot price.

Bear Case

The external variable with the most leverage on this thesis is interest rates, and a bank is more exposed to it than almost any other business. Seacoast's improving net interest margin, the heart of the bull case, is a function of the spread between what it earns on loans and securities and what it pays on deposits. That spread widened as deposit costs fell to 1.54%, but the same dynamic reverses if rates move against the bank: a sharp rate cut compresses asset yields faster than deposit costs fall, while renewed rate pressure or deposit competition pushes funding costs back up. The price assumes a sustained 11.3% return on equity, and the margin that delivers it is the line item most sensitive to a rate environment the bank does not control. The $39.5 million securities loss this quarter is itself a reminder of rate risk: low-yield securities bought in a different rate regime had to be sold at a loss to reposition the balance sheet.

The acquisition strategy that powers growth also concentrates risk in Florida and in integration execution. Seacoast is building scale almost entirely in one state, so a Florida-specific shock, a property-insurance crisis, a hurricane cycle, a regional real-estate downturn, would hit the loan book and the deposit base at once with no geographic diversification to cushion it. Each deal also carries integration risk: the 10-K notes Villages integration and system conversion "are expected to be completed early in the third quarter of 2026" (accession 0001628280-26-012787), and a botched conversion, customer attrition, or worse-than-expected credit in an acquired book can turn an accretive deal dilutive. The 12.2% annual share-count growth reflects how much of this expansion has been funded with equity, which dilutes existing holders unless the accretion fully materializes.

The valuation gives little room for any of that to go wrong. The price embeds a return well above what the bank has actually earned, and the inversion flags that the assumed return runs above its own record. The bet is that integration and margin normalization lift the franchise to a sustained 11% return. If rates, Florida credit, or a stumbled acquisition delay that, the gap between the price and the tangible-book-based marks is the downside.

Valuation

A bank is valued on the return it earns on capital, so the price is read off price-to-book rather than an operating multiple. At about 1.1x book the market assumes Seacoast sustains a return on equity near 11.3%, computed at a 10.7% cost of equity over a five-year stage. For context the bank has recently earned about 2.8% and 5.3% on a trailing basis, both depressed by a securities-repositioning loss, so the implied return runs above its record. It sits in the lower half of the peer group on price-to-book, and the assumption is labeled within range.

The X-ray uses the bank-appropriate frames and gates off the DCF, EV/EBITDA, FCF, and P/S methods that do not apply to a deposit-funded balance sheet. The wide spread reflects how much the answer depends on which return on equity you assume: the depressed trailing figure produces the low marks, while the normalized, post-acquisition figure the bull case projects produces the higher ones.

The honest read is that the price embeds a normalized return the bank has not yet demonstrated, justified by acquisition accretion and margin recovery. The variable that settles it is whether return on equity climbs from the depressed trailing level toward the implied 11%, which depends on integration of the Heartland and Villages deals, the rate environment that drives the margin, and Florida credit quality.

Catalysts

The defining catalyst is the Villages Bancorporation acquisition. Seacoast agreed to acquire VBI for about $710.8 million, adding roughly $3.5 billion in deposits and 19 branches and taking combined assets toward $21 billion, with the deal expected to be about 22% accretive to 2026 earnings per share and integration targeted for early in the third quarter of 2026 (accession 0001628280-26-012787, web research). The completion and accretion realization of that deal, on top of the completed $111.2 million Heartland Bancshares acquisition, are the events that drive the earnings normalization the price assumes.

The margin and deposit trend is the core-franchise catalyst. First-quarter 2026 net interest margin expanded to 3.83% as deposit costs fell to 1.54%, organic deposits grew 7% annualized, and noninterest-bearing demand deposits grew 29% annualized, with adjusted EPS of $0.62 beating estimates (web research). Each quarter's margin and deposit-cost print is the readout on whether the spread keeps widening.

The macro catalyst is the rate path. Net interest margin and the value of the securities book both move with rates, and the quarter already included a $39.5 million repositioning loss tied to low-yield securities (web research). Watch the integration of Heartland and Villages and the accretion that follows, the net-interest-margin trajectory, deposit-cost trends, and Florida credit quality as the combined balance sheet scales.

Sources: Seacoast Q1 2026 earnings (stocktitan.net, finance.yahoo.com, aol.com, sec.gov 8-K); Seacoast Villages and Heartland acquisitions (seacoastbank.com, businesswire.com, retailbankerinternational.com, investing.com).

Peer Cohorts (Per Segment, With Filing Citations)

Seacoast Banking (consolidated) (reported)

Methodology Note

Fundamentals sourced from SEC EDGAR filings. Current price from Databento. The priced-in inversion and valuation x-ray are computed by the boothcheck engine; narrative composed by AI from the structured data.

View the full interactive SBCF report on boothcheck