Commonwealth Bank of Australia (ASX: CBA) shares are one of the most popular options out there for Australian investors.
In fact, even if you don't own the banking giant's shares directly, there's a strong probability that you own them indirectly through your super fund or an exchange traded fund (ETF).
As a result, it is fair to say that CBA shares have a big impact on the wealth of the nation.
Let's now see if that impact was positive or negative during the last financial year and find out what a $10,000 investment would have become.
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$10,000 invested in CBA shares
Firstly, let's find out how many CBA shares you could have bought at the end of the previous financial year.
The CBA share price closed out FY 2024 at $127.38. This means that if you invested $10,000 (plus an extra $63.02) into its shares at that point, you would have picked up 79 shares.
Interestingly, you would have been brave to have done this. Almost all the major brokers were warning that CBA's shares were severely overvalued and in major of crashing deep into the red.
But how wrong they were!
What happened in FY 2025?
Investors were bidding CBA's shares higher and higher (and even higher) during the last financial year after rising interest rates failed to impact its performance.
For example, in August the company outperformed expectations with its full year results. It reported operating income of $27.2 billion and a cash net profit of $9.8 billion. This allowed the CBA board to increase its fully franked dividend by 3% to $2.50 per share.
CBA then followed this up with a half year result in February which once again was ahead of expectations. Operating income was up 3% to $14.1 billion and its cash net profit rose 2% to $5.13 billion. This underpinned a 5% lift in its interim dividend to a fully franked $2.25 per share.
In light of this strong performance, it will come as no surprise to learn that CBA shares pushed higher in the 2025 financial year.
But what might come as a surprise is just how much they climbed. Despite being labelled as overvalued, the CBA share price rose by a whopping 45% during the year to end at $184.75.
This means that those 79 CBA shares had a market value of $14,595.25 at the end of the financial year. This is approximately $4,500 more than the original investment.
But it gets better! CBA paid out two fully franked dividends during the 12 months totalling $4.75 per share. This represents $375.25 in dividend income, boosting the total value of the shareholding to $14,970.50.
Overall, it is fair to say that it was an incredible year to hold the bank's shares in your portfolio. Here's hoping the new financial year will be a successful one.
