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Vivo Energy plc's (LON:VVO) Stock Has Shown A Decent Performance: Have Financials A Role To Play?

Vivo Energy's (LON:VVO) stock up by 1.8% over the past month. 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Vivo Energy's ROE today.

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 simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.

View our latest analysis for Vivo Energy

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

ROE can be calculated by using the formula:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity

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So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Vivo Energy is:

18% = US$153m ÷ US$845m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2021).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each £1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made £0.18 in profit.

Why Is ROE Important For 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 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.

A Side By Side comparison of Vivo Energy's Earnings Growth And 18% ROE

At first glance, Vivo Energy seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 22%. However, we are curious as to how Vivo Energy's decent returns still resulted in flat growth for Vivo Energy in the past five years. Based on this, we feel that there might be other reasons which haven't been discussed so far in this article that could be hampering the company's growth. For example, it could be that the company has a high payout ratio or the business has allocated capital poorly, for instance.

As a next step, we compared Vivo Energy's performance with the industry and found thatVivo Energy's performance is depressing even when compared with the industry, which has shrunk its earnings at a rate of 1.1% in the same period, which is a slower than the company.

past-earnings-growth
past-earnings-growth

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. 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. Is VVO fairly valued? This infographic on the company's intrinsic value has everything you need to know.

Is Vivo Energy Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Vivo Energy has a low three-year median payout ratio of 16% (or a retention ratio of 84%) but the negligible earnings growth number doesn't reflect this as high growth usually follows high profit retention.

Additionally, Vivo Energy has paid dividends over a period of three years, which means that the company's management is determined to pay dividends even if it means little to no earnings growth. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 51% over the next three years. However, the company's ROE is not expected to change by much despite the higher expected payout ratio.

Conclusion

In total, it does look like Vivo Energy has some positive aspects to its business. Although, we are disappointed to see a lack of growth in earnings even in spite of a high ROE and and a high reinvestment rate. We believe that there might be some outside factors that could be having a negative impact on the business. Having said that, looking at current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings growth rate is expected to see a huge improvement. 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. 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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