Yahoo Finance Is Weakness In The New York Times Company (NYSE:NYT) Stock A Sign That The Market Could be Wrong Given Its Strong Financial Prospects?
New York Times (NYSE:NYT) has had a rough three months with its share price down 11%. However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, which in this case looks quite promising. Specifically, we decided to study New York Times' 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. 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 New York Times
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 New York Times is:
13% = US$233m ÷ US$1.8b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).
The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn $0.13 in profit.
What Has ROE Got To Do With 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.
New York Times' Earnings Growth And 13% ROE
At first glance, New York Times seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 12%. Consequently, this likely laid the ground for the decent growth of 11% seen over the past five years by New York Times.
We then performed a comparison between New York Times' net income growth with the industry, which revealed that the company's growth is similar to the average industry growth of 12% in the same 5-year period.
Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. What is NYT worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether NYT is currently mispriced by the market.
Is New York Times Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?
New York Times has a three-year median payout ratio of 31%, which implies that it retains the remaining 69% of its profits. This suggests that its dividend is well covered, and given the decent growth seen by the company, it looks like management is reinvesting its earnings efficiently.
Additionally, New York Times 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 30% of its profits over the next three years. As a result, New York Times' ROE is not expected to change by much either, which we inferred from the analyst estimate of 15% for future ROE.
Conclusion
Overall, we are quite pleased with New York Times' 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 substantial growth in its earnings. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings are expected to accelerate. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.
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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.
