The major bank revealed its full-year results, and with profits taking a hit, it’s had a flow-on effect on what shareholders should expect in income.
Summary of results
The National Australia Bank (NAB) has reported that its statutory profit after tax for the year ended 30 September 2019 is $4.8 billion.
It’s down by 13.6 per cent on the previous comparable period to 30 September 2018 following a $15 billion slide in mortgage volumes.
Cash earnings at the bank fell less than net profit but were down double digits to $5.1 billion.
Cash earnings per share have also decreased, falling from 202.4 cents per share in September 2018 to just 177.0 cents per share in September 2019.
This led to the bank paying shareholders 83 cents fully franked final dividend, down from 99 cents a year ago.
Speaking to the media, NAB acting CEO and chairman-elect Philip Chronican acknowledged that the bank “fell behind” its peers in the mortgage market over the second half of the 2019 financial year, adding that home loan growth was clearly disappointing.
However, he is confident that NAB will recover ground in the home lending space over FY20, with CFO Gary Lennon revealing that applications have already increased by 18 per cent since June off the back of rate cuts and changes to mortgage serviceability guidance.
Despite expecting volumes to improve in FY20, Mr Chronican does expect overall credit growth to remain subdued.
“We’ve got work to get back to system growth, but from the numbers I’ve seen of the last four to six weeks in terms of applications, [it] suggests pretty strong momentum coming through there, but that’s clearly the area of focus for us,” he said.
“I’m pretty comfortable that we can grow broadly in line with system credit growth or better, but obviously, it’s going to be a low number. Credit growth is going to be a low single-digit number.”
It comes after the “disappointing” results from both ANZ and Westpac.
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