NAB (ASX: NAB) shares are currently in a trading halt after announcing a capital raising.
What did NAB announce?
This morning NAB announced it wanted to raise around $3.5 billion from investors to strengthen its balance sheet because of COVID-19 impacts.
The capital raising price is $14.15, which is a 8.5% discount to the last closing price.
The new shares issued will represent 7.1% of NAB’s existing shares.
NAB HY20 result
NAB also announced its FY20 half year result.
The major ASX bank announced a statutory net profit of $1.31 billion. Its cash profit was $1.44 billion, down 51.4% compared to a year ago.
Excluding ‘large notable items’, like the ones previously announced, NAB generated cash earnings of $2.47 billion which was reduction of 24.6%. Not quite as bad, but still painful.
NAB dividend
NAB said it wanted to balance making cash returns to shareholders whilst maintaining a good financial position.
The NAB Board settled on a dividend cut to $0.30 per share, which represents a fall of just under 64%.
Is the NAB share price a buy?
The other major banks all saw their share prices drop in response. For example, the Westpac (ASX: WBC) share price is down almost 4%.
The NAB share price was down around 40% even before today’s announcements. If you believe in the long term future of the bank then this could be a cheap price to buy. But with interest rates so low I think bank profitability will be low for a while.
I’d much rather buy the technology shares revealed below than the ASX banks like NAB:
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Disclosure: at the time of publishing, Jaz does not have a financial interest in any of the companies mentioned.
