Yahoo Finance Is The Market Rewarding SDI Limited (ASX:SDI) With A Negative Sentiment As A Result Of Its Mixed Fundamentals?
SDI (ASX:SDI) has had a rough three months with its share price down 6.7%. We, however decided to study the company's financials to determine if they have got anything to do with the price decline. Long-term fundamentals are usually what drive market outcomes, so it's worth paying close attention. Particularly, we will be paying attention to SDI's ROE today.
ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
Check out our latest analysis for SDI
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 SDI is:
5.7% = AU$4.2m ÷ AU$74m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).
The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. That means that for every A$1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated A$0.06 in profit.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?
Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. We now need to evaluate how much profit the company reinvests or "retains" for future growth which then gives us an idea about the growth potential of the company. 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 SDI's Earnings Growth And 5.7% ROE
At first glance, SDI's ROE doesn't look very promising. We then compared the company's ROE to the broader industry and were disappointed to see that the ROE is lower than the industry average of 9.8%. Therefore, SDI's flat earnings over the past five years can possibly be explained by the low ROE amongst other factors.
Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that SDI's earnings seems to be shrinking at a similar rate as the industry which shrunk at a rate of a rate of 0.2% in the same period.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Is SDI fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.
Is SDI Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
In spite of a normal three-year median payout ratio of 47% (or a retention ratio of 53%), SDI hasn't seen much growth in its earnings. Therefore, there might be some other reasons to explain the lack in that respect. For example, the business could be in decline.
Moreover, SDI has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more suggesting that management must have perceived that the shareholders prefer dividends over earnings growth.
Conclusion
On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by SDI can be open to many interpretations. While the company does have a high rate of profit retention, its low rate of return is probably hampering its earnings growth. So far, we've only made a quick discussion around the company's earnings growth. You can do your own research on SDI and see how it has performed in the past by looking at this FREE detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flows.
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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