Yahoo Finance Tesco PLC's (LON:TSCO) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financial Prospects Look Decent: Is The Market Wrong?
It is hard to get excited after looking at Tesco's (LON:TSCO) recent performance, when its stock has declined 23% over the past three months. However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Specifically, we decided to study Tesco'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 other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
View our latest analysis for Tesco
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 Tesco is:
8.5% = UK£1.0b ÷ UK£12b (Based on the trailing twelve months to August 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 £0.09 in profit.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?
We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.
A Side By Side comparison of Tesco's Earnings Growth And 8.5% ROE
On the face of it, Tesco'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 18% either. Despite this, surprisingly, Tesco saw an exceptional 64% net income growth over the past five years. So, there might be other aspects that are positively influencing the company's earnings growth. Such as - high earnings retention or an efficient management in place.
We then compared Tesco's net income growth with the industry and we're pleased to see that the company's growth figure is higher when compared with the industry which has a growth rate of 4.2% in the same period.
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. What is TSCO worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether TSCO is currently mispriced by the market.
Is Tesco Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
The three-year median payout ratio for Tesco is 44%, which is moderately low. The company is retaining the remaining 56%. So it seems that Tesco is reinvesting efficiently in a way that it sees impressive growth in its earnings (discussed above) and pays a dividend that's well covered.
Moreover, Tesco is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of paying a dividend for at least ten years. Looking at the current analyst consensus data, we can see that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 53% over the next three years. Regardless, the future ROE for Tesco is speculated to rise to 10% 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
On the whole, we do feel that Tesco has some positive attributes. With a high rate of reinvestment, albeit at a low ROE, the company has managed to see a considerable growth in its earnings. Having said that, the company's earnings growth is expected to slow down, as forecasted in the current analyst estimates. 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.
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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