Yahoo Finance Could The Market Be Wrong About Savills plc (LON:SVS) Given Its Attractive Financial Prospects?
Savills (LON:SVS) has had a rough three months with its share price down 24%. 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Savills' ROE today.
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 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 Savills is:
17% = UK£84m ÷ UK£503m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019).
The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every £1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn £0.17 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. 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.
A Side By Side comparison of Savills' Earnings Growth And 17% ROE
At first glance, Savills seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 8.4% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, Savills was able to see a decent growth of 6.3% over the last five years.
Next, on comparing Savills' net income growth with the industry, we found that the company's reported growth is similar to the industry average growth rate of 5.3% in the same period.
Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. 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 SVS worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether SVS is currently mispriced by the market.
Is Savills Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
Savills has a healthy combination of a moderate three-year median payout ratio of 28% (or a retention ratio of 72%) and a respectable amount of growth in earnings as we saw above, meaning that the company has been making efficient use of its profits.
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
Overall, we are quite pleased with Savills' 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.
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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