Boost for BNS shareholders

Article Excerpt

BANK OF NOVA SCOTIA, $83.38, is a #1 Buy for 2022. The lender (Toronto symbol BNS; Shares outstanding: 1.2 billion; Market cap: $99.7 billion; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; Dividend yield: 4.8%; www.scotiabank.com) raised your quarterly dividend by 11.1% with the January 2022 payment. The new annual rate of $4.00 per share yields a high 4.8%. That increase came after Canada’s banking regulator lifted the restrictions it placed on the capital distributions of banks and insurers in March 2020 because of COVID-19 uncertainty. As well, at the same time, Bank of Nova Scotia also announced that it would buy back up to 24 million of its shares by December 1, 2022. So far, it has repurchased 20.2 million shares. In addition, the bank has just increased the maximum number of shares it can repurchase by 50% to 36 million shares. That new target is equal to roughly 3% of the total outstanding. Bank of Nova Scotia is a #1 Buy for 2022. 2022…