NatWest shares slide despite beating on profits

NatWest followed up its announcement that it was buying wealth manager Evelyn Partners for £2.7bn earlier this week, with a solid set of full year results today.

Rather surprisingly this hasn’t been enough to prevent its shares from falling to their lowest levels since October 2025, testing the 200-day SMA in the process, having started February well above the 700p level.

Chart here

Source: CMC Markets

On any measure today’s Q4 and full year numbers are impressive, with net interest income rising by 13.8% on an annual basis to £12.8bn, while total income jumped 13.2% to £16.64bn.

Total profits for the year rose 21.3% to £5.83bn, despite an 86.9% increase in annual impairments to £671m.

The bank reported a sizeable increase in net interest margin of 21bps to 2.34%, in spite of a falling rate environment.

On guidance NatWest management were equally bullish saying that they expect total income for 2026 to be in the region of between £17.2bn and £17.6bn, and to deliver ROTE in excess of 17%.

The bank announced a final dividend of 23p per share, taking the total dividend for the year to 32.5p, a 51% increase on 2024, which you would have expected to have halted the recent slide in the share price, but no.

There still seems to be some short-term negativity around the price paid for Evelyn Partners at the expense of the share buybacks.

This could well pass once it becomes apparent that the deal is likely to add more value in the long term as the short-term effect of lower buybacks fades.