Yahoo Finance Is FutureFuel Corp’s (NYSE:FF) 15.82% ROE Strong Compared To Its Industry?
The content of this article will benefit those of you who are starting to educate yourself about investing in the stock market and looking to gauge the potential return on investment in FutureFuel Corp (NYSE:FF).
FutureFuel Corp (NYSE:FF) outperformed the Specialty Chemicals industry on the basis of its ROE – producing a higher 15.82% relative to the peer average of 13.93% over the past 12 months. Superficially, this looks great since we know that FF has generated big profits with little equity capital; however, ROE doesn’t tell us how much FF has borrowed in debt. We’ll take a closer look today at factors like financial leverage to determine whether FF’s ROE is actually sustainable. View out our latest analysis for FutureFuel
What you must know about ROE
Firstly, Return on Equity, or ROE, is simply the percentage of last years’ earning against the book value of shareholders’ equity. For example, if the company invests $1 in the form of equity, it will generate $0.16 in earnings from this. While a higher ROE is preferred in most cases, there are several other factors we should consider before drawing any conclusions.
Return on Equity = Net Profit ÷ Shareholders Equity
ROE is assessed against cost of equity, which is measured using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) – but let’s not dive into the details of that today. For now, let’s just look at the cost of equity number for FutureFuel, which is 8.59%. Since FutureFuel’s return covers its cost in excess of 7.23%, its use of equity capital is efficient and likely to be sustainable. Simply put, FutureFuel pays less for its capital than what it generates in return. ROE can be split up into three useful ratios: net profit margin, asset turnover, and financial leverage. This is called the Dupont Formula:
Dupont Formula
ROE = profit margin × asset turnover × financial leverage
ROE = (annual net profit ÷ sales) × (sales ÷ assets) × (assets ÷ shareholders’ equity)
ROE = annual net profit ÷ shareholders’ equity
Essentially, profit margin shows how much money the company makes after paying for all its expenses. Asset turnover shows how much revenue FutureFuel can generate with its current asset base. Finally, financial leverage will be our main focus today. It shows how much of assets are funded by equity and can show how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. Since ROE can be inflated by excessive debt, we need to examine FutureFuel’s debt-to-equity level. Currently, FutureFuel has no debt which means its returns are driven purely by equity capital. Therefore, the level of financial leverage has no impact on ROE, and the ratio is a representative measure of the efficiency of all its capital employed firm-wide.
Next Steps:
ROE is a simple yet informative ratio, illustrating the various components that each measure the quality of the overall stock. FutureFuel’s ROE is impressive relative to the industry average and also covers its cost of equity. ROE is not likely to be inflated by excessive debt funding, giving shareholders more conviction in the sustainability of high returns. Although ROE can be a useful metric, it is only a small part of diligent research.
For FutureFuel, I’ve put together three pertinent aspects you should look at:
Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
Valuation: What is FutureFuel worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether FutureFuel is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of FutureFuel? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!
To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.
