Yahoo Finance Is PageGroup plc's (LON:PAGE) Latest Stock Performance Being Led By Its Strong Fundamentals?
PageGroup's (LON:PAGE) stock up by 4.9% over the past week. Given its impressive performance, we decided to study the company's key financial indicators as a company's long-term fundamentals usually dictate market outcomes. Specifically, we decided to study PageGroup's ROE in this article.
Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.
View our latest analysis for PageGroup
How To Calculate Return On Equity?
The formula for ROE is:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for PageGroup is:
14% = UK£48m ÷ UK£336m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).
The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each £1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made £0.14 in profit.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And 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.
PageGroup's Earnings Growth And 14% ROE
At first glance, PageGroup seems to have a decent ROE. And on comparing with the industry, we found that the the average industry ROE is similar at 14%. This probably goes some way in explaining PageGroup's moderate 7.0% growth over the past five years amongst other factors.
As a next step, we compared PageGroup's net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 16% 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. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. If you're wondering about PageGroup's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.
Is PageGroup Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?
While the company did pay out a portion of its dividend in the past, it currently doesn't pay a dividend. We infer that the company has been reinvesting all of its profits to grow its business.
Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 60% over the next three years. Regardless, the future ROE for PageGroup is speculated to rise to 21% despite the anticipated increase in the payout ratio. There could probably be other factors that could be driving the future growth in the ROE.
Conclusion
Overall, we are quite pleased with PageGroup's performance. Specifically, we like that the company is reinvesting a huge chunk of its profits at a high rate of return. This of course has caused the company to see a good amount of growth in its earnings. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. 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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