The National Australia Bank Ltd (ASX: NAB) share price was on form last week.
The banking giant's shares rose almost 2% over the five days to end the period at $28.38.
This means the NAB share price is now up 24% since the start of the year.
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Could the NAB share price hit $30.00 before the end of the year?
One leading broker that believes the NAB share price could rise further from here is Goldman Sachs.
A note out of the investment bank last week reveals that its analysts have retained their conviction buy rating and $30.62 price target on the bank's shares.
Based on the current NAB share price, this implies potential upside of 7.9% over the next 12 months.
In addition, the broker is forecasting a fully franked $1.40 per share dividend in FY 2022. This represents a 4.9% dividend yield, which brings the total potential return to almost 13%.
Based on this, Goldman appears to believe there's potential for the NAB share price to hit $30.00 by the end of the year.
What did the broker say?
NAB is the broker's top pick among the major banks for a number of reasons. One of those is its cost management initiatives. It recently explained:
"i) NAB's cost management initiatives, which seem further progressed relative to most of its peers, should drive productivity benefits sooner and free up investment spend to be directed more towards customer experience, as opposed to infrastructure (3Q21 update shows NAB is tracking well against this)."
Goldman also likes NAB due to its strong position in business banking. Its analysts commented:
"ii) given NAB's position as the largest business bank and investment in its mortgage capability, we believe it is strongly positioned to benefit from the current recovery in both housing and commercial volumes (3Q21 update showed continued volume momentum)."
Finally, Goldman has been pleased with the way it manages its margins. It said:
"iii) NAB continues to effectively manage the balance between volumes and margins as well as any peer."
