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Did Southern Gold Limited (ASX:SAU) Create Value For Shareholders?

The content of this article will benefit those of you who are starting to educate yourself about investing in the stock market and want to begin learning the link between Southern Gold Limited (ASX:SAU)’s return fundamentals and stock market performance.

With an ROE of 14.38%, Southern Gold Limited (ASX:SAU) outpaced its own industry which delivered a less exciting 11.89% over the past year. Superficially, this looks great since we know that SAU has generated big profits with little equity capital; however, ROE doesn’t tell us how much SAU has borrowed in debt. In this article, we’ll closely examine some factors like financial leverage to evaluate the sustainability of SAU’s ROE. View out our latest analysis for Southern Gold

Breaking down ROE — the mother of all ratios

Firstly, Return on Equity, or ROE, is simply the percentage of last years’ earning against the book value of shareholders’ equity. An ROE of 14.38% implies A$0.14 returned on every A$1 invested. While a higher ROE is preferred in most cases, there are several other factors we should consider before drawing any conclusions.

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Return on Equity = Net Profit ÷ Shareholders Equity

ROE is assessed against cost of equity, which is measured using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) – but let’s not dive into the details of that today. For now, let’s just look at the cost of equity number for Southern Gold, which is 9.72%. This means Southern Gold returns enough to cover its own cost of equity, with a buffer of 4.66%. This sustainable practice implies that the company pays less for its capital than what it generates in return. ROE can be broken down into three different ratios: net profit margin, asset turnover, and financial leverage. This is called the Dupont Formula:

Dupont Formula

ROE = profit margin × asset turnover × financial leverage

ROE = (annual net profit ÷ sales) × (sales ÷ assets) × (assets ÷ shareholders’ equity)

ROE = annual net profit ÷ shareholders’ equity

ASX:SAU Last Perf June 26th 18
ASX:SAU Last Perf June 26th 18

Essentially, profit margin shows how much money the company makes after paying for all its expenses. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue Southern Gold can make from its asset base. And finally, financial leverage is simply how much of assets are funded by equity, which exhibits how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. Since ROE can be inflated by excessive debt, we need to examine Southern Gold’s debt-to-equity level. Currently, Southern Gold has no debt which means its returns are driven purely by equity capital. Therefore, the level of financial leverage has no impact on ROE, and the ratio is a representative measure of the efficiency of all its capital employed firm-wide.

ASX:SAU Historical Debt June 26th 18
ASX:SAU Historical Debt June 26th 18

Next Steps:

ROE is a simple yet informative ratio, illustrating the various components that each measure the quality of the overall stock. Southern Gold’s ROE is impressive relative to the industry average and also covers its cost of equity. Its high ROE is not likely to be driven by high debt. Therefore, investors may have more confidence in the sustainability of this level of returns going forward. Although ROE can be a useful metric, it is only a small part of diligent research.

For Southern Gold, I’ve compiled three fundamental aspects you should look at:

  1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.

  2. Valuation: What is Southern Gold worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether Southern Gold is currently mispriced by the market.

  3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Southern Gold? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!


To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.