Yahoo Finance Globe Life Inc. (NYSE:GL) Is Up But Financials Look Inconsistent: Which Way Is The Stock Headed?
Globe Life's (NYSE:GL) stock is up by 7.1% over the past three months. However, the company's financials look a bit inconsistent and market outcomes are ultimately driven by long-term fundamentals, meaning that the stock could head in either direction. Specifically, we decided to study Globe Life's ROE in this article.
Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.
View our latest analysis for Globe Life
How Do You 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 Globe Life is:
9.5% = US$745m ÷ US$7.8b (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).
The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated $0.10 in profit.
Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?
We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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 everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.
Globe Life's Earnings Growth And 9.5% ROE
On the face of it, Globe Life's ROE is not much to talk about. A quick further study shows that the company's ROE doesn't compare favorably to the industry average of 12% either. As a result, Globe Life reported a very low income growth of 3.3% over the past five years.
We then compared Globe Life's net income growth with the industry and found that the company's growth figure is lower than the average industry growth rate of 11% in the same period, which is a bit concerning.
Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Has the market priced in the future outlook for GL? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.
Is Globe Life Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
Globe Life's low three-year median payout ratio of 10% (or a retention ratio of 90%) should mean that the company is retaining most of its earnings to fuel its growth. However, the low earnings growth number doesn't reflect this fact. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.
In addition, Globe Life has been paying dividends over a period of at least ten years suggesting that keeping up dividend payments is way more important to the management even if it comes at the cost of business growth. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 10.0%. As a result, Globe Life's ROE is not expected to change by much either, which we inferred from the analyst estimate of 9.6% for future ROE.
Summary
On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by Globe Life can be open to many interpretations. Even though it appears to be retaining most of its profits, given the low ROE, investors may not be benefitting from all that reinvestment after all. The low earnings growth suggests our theory correct. We also studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that the company's earnings growth is expected be similar to its current growth rate. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.
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