Share count
1.2Bpeak FY2025
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BNS, Bank Nova Scotia Halifax Pfd 3
Banks financial
GBM is a full-service wholesale bank in the Americas, serving clients across Canada, the United States, Latin America, Europe and Asia-Pacific.
Canadian Banking provides a full suite of financial advice and banking solutions, supported by an excellent customer experience, to over 11 million customers.
Retail, Small Business Banking and Commercial Banking customers receive service through its network of 892 branches and 3,542 automated banking machines (ABMs), as well as online, mobile and telephone banking, and specialized sales teams.
The business
What it sells, where the money comes from, the kind of company it is.
Revenue · FY2025
C$20.3B
+16.4% YoY · 4% 5-yr CAGR
Vital signs · FY2025, with 5-yr average
Revenue C$20.3B 5-yr avg C$17.5B
The business in brief
read the 10-K →What this business is and what moves its needle, from its own SEC filings.
- What moves the needle
- Net interest margin, loan losses, and book value. A lender is read on the quality of its balance sheet, not an earnings multiple, and the worst year of credit losses matters more than the best. On its own account, the filing leans hardest on cyclicality & demand, set against the numbers in what the filing emphasizes, below.
- Is it a good business?
- Return on equity has hovered around the cost of equity (median 12%, above 12% in 6 of 10 years). A bank that earns above its cost of equity through the cycle compounds book value; whether this one did it by underwriting discipline or by reaching for risk is what the 10-K, and the worst years in the record, will tell you.
Every line is arithmetic on the company's filings, shown in full in the sections below.
The record
Ten years of arithmetic, read across the cycle.
The record, charted
FY2016–2025Each measure over its full record; the current point and the worst year marked.
Revenue
C$20.3Blow FY2016
Quality & stewardship
Returns, the balance sheet, capital allocation, and pay.
Owner’s Scorecard
FY2025 40-F · source on SEC EDGAR →
Is it a good business?
- Below the cost of equityNet income C$7.8B ÷ equity C$86.9BIndustry peers: median 10%
What this means
The bank's north star, what it earns on shareholders' capital. Cost of equity is roughly 10%, so a return durably above that builds value and below it destroys it. One year is noisy; the durability across a full credit cycle is what counts.
- ModestNet income ÷ (equity − goodwill C$8.6B − intangibles C$7.6B)Industry peers: median 13%
What this means
The cleaner return, stripping out the goodwill paid for past acquisitions. This is the number a buyer of the whole bank actually earns on the hard capital.
- Not enough dataIndustry peers: median 63%
What this means
Noninterest expense or revenue missing.
Is it sound?
- Capital (equity / assets) 5.9%ThinEquity C$86.9B ÷ assets C$1.46T
What this means
A plain-English leverage read: how much of the balance sheet is the owners' own money. This is a rough proxy; the regulatory figure is the CET1 ratio, which is risk-weighted and reported in the filing. The point is the same, how much loss the bank can absorb before depositors are at risk.
- Funding —Not enough data
What this means
Deposits or total assets missing.
- Credit cost —Not enough data
What this means
Provision or net interest income missing.
Does AI threaten the moat?
Low contestabilityThe moat is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded, the kind AI cuts costs within but does not contest.
In its own filing Named as a competitive risk
Its FY2025 10-K names artificial intelligence as a competitive threat.
“Maintaining competitiveness through AI adoption including Gen AI, Agentic AI and LLM is vital for the Bank as it aims to leverage the technology for improved decision-making, enhanced client experience and process optimisation.”
AI is unlikely to contest a moat that is physical, regulated or balance-sheet-funded; here it reads more as a cost tool than a threat, and the company is using it that way.
Read from the filing's own risk factors, paired with the industry's structure under its SIC code; the durability is read above, the price below.
All figures as filed; the source filing is linked above.
What an owner would ask, FY2025
read the 10-K →- Which reported numbers are a judgment call?Management names Pension & retirement, Credit & receivables as critical estimates
each rests partly on management's judgment; the filing's note sets out the assumptionsverify →
The questions the record and the charts do not answer on their own; each carries the figure and the place to look.
Peers, Banks
The same industry, side by side on the bank lens. Each figure is a through-cycle median, so a peak or trough year can’t distort it; the group median at the foot is the line to read each against.
| Company | Revenue | ROE | ROTCE | Efficiency | NII / assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PNCPNC Financial Services Group Inc. (The) | $23.1B | 10% | 12% | 63% | 2.4% |
| TFCTruist Financial Corporation | $20.3B | 8% | 11% | 63% | 2.7% |
| BKTHE Bank of NEW York Mellon Corporation | $20.1B | 10% | 20% | 69% | 0.9% |
| STTState Street Corporation | $13.9B | 10% | 15% | 74% | 0.9% |
| MTBM&T Bank Corporation | $9.7B | 9% | 13% | 57% | 3.2% |
| FCNCAFirst Citizens BancShares Inc. | $9.5B | 12% | 13% | 64% | 3.0% |
| FITBFifth Third Bancorp | $9.0B | 12% | 16% | 58% | 2.7% |
| BNSBank Nova Scotia Halifax Pfd 3 | C$20.3B | 12% | 15% | — | 1.4% |
| Group median | — | 10% | 14% | — | 2.5% |
The price
What a price has to assume.
What the price implies
price / tangible bookEnter the US price, in dollars: the NYSE/Nasdaq quote you hold. Bank Nova Scotia Halifax Pfd 3's US listing is the ordinary share itself; figures in this tool are translated at CAD 1 = $0.712 (2026-07-17, reference rate); the dollar quote then reconciles exactly. The record tables elsewhere on this page remain as filed, in CAD.
A bank is worth a multiple of its tangible book value, and the multiple it deserves is set by the return it earns on that book. Type today’s price; we show what you would be paying against what Bank Nova Scotia Halifax Pfd 3’s record justifies.
$
The assumptions
Tangible book / share, delivered6%/yr’20→’25
The justified multiple is (return on tangible equity − growth) ÷ (cost of equity − growth). A bank earning exactly its cost of equity is worth about one times tangible book; the premium above that prices each point of durable excess return. A higher cost of equity lowers the justified multiple for a bank.
Enter a price above to run it.
Price / tangible book—
Justified by the return—
Normalized return on tangible equity15%
Price / book—
Earnings yield—
P/E (3-yr avg ’23–’25)—
Graham’s price gate—
Graham applied the same standards to financial enterprises (Intelligent Investor ch.14): the 15× multiple cap on averaged earnings, and P/E times price-to-book at most 22.5. The gate marks the bargain-hunter’s floor, not a verdict.
A dated snapshot of the price you typed, the assumptions you set, and what the page showed for them. A snapshot is never edited after it is saved. Your notebook is yours alone — the commitment states what is stored and what we will never do.
Tangible book $50.4B on 1236M shares, a 15% normalized return on it. The dials set the multiple such a return would justify; your price sets the multiple you are paying. It assumes the bank keeps earning that return; a credit cycle, a rate shock or a bad acquisition changes it, which is what the record and the 10-K are for.
Cite: Owner Scorecard, "Bank Nova Scotia Halifax Pfd 3 (BNS), the owner's record," https://ownerscorecard.com/c/BNS, data as of 2026-07-09.
Manual order: ← BNR its page in the Manual BNT →
Industry order: ← BMRC the Banks chapter BNY →