Bank of Nova Scotia (TSX:BNS) Misses Estimates

Scotiabank Stock (Tsx:BNS) Misses Esimates – What Next?

Scotiabank (TSE:BNS), the third-largest Canadian bank stock, announced its profit for the fiscal third quarter and it wasn’t a pretty sight.

The bank earned $1.3 billion during the three-month fiscal period, or $1.04 a share which was below the expected $1.12 a share that analysts had forecasted. This is all compared to earnings of $1.98 billion or $1.5o a share one year ago at the same time.

Bank of Nova Scotia stock is currently hovering around $55.92 a share, down from a 52-week high of $76.75. The company has a market cap of $67.74 billion and is yielding a dividend of 6.5%.

The lowest the share price hit this year was $46.38 so the company still has not fully bounced back as we have seen some others do.

Trailing price to earnings sits at 9.2, which represents a 19% discount from the company’s five-year average. A theme with many of Scotiabank’s current fundamental numbers is the discount they are at as the company struggles to deal with the impact of COVID-19.

Bank of Nova Scotia’s international presence

Due to its large international presence, Scotiabank may have taken more of a hit from the novel coronavirus than other Canadian bank stocks. For those looking to buy stocks in the financial sector, this has made Scotiabank look quite cheap.

The spread of the virus in places such as Latin America where the bank has a large presence has forced them to set aside large amounts of money to cover potential losses on loans. The bank designated $2.18 billion aside, which forced the department to post a loss of $28 million this year compared to last when it profited $844 million.

This is a drastic change, but one that can be clearly attributed to the effects of the coronavirus and not one that reflects poorly on the company’s financial fundamentals.  On a similar note, profits from domestic retail banking which is the bank’s largest division fell by over 50% to $429  million.

It’s not all bad news

The good news for Scotiabank owners is that the Captial Market sector actually performed strongly for the bank, it was just overshadowed by the provisions that had to be set aside to protect against international loan losses which ended up wiping out its profit.

Earnings in the division soared to a record $600 million which represented a 60% jump. Scotiabank has stated that they think this is “the peak” of provisions that will need to be set aside and as our world returns closer to normalcy the company should be well-positioned to bounce back in terms of stock price.

This increase comes from stronger revenue from trading, as well as investment banking, and helped ease some of the sting from the losses that other departments took.

Future targets for Bank of Nova Scotia stock

In twelve months, the low price target for this stock as determined by thirteen analysts sits at $53.00 a share, the high target is at $70.00, and the mean is $61.90.

Like many Canadian bank stocks, Scotiabank is a strong, reliable company that might not provide the returns that riskier growth stocks could see but offers a peace of mind that many investors seek, especially those who are just learning how to buy stocks and want less volatility.

While it’s going to take time, eventually the world is going to figure out how to best manage the coronavirus and resume our normal economic systems.

But as that is not the case right now, some of these companies can be had for a discount and Scotiabank is one of them with their share almost down 30% from earlier levels.