NAB Posts Decline In Full Year Profits

Post by Sharat on October 28, 2009 · Under Australian Economy, Business News, Capital Markets, Company News, banking · Comment

Australian banking major, National Australia bank recorded a 43 per cent decline in full year net profit. The lenders higher revenues were not enough to propel profits higher, and were generally offset by credit impairment charges, tax charges and other one off items.

NAB chief executive Cameron Clyne said a number of positive indicators suggest that the worst of global financial crisis has passed, with both consumer and business confidence having improved.

NAB which also owns British lenders Clydesdale and Yorkshire Banks, also said that the UK economy may be at the bottom of its cycle, but some fragility remained in the global economy.

NAB is the first of the Big Four lenders to report full year earnings and said that full year profit ending September 30th declined to $2.59 billion from $4.5 billion from a year earlier.

NAB declared a final dividend of 73 cents a share, down from 97c a year earlier.

The group’s closely watched cash profit — a smoothed measure which strips out volatile items –fell to $3.84bn from $3.92bn, slightly above market expectations.

Australian banking equities have generally outpaced the broader market in gains over the last few months, as it becomes increasingly apparent that the banks have managed to avoid their worst projections of bad debt write off’s, having already avoided sub prime losses which weighed heavily on their international rivals.

NAB’s bad and doubtful debt charge rose to $3.82bn from $2.49bn in the previous year.

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