Yahoo Finance Has ITV plc (LON:ITV) Stock's Recent Performance Got Anything to Do With Its Financial Health?
ITV's (LON:ITV) stock is up by 6.9% over the past three months. Given that stock prices are usually aligned with a company's financial performance in the long-term, we decided to investigate if the company's decent financials had a hand to play in the recent price move. Specifically, we decided to study ITV's ROE in this article.
Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
Check out our latest analysis for ITV
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 ITV is:
23% = UK£435m ÷ UK£1.9b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2022).
The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. That means that for every £1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated £0.23 in profit.
What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?
Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. Based on how much of its profits the company chooses to reinvest or "retain", we are then able to evaluate a company's future ability to generate profits. 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.
ITV's Earnings Growth And 23% ROE
First thing first, we like that ITV has an impressive ROE. Additionally, the company's ROE is higher compared to the industry average of 8.9% which is quite remarkable. Given the circumstances, we can't help but wonder why ITV saw little to no growth in the past five years. We reckon that there could be some other factors at play here that's limiting the company's growth. Such as, the company pays out a huge portion of its earnings as dividends, or is faced with competitive pressures.
We then compared ITV's net income growth with the industry and found that the average industry growth rate was 17% in the same period.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. If you're wondering about ITV's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.
Is ITV Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
Despite having a normal three-year median payout ratio of 35% (implying that the company keeps 65% of its income) over the last three years, ITV has seen a negligible amount of growth in earnings as we saw above. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.
Moreover, ITV has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more suggesting that management must have perceived that the shareholders prefer dividends over earnings growth. Looking at the current analyst consensus data, we can see that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 47% over the next three years. Despite the higher expected payout ratio, the company's ROE is not expected to change by much.
Conclusion
On the whole, we do feel that ITV has some positive attributes. However, given the high ROE and high profit retention, we would expect the company to be delivering strong earnings growth, but that isn't the case here. This suggests that there might be some external threat to the business, that's hampering its growth. With that said, we studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that while the company has shrunk its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to grow, albeit marginally, in the future. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company.
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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.
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