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Should You Be Impressed By Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc.'s (NYSE:OHI) ROE?

Many investors are still learning about the various metrics that can be useful when analysing a stock. This article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE). We'll use ROE to examine Omega Healthcare Investors, Inc. (NYSE:OHI), by way of a worked example.

Our data shows Omega Healthcare Investors has a return on equity of 8.1% for the last year. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders' equity, it generated $0.08 in profit.

View our latest analysis for Omega Healthcare Investors

How Do I Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for return on equity is:

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

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Or for Omega Healthcare Investors:

8.1% = US$352m ÷ US$4.3b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019.)

It's easy to understand the 'net profit' part of that equation, but 'shareholders' equity' requires further explanation. It is all earnings retained by the company, plus any capital paid in by shareholders. You can calculate shareholders' equity by subtracting the company's total liabilities from its total assets.

What Does ROE Mean?

ROE looks at the amount a company earns relative to the money it has kept within the business. The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. That means that the higher the ROE, the more profitable the company is. So, all else equal, investors should like a high ROE. Clearly, then, one can use ROE to compare different companies.

Does Omega Healthcare Investors Have A Good Return On Equity?

By comparing a company's ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. The limitation of this approach is that some companies are quite different from others, even within the same industry classification. As is clear from the image below, Omega Healthcare Investors has a better ROE than the average (5.9%) in the REITs industry.

NYSE:OHI Past Revenue and Net Income, March 16th 2020
NYSE:OHI Past Revenue and Net Income, March 16th 2020

That's what I like to see. I usually take a closer look when a company has a better ROE than industry peers. For example, I often check if insiders have been buying shares.

How Does Debt Impact ROE?

Companies usually need to invest money to grow their profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the first two cases, the ROE will capture this use of capital to grow. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. Thus the use of debt can improve ROE, albeit along with extra risk in the case of stormy weather, metaphorically speaking.

Combining Omega Healthcare Investors's Debt And Its 8.1% Return On Equity

Omega Healthcare Investors clearly uses a significant amount of debt to boost returns, as it has a debt to equity ratio of 1.18. The company doesn't have a bad ROE, but it is less than ideal tht it has had to use debt to achieve its returns. Debt does bring extra risk, so it's only really worthwhile when a company generates some decent returns from it.

But It's Just One Metric

Return on equity is one way we can compare the business quality of different companies. In my book the highest quality companies have high return on equity, despite low debt. If two companies have the same ROE, then I would generally prefer the one with less debt.

But when a business is high quality, the market often bids it up to a price that reflects this. It is important to consider other factors, such as future profit growth -- and how much investment is required going forward. So you might want to take a peek at this data-rich interactive graph of forecasts for the company.

Of course Omega Healthcare Investors may not be the best stock to buy. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have high ROE and low debt.

If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. 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. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned.

We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Thank you for reading.