Yahoo Finance Are Robust Financials Driving The Recent Rally In Paychex, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:PAYX) Stock?
Paychex's's (NASDAQ:PAYX) stock is up by a considerable 20% over the past three months. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company’s key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. Specifically, we decided to study Paychex'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. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.
View our latest analysis for Paychex
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 Paychex is:
40% = US$1.1b ÷ US$2.8b (Based on the trailing twelve months to February 2020).
The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. So, this means that for every $1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of $0.40.
What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?
Thus far, we have learnt that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. 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.
Paychex's Earnings Growth And 40% ROE
To begin with, Paychex has a pretty high ROE which is interesting. Additionally, the company's ROE is higher compared to the industry average of 17% which is quite remarkable. This likely paved the way for the modest 11% net income growth seen by Paychex over the past five years. growth
As a next step, we compared Paychex's net income growth with the industry and found that the company has a similar growth figure when compared with the industry average growth rate of 9.5% in the same period.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. One good indicator of expected earnings growth is the P/E ratio which determines the price the market is willing to pay for a stock based on its earnings prospects. So, you may want to check if Paychex is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.
Is Paychex Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?
The high three-year median payout ratio of 80% (or a retention ratio of 20%) for Paychex suggests that the company's growth wasn't really hampered despite it returning most of its income to its shareholders.
Additionally, Paychex 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 is expected to keep paying out approximately 87% of its profits over the next three years. Therefore, the company's future ROE is also not expected to change by much with analysts predicting an ROE of 37%.
Summary
In total, we are pretty happy with Paychex's performance. Especially the high ROE, Which has contributed to the impressive growth seen in earnings. Despite the company reinvesting only a small portion of its profits, it still has managed to grow its earnings so that is appreciable. Having said that, on studying current analyst estimates, we were concerned to see that while the company has grown its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to shrink in the future. 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.
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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