Yahoo Finance Is Weakness In Savills plc (LON:SVS) Stock A Sign That The Market Could be Wrong Given Its Strong Financial Prospects?
With its stock down 22% over the past three months, it is easy to disregard Savills (LON:SVS). However, a closer look at its sound financials might cause you to think again. Given that fundamentals usually drive long-term market outcomes, the company is worth looking at. In this article, we decided to focus on Savills' ROE.
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 short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.
View our latest analysis for Savills
How Do You 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 Savills is:
19% = UK£137m ÷ UK£736m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).
The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. That means that for every £1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated £0.19 in profit.
What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?
We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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 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.
A Side By Side comparison of Savills' Earnings Growth And 19% ROE
At first glance, Savills seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 12% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, Savills was able to see a decent growth of 13% over the last five years.
As a next step, we compared Savills' net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 0.9%.
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. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is SVS worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether SVS is currently mispriced by the market.
Is Savills Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?
Savills has a low three-year median payout ratio of 19%, meaning that the company retains the remaining 81% of its profits. This suggests that the management is reinvesting most of the profits to grow the business.
Besides, Savills has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Looking at the current analyst consensus data, we can see that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 41% 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, we are pretty happy with Savills' performance. In particular, it's great to see that the company is investing heavily into its business and along with a high rate of return, that has resulted in a sizeable growth in its earnings. That being so, a study of the latest analyst forecasts show that the company is expected to see a slowdown in its future earnings growth. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.
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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