Yahoo Finance Dechra Pharmaceuticals PLC (LON:DPH) Stock's Been Sliding But Fundamentals Look Decent: Will The Market Correct The Share Price In The Future?
With its stock down 23% over the past month, it is easy to disregard Dechra Pharmaceuticals (LON:DPH). But if you pay close attention, you might find that its key financial indicators look quite decent, which could mean that the stock could potentially rise in the long-term given how markets usually reward more resilient long-term fundamentals. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Dechra Pharmaceuticals' ROE today.
ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
View our latest analysis for Dechra Pharmaceuticals
How To Calculate Return On Equity?
The formula for return on equity is:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Dechra Pharmaceuticals is:
11% = UK£73m ÷ UK£639m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).
The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. That means that for every £1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated £0.11 in profit.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?
So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. Assuming all else is equal, companies that have both a higher return on equity and higher profit retention are usually the ones that have a higher growth rate when compared to companies that don't have the same features.
A Side By Side comparison of Dechra Pharmaceuticals' Earnings Growth And 11% ROE
At first glance, Dechra Pharmaceuticals seems to have a decent ROE. Even so, when compared with the average industry ROE of 15%, we aren't very excited. Although, we can see that Dechra Pharmaceuticals saw a modest net income growth of 19% over the past five years. We reckon that there could be other factors at play here. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio. However, not to forget, the company does have a decent ROE to begin with, just that it is lower than the industry average. So this also does lend some color to the fairly high earnings growth seen by the company.
Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Dechra Pharmaceuticals' growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 5.4% in the same period, which is great to see.
Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. What is DPH worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether DPH is currently mispriced by the market.
Is Dechra Pharmaceuticals Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
Dechra Pharmaceuticals has a very high three-year median payout ratio of 104% suggesting that the company's shareholders are getting paid from more than just the company's earnings. In spite of this, the company was able to grow its earnings respectably, as we saw above. It would still be worth keeping an eye on that high payout ratio, if for some reason the company runs into problems and business deteriorates.
Additionally, Dechra Pharmaceuticals has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years which means that the company is pretty serious about sharing its profits with shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 37% over the next three years. The fact that the company's ROE is expected to rise to 23% over the same period is explained by the drop in the payout ratio.
Summary
In total, it does look like Dechra Pharmaceuticals has some positive aspects to its business. Specifically, its decent ROE which likely contributed to the growth in earnings. Bear in mind, the company reinvests little to none of its profits, which means that investors aren't necessarily reaping the full benefits of the decent rate of return. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings growth is expected to slow down. To know more about the company's future earnings growth forecasts take a look at this free report on analyst forecasts for the company to find out more.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
