Why is National Australia Bank stock tumbling today?

National Australia Bank stock tumbled 7.6% to A$38.04 on Thursday after the bank delivered a heavily disappointing set of FY26 full-year results that fell well short of what analysts had pencilled in.

Cash earnings came in at A$6.14 billion, a 13.4% decline from the prior year, against a consensus estimate of around A$6.3–6.6 billion — a miss that triggered an immediate and steep sell-off at the open.

The two biggest culprits behind the earnings shortfall were a near-doubling of credit impairment charges, which surged approximately 86% to A$1.55 billion and included a A$403 million top-up to forward-looking economic provisions, and a A$1.35 billion accelerated software amortisation charge stemming from a review of NAB’s software capitalisation policy.

Total operating expenses jumped 18.2%, far above estimates. On the positive side, net operating income grew 5.8% to A$22 billion, the net interest margin edged up 6 basis points to 1.80%, and the board held the final dividend steady at 85 cents per share fully franked — but none of these offset the scale of the charges.

The broader market context made NAB’s decline all the more striking. The ASX 200 soared nearly 2% on a positive lead-in from Wall Street.