Bread Financial Holdings Inc

Bread Financial, formerly Alliance Data Systems, is a U.S. consumer lender. Its core business runs credit card programs for nearly 100 brands, including AAA, Caesars, Dell Technologies, the NFL, Saks Fifth Avenue, Signet, Ulta and Victoria's Secret. Bread's banks issue the cards, lend the money and service the accounts. Partner contracts are generally exclusive and typically last 5 to 10 years.

Private label cards carry only the store's brand and work only at that store. Co-brand cards also carry an American Express, Mastercard or Visa logo and work wherever that network is accepted. In fiscal 2025, co-brand cards made up about 52% of spending on Bread's cards and private label cards about 43%. Co-brand customers tend to have higher credit scores and fewer late payments. Private label balances earn higher yields, but those customers are more likely to fall behind.

Bread also sells its own Bread Cashback and Bread Rewards American Express cards, Bread Pay installment and split-pay (pay-in-parts) loans, and Bread Savings accounts. It reports one business segment. Most revenue comes from interest and fees on loans, with a smaller part from partner contracts. Revenue was $3.85 billion in fiscal 2025. Card and other loans totaled $18.8 billion across about 34 million accounts as of December 31, 2025.

• In Q3 FY2026 (ended Sep 30, 2026), revenue was $1.02B, up 4.7% from a year earlier, and net income was $156.0M (-17.0%).
• For fiscal 2025, revenue was $3.85B (+0.2% year over year; +3.1% a year from FY2020 to FY2025) with a 13.5% net margin.

• Over FY2021–FY2025: $415.0M in buybacks and $210.0M in dividends.
• Regular dividend per share increased 1 years in a row.
• Regular dividends per share grew -7.4% a year over 5 years (FY2020–FY2025).
• Dividends took 7.7% of earnings in the latest fiscal year.
• Shares outstanding changed -23.7% from Oct 25, 2021 to Oct 21, 2026.

Rank among 1514 US companies

Market value at each year end

Bread Financial Holdings’s market value went from $1.88B at the end of 2022 to $3.98B on Oct 28, 2026, about 2.1 times as much; since the end of 2025 it is up 18%.

Form 4 filings from 2025-10-31 to 2026-10-31 (25 read): 4 open-market purchases ($186K) and 5 sales ($2.5M), 3 of them under pre-arranged 10b5-1 trading plans.

Large shareholders (13G filings)

ETFs with the most weight in BFH

1. Heavy reliance on a few brand partners. A significant share of revenue comes from a limited number of partners. Losing one, a partner promoting the card less, or a partner running into financial trouble could cause a significant drop in revenue.
2. Unsecured loans that borrowers may not repay. Card loans aren't backed by a house or car. In a downturn, more borrowers default. Bread charged $1.24 billion against earnings for expected credit losses in 2025, and its reserve could prove too small.
3. Limits on card interest rates and fees. Interest and fees are the main source of revenue. Laws, regulations or executive actions that cap card interest rates or late fees, or cut interchange (fees merchants pay on card purchases), could hit profits directly.
4. Funding depends on deposits and securitization. Bread funds loans with savings deposits and securitizations, which package card loans into bonds sold to investors. Stiffer competition for deposits, frozen securitization markets or a credit rating cut could make lending costlier or harder.
5. Bank rules can limit cash for shareholders. The parent company depends on dividends from its bank subsidiaries. Regulators and capital rules can restrict those payments, which would limit the cash available for Bread's own dividends and buybacks.
6. Leftover risks from the LoyaltyOne spinoff. Bread spun off its former LoyaltyOne segment but warns that the deal could still bring tax and other liabilities, lawsuits or other disputes that hurt its results.

• Oct 28, 2026 Other company announcement
• Oct 22, 2026 Investor presentation or announcement
• Oct 22, 2026 Quarterly results released; Investor presentation or announcement; Other company announcement
• Sep 15, 2026 Investor presentation or announcement
• Sep 8, 2026 Major agreement signed
• Aug 17, 2026 Investor presentation or announcement
• Jul 23, 2026 Investor presentation or announcement
• Jul 23, 2026 Quarterly results released; Investor presentation or announcement; Other company announcement
• Jul 14, 2026 Executive or board change; Investor presentation or announcement
• Jun 10, 2026 Investor presentation or announcement

Bread Financial pays only a small dividend. The yield was 0.88% as of October 28, 2026, so income investors would rely mostly on share-price gains. Dividends per share fell from $1.26 in fiscal 2020 to $0.84 a year in 2021 through 2024, then rose to $0.86 in 2025, a one-year streak of increases. The 2025 dividend took just 7.7% of earnings. Buybacks, where the company repurchases its own shares, are the bigger channel: $415 million over fiscal 2021–2025 versus $210 million in dividends. Shares outstanding fell 23.7% from October 2021 to October 2026.

The price record covers only about 4.6 years. That is too short to show how the stock fared in the 2008 financial crisis, the 2020 COVID crash or the full 2022 bear market. In that span the shares fell as much as 59.2% from a peak. They lost 10.25% in 2023 before gaining 88.88% in 2024. A single stock carries more risk than a diversified fund.