Yahoo Finance Is Mainfreight Limited's(NZSE:MFT) Recent Stock Performance Tethered To Its Strong Fundamentals?
Mainfreight (NZSE:MFT) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 14% over the last three months. Given the company's impressive performance, we decided to study its financial indicators more closely as a company's financial health over the long-term usually dictates market outcomes. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Mainfreight's ROE today.
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 short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.
View our latest analysis for Mainfreight
How Is ROE Calculated?
The formula for ROE is:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Mainfreight is:
17% = NZ$188m ÷ NZ$1.1b (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).
The 'return' is the yearly profit. So, this means that for every NZ$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of NZ$0.17.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.
A Side By Side comparison of Mainfreight's Earnings Growth And 17% ROE
At first glance, Mainfreight seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 17%. This probably goes some way in explaining Mainfreight's moderate 15% growth over the past five years amongst other factors.
As a next step, we compared Mainfreight's 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 7.7%.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. Has the market priced in the future outlook for MFT? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.
Is Mainfreight Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
Mainfreight has a three-year median payout ratio of 40%, which implies that it retains the remaining 60% 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, Mainfreight 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. Based on the latest analysts' estimates, we found that the company's future payout ratio over the next three years is expected to hold steady at 45%. Accordingly, forecasts suggest that Mainfreight's future ROE will be 18% which is again, similar to the current ROE.
Conclusion
In total, we are pretty happy with Mainfreight's performance. Particularly, we like that the company is reinvesting heavily into its business, and at a high rate of return. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an impressive earnings growth. On studying current analyst estimates, we found that analysts expect the company to continue its recent growth streak. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page 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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