NAB have taken a battering on the stock market after releasing their financial results for the first half of 2021.
Despite posting strong results, the Big Four bank’s share price dropped significantly, dropping 3% before lunchtime. Although the trading day was poor, the share price is still higher than it was at this time last year, when COVID had just struck.
It follows a similar pattern that was seen by ANZ, who released their results first thing on Wednesday and ended up almost a point down by the end of the trading day. They fell a further 1% yesterday morning.
Westpac peaked on Monday when their financial results were announced, jumping 5% and staying there, albeit with a few peaks and troughs.
The slide was a surprise, as NAB’s results were stronger than expected. They posted a FH2021 profit of 3.34 billion, slightly more than pundits had predicted, and were able to double their shareholder dividend based on the same period of 2020 to 60c per share. Statutory net profit was also up, jumping to $3.21 billion.
“The rebound in the Australian and New Zealand economies from COVID-19 has been better than expected,” said NAB Chief Executive Ross McEwan in the statement that accompanied the report. “This, along with the vaccine rollout and continued strong health outcomes, make up optimistic about the outlook.”
Mortgages have driven much of the recovery in the economy, on the back of the strong housing market, though NAB actually lost market share in that space.
ANZ announced as part of their financial disclosures for the first half of 2021 that they had overtaken NAB as the third biggest provider of home loans in Australia, having written approximately 92,000 new mortgages in the period between October and March 2021 that was covered by the results.
