NatWest Group Plc (LON: NWG, NYSE: NWG) is ending 2025 in a very different place to where it spent most of the last decade: shares are trading close to post‑crisis highs, the UK government is finally out of the shareholder register, and regulators have just confirmed that the big UK banks can survive some pretty nasty economic weather. [1]
Here’s a deep dive into what’s driving NatWest’s share price as of 8 December 2025, and what recent forecasts and analysis say about 2026 and beyond.
1. NatWest share price today: still near 12‑month highs
On Monday 8 December 2025, NatWest’s London‑listed shares closed at around 616.8p, down a modest 0.13% on the day and just under 4% below the recent intraday high of 641.4p set on 3 December. [2]
Key snapshot for the LSE line (NWG:LON): [3]
- Close (8 Dec 2025): ~616.8p
- 52‑week range: 369p – 641.4p
- Market cap: ~£49.6bn
- P/E (trailing): ~9.5x
- Dividend yield (trailing): ~4.0%
On the US ADR (NWG:NYSE), shares recently hit a new 52‑week high of $16.82 on 3 December, with the 12‑month performance now around 60%–61% and a 52‑week range of roughly $9.16–$16.82. [4]
So, in simple terms: NatWest is no longer the distressed, deep‑value UK bank of old. It’s priced like a solidly profitable lender that the market finally believes in again.
2. What’s been moving the stock in early December 2025?
2.1 Insider buying: chairman puts more skin in the game
Fresh insider buying is usually catnip for investors. On 5 December 2025, NatWest chairman Rick Haythornthwaite purchased 23,869 ordinary shares on the London Stock Exchange at £6.282 per share (628.2p). [5]
It’s not a life‑changing number of shares for a FTSE‑100 chairman, but it matters for three reasons:
- It’s a public vote of confidence in the bank’s current valuation.
- It comes after a 2025 rally of roughly 60%+, so it’s explicitly not a “bottom‑fishing” trade. [6]
- It reinforces the narrative that NatWest is now in a “normal” phase of its life: fully privatised, solidly profitable, and run like any other large listed bank rather than a quasi‑state asset. [7]
2.2 Aggressive share buybacks continue
If there were a leaderboard for “quietly shovelling cash back to shareholders,” NatWest would be right near the top.
Over the last few weeks, the bank has reported daily share repurchases as part of its ongoing buyback programme. Recent filings and auto‑generated news summaries show, among others: [8]
- 2.43m shares bought from Merrill Lynch International in one block trade.
- Several days with ~0.8m–0.9m shares repurchased at average prices around 620–630p.
- All of these shares are being cancelled, gradually shrinking the share count.
TipRanks’ AI “Spark” model labels the stock “Outperform”, explicitly citing the combination of strong earnings, attractive valuation and these ongoing buybacks as key positives. [9]
The result: even if the share price only creeps higher from here, total shareholder yield (dividends + buybacks) is widely estimated in the high single digits and potentially close to double‑digit percentages for 2025. TechStock²+1
2.3 £40bn Euro Medium Term Note (EMTN) programme
Alongside equity buybacks, NatWest is fine‑tuning its liability side.
A few days ago, the bank published a prospectus for a £40 billion Euro Medium Term Note (EMTN) programme, allowing it to issue bonds flexibly in different currencies and maturities. [10]
This doesn’t change the equity story overnight, but it:
- Gives NatWest more flexibility in how it funds lending and manages capital.
- Signals that management expects to keep playing offence, not defence, in wholesale funding markets.
2.4 2025 Bank of England stress test: NatWest shines
The 2025 Bank of England (BoE) stress test is a big part of why NatWest (and other UK banks) have been re‑rated.
Regulators ran a nasty “what if” scenario: deep global recession, markets tanking, gas prices spiking, and UK interest rates jumping to 8%. The BoE concluded that all seven major UK lenders, including NatWest, comfortably passed with ample capital left above regulatory minimums. [11]
For NatWest specifically:
- The stressed low‑point CET1 ratio would have been 11.1%, down from 13.6% at December 2024 but still well above the BoE’s hurdle rate. [12]
- The Tier 1 leverage ratio low‑point sat around 4.7%, versus 5.0% at the starting point – again nicely above minimum requirements. [13]
One follow‑on effect: the BoE also signalled lower sector‑wide capital requirements, trimming a key Tier 1 benchmark from 14% to 13%, which effectively frees up some capital for lending and shareholder distributions over time. [14]
A separate equity‑research note highlighted that NatWest now screens as the least cyclical UK bank in the BoE’s modelling – i.e., its profits and capital buffers are less violently sensitive to the economic cycle than peers like Lloyds. [15]
For investors, “least cyclical, still cheapish” is a very different risk profile from the NatWest of 10 years ago.
2.5 Political and sector backdrop: tax scare, then relief
In the run‑up to the November 2025 UK budget, markets worried that Chancellor Rachel Reeves might plug fiscal holes with a sector‑specific tax grab on big banks. Media briefings and leaks sent the FTSE bank index bouncing around. [16]
Instead:
- A Reuters report on 25 November flagged that the sector was likely to avoid fresh taxes, and bank shares duly rallied – NatWest jumped about 3.7% on the day. [17]
- When the budget finally landed, UK banks indeed dodged new levies, and a subsequent Reuters piece noted that the UK bank index is now up around 62% since Labour’s election victory in July 2024. [18]
NatWest has ridden that wave, but it’s also helped drive it by posting stronger earnings than some peers and side‑stepping big hit‑items like the UK motor‑finance mis‑selling scandal. [19]
3. 2025 earnings: profit jump and upgraded guidance
3.1 H1 2025: earnings, dividends and capital
NatWest’s H1 2025 results, presented in July, already set the tone for a stronger year: [20]
- Income (ex‑notable items): ~£8.0bn, up about 13.7% year‑on‑year.
- Costs: down 1.4%, thanks to ongoing simplification and digitalisation.
- Return on tangible equity (RoTE):18.1%, up from 16.4%.
- Earnings per share: up about 28% to 30.9p.
- Interim dividend:9.5p per share, up 58%.
- CET1 capital ratio: a robust 13.6%.
- Customer loans and deposits: both still growing modestly, and Assets Under Management ticking higher.
This is not “just about cost‑cutting”: there’s real income growth, plus decent loan growth without blowing up the balance sheet.
3.2 Q3 2025: another beat and stronger 2025 guidance
The Q3 2025 update in late October added another layer. Reuters summarised a roughly 30% year‑on‑year jump in quarterly profit to £2.2bn, beating analyst expectations and pushing the shares to their highest level since 2008. [21]
From NatWest’s own Q3 commentary and investor materials: [22]
- Total income (ex‑notable items) in Q3 rose to about £4.2bn, helping generate an attributable profit of £1.6bn.
- RoTE in the quarter ran at a punchy 22.3%.
- Net loans to customers grew ~£4.4bn in the quarter.
- Assets under management and administration climbed to roughly £56bn, up 8.1% in the quarter.
- The CET1 ratio improved to 14.2%, and TNAV per share rose to 362p.
Most importantly for the share‑price story, NatWest upgraded its 2025 guidance:
- 2025 income (ex‑notable items): now expected to be around £16.3bn.
- 2025 RoTE: guided to “greater than 18%”, up from “greater than 16.5%” previously. [23]
Management also flagged that it will introduce 2026 guidance and new 2028 targets when it reports full‑year 2025 results on 13 February 2026 – a date analysts will have circled in red ink. [24]
4. Analyst ratings, price targets and forecasts
4.1 London‑listed shares (LON: NWG)
Recent broker and data‑aggregator snapshots paint a broadly constructive picture:
- MarketBeat shows a “Moderate Buy” consensus on the LSE line, with around four Buy and two Hold ratings and an average 12‑month price target around 660–662p, in a range of 550p to 765p. [25]
- A recent Citigroup upgrade lifted its target from 690p to 765p, helping push the share price to a new 52‑week high of about 641p in early December. [26]
TS2.Tech, which compiles data from MarketBeat and TradingView, notes that from a starting point around 638p, these targets imply modest capital upside of roughly 3–5% plus dividends. Some houses (JPMorgan, RBC, Citi) are more bullish with targets in the 700–765p area, but the median view is that “the big re‑rating has already happened.” TechStock²
TipRanks’ AI overlay labels GB:NWG “Outperform”, with recent human analyst targets also clustering in the high‑600s to mid‑700s pence. [27]
4.2 US ADR (NYSE: NWG)
On the New York line:
- MarketBeat records a more mixed analyst mix – roughly one Strong Buy, two Buys and two Sells, averaging to a “Hold” stance. [28]
- The ADR recently hit that $16.82 52‑week high, with a trailing P/E around 9.7x and market cap near $67bn on US data feeds. [29]
Short‑term technical commentary from sites like StockInvest notes that the ADR closed $16.51 on Friday 5 December (down 1.02% on the day) but had still risen in 7 of the last 10 sessions, up about 11% over two weeks, with higher‑than‑usual volume on the minor pullback – a combination they frame as slightly raising near‑term risk after a strong run. [30]
4.3 Revenue and EPS forecasts
Fundamental forecast data collated by StockAnalysis show analysts still expecting growth into 2026, even after the 2025 step‑up: [31]
- Revenue 2024 (actual): ~£14.3bn
- Revenue 2025E: ~£16.9bn (+17.6%)
- Revenue 2026E: ~£18.0bn (+6.5%)
- EPS 2024 (actual): ~£0.53
- EPS 2025E: ~£0.65 (+22.7%)
- EPS 2026E: ~£0.73 (+12.3%)
Forecast ranges matter more than point estimates. Even the “low” scenarios in the dataset still have NatWest earning well above its 2020–2022 levels, reinforcing the idea that the bank has structurally moved into a higher‑profitability regime.
5. Valuation, dividends and total shareholder returns
From Google Finance and other aggregators, NatWest currently trades around: [32]
- ~9.5x trailing earnings (LSE line)
- Price‑to‑book (P/B) near 1.3–1.4x
- Dividend yield around 4%, based on the 2025 interim dividend of 9.5p and expectations of a higher full‑year payout. [33]
TS2.Tech, citing NatWest’s Q3 factbook, estimates that at prices around 638p the shares equate to roughly 12x trailing EPS and about 1.8x tangible net asset value, using a TNAV per share of 362p. TechStock²+1
Once you layer in:
- A mid‑single‑digit cash dividend, and
- A multi‑billion‑pound share buyback that is steadily reducing the share count,
…it’s not hard to see why many investors talk more about “shareholder yield” than just the headline dividend. Several analyses frame NatWest’s total shareholder yield in the high single digits, possibly tipping into low double digits if buybacks remain aggressive in 2026. [34]
Crucially, none of this is being funded by fragile capital ratios: the BoE stress tests and the bank’s own disclosures show CET1 comfortably above 14% even after distributions, with stressed outcomes still above 11%. [35]
6. Strategy, deals and growth angles
A few strategic threads running alongside the financials:
- Wealth and mass‑affluent: Reuters recently reported that Barclays is exploring a bid for wealth manager Evelyn Partners, with NatWest named as one of several other potential suitors – underlining UK banks’ hunt for fee‑rich, capital‑light revenue. [36]
- SME and fintech: Sky News coverage flagged that NatWest has taken a stake in small‑business finance startup Bourn, reinforcing its push into digital SME lending and alternative financing. [37]
- Funding flexibility: The new £40bn EMTN programme gives NatWest more optionality to issue wholesale paper as needed, often a prerequisite for supporting loan growth without crushing capital ratios. [38]
None of these moves are transformational on their own, but they support the idea that the bank is on the front foot, leaning into relatively high‑return segments (wealth, SME, specialist lending) while keeping a tight rein on costs.
7. Key risks heading into 2026
Nothing is ever “risk‑free,” especially not in banking. The main risk themes analysts and commentators keep returning to include: MarketScreener+3TechStock²+3Reuters+3
- Interest‑rate and margin risk
- The current RoTE heroics are partly thanks to higher‑for‑longer UK rates. As the market starts to price Bank of England rate cuts in 2026, net interest margin is likely to come under pressure, especially if depositors continue demanding better deals.
- UK macro and credit quality
- For all its strengths, NatWest is still heavily UK‑centric. A sharper downturn, rising unemployment or a wobble in commercial real estate could push impairment charges higher from today’s very benign levels.
- Regulatory and political risk
- Banks dodged a direct tax raid in the last budget, but British politics is rarely far from another round of “soak the banks” debate. Future constraints on pricing, capital or conduct could change the economics quickly. [39]
- Operational and reputational risk
- Large retail banks are always exposed to IT outages, cyber attacks and conduct scandals. NatWest is still rebuilding reputational capital after the 2023 Coutts “debanking” controversy, even if that saga has largely faded from headlines.
- Valuation no longer “distressed”
- At 1.3–1.8x book and ~10x earnings, NatWest is not expensive, but it’s also no longer the 0.5–0.7x book “deep value” story it once was. If earnings disappoint, there is real downside from these levels. TechStock²+1
8. So where does that leave NatWest stock on 8 December 2025?
Putting the threads together:
- Fundamentals: Revenue, profit and RoTE are all materially higher than a few years ago; Q3 showed >22% RoTE and another guidance upgrade, with 2025 income now expected around £16.3bn. [40]
- Capital & regulation: The BoE stress test confirmed NatWest can withstand a severe shock while keeping capital well above regulatory minima, and the overall sector is getting slightly looser capital requirements into the next regulatory cycle. [41]
- Shareholder returns: Dividends plus heavy buybacks give investors a high single‑digit (or better) total yield, supported by a robust capital position and growing earnings. [42]
- Valuation & sentiment: After a ~60%+ 12‑month run, the stock trades on single‑digit P/E multiples and modestly above book, with most analysts seeing only modest price upside from here but ongoing income and buyback support. [43]
For income‑oriented and value‑leaning investors, NatWest in December 2025 looks like a stock where the return profile is shifting from “multiple re‑rating” to “earnings plus distributions”. The bigger question for 2026 is whether the bank can hold high‑teens RoTE as rates drift lower, and whether UK macro and politics stay benign enough to avoid any nasty surprises.
References
1. www.reuters.com, 2. www.investing.com, 3. www.investing.com, 4. www.marketbeat.com, 5. www.stocktitan.net, 6. www.investing.com, 7. www.reuters.com, 8. www.tipranks.com, 9. www.tipranks.com, 10. www.tipranks.com, 11. www.reuters.com, 12. www.investegate.co.uk, 13. www.investegate.co.uk, 14. www.ft.com, 15. www.marketscreener.com, 16. www.reuters.com, 17. www.reuters.com, 18. www.reuters.com, 19. www.reuters.com, 20. www.investing.com, 21. www.reuters.com, 22. investors.natwestgroup.com, 23. investors.natwestgroup.com, 24. investors.natwestgroup.com, 25. www.marketbeat.com, 26. www.marketbeat.com, 27. www.tipranks.com, 28. www.marketbeat.com, 29. www.marketbeat.com, 30. stockinvest.us, 31. stockanalysis.com, 32. www.google.com, 33. investors.natwestgroup.com, 34. www.investing.com, 35. investors.natwestgroup.com, 36. www.reuters.com, 37. www.google.com, 38. www.tipranks.com, 39. www.reuters.com, 40. www.reuters.com, 41. www.reuters.com, 42. www.investing.com, 43. www.investing.com
