Itaúsa – Investimentos Itaú SA

What it is

Itaúsa is a holding company: it owns nothing you can touch, only stakes in other firms, and lives off the dividends they send up. It controls a 37.4% stake in Itaú Unibanco — the region’s biggest private bank — alongside positions in Dexco (37.7%), Alpargatas (29.4%), Aegea (12.8%), Copa Energia (48.9%), NTS (8.5%), and Motiva (10.4%).

The bank does the heavy lifting. By one estimate, Itaú Unibanco supplies roughly 87% of the profit Itaúsa receives, with flip-flops, wood panels, toll roads and gas pipelines making up the rest.

Who owns it

The founding family controls it without owning most of it, a common Brazilian set-up using two share classes. The controlling group is the ESA Family, which holds 33.62% of total shares — 63.66% of the voting common shares and 17.89% of the preferred shares.

“ESA” stands for Egydio de Souza Aranha, the lineage of the Setubal and Villela families. Itaúsa is a holding company with a free float of about 66% of its total capital, indicating a broad base of ownership beyond the controlling entity — nearly one million shareholders in all.

Who runs it

Alfredo Egydio Setubal has been chief executive and investor relations officer since 2015, and a director since 2008. The board chair is an independent outsider, by design.

As of May 2025, Raul Calfat chairs the board as an independent member, with vice-chairs Ana Lúcia de Mattos Barretto Villela and Roberto Egydio Setubal.

The chief financial officer is Priscila Grecco. Half the board is independent, a governance choice the company makes voluntarily.

The money, in plain words

In 2025 Itaúsa earned R$16.49bn (US$3.20bn) on income of R$8.25bn (US$1.60bn). That profit dwarfs the revenue line because most of its earnings arrive as its share of other companies’ profits, not as sales — normal for a holding company.

For every R$1 (US$0.19)owners put in, it earned about 18 centavos back — a return on equity of 18.4%, strong, and close to a well-run bank’s. Itaúsa’s ROE now approaches that of a well-run Brazilian bank, despite being a diversified holding (our reading of the data).

The shares look cheap on the face of it: you pay about R$8.50 (US$2)for each R$1 of yearly profit — a price-to-earnings ratio of 8.5x (our calculation). The dividend is generous, paid quarterly, at a yield near 8.6%.

What it is doing now

The company just marked its 50th birthday with its best year ever. Fourth-quarter recurring net income rose 21% year-over-year, and over 2025 Itaúsa distributed R$11.9 billion (US$2.3 bn) in earnings, a 76% payout and one of the highest dividend yields on the Brazilian exchange.

It is also reshaping its debt and trimming its portfolio. Management has signalled that continued portfolio optimisation — including a potential first-half 2026 airport platform sale — could serve as triggers to close the gap between its share price and the worth of its holdings.

What to watch

The “holding discount” is the central question for the stock. At roughly 24–25%, the gap between Itaúsa’s market value and the sum-of-parts value of its portfolio remains stubbornly wide — meaning the market prices Itaúsa below the worth of what it owns.

Two things should help. A tax reform approved in January 2025 will end a tax on interest-on-capital payments received from 2027, and almost everything depends on the bank: Itaú’s 2026 guidance is the single most important input.

This is news, not investment advice.