Yahoo Finance Is Peet Limited's (ASX:PPC) Recent Stock Performance Influenced By Its Financials In Any Way?
Peet's (ASX:PPC) stock up by 2.6% over the past week. Given that stock prices are usually aligned with a company's financial performance in the long-term, we decided to investigate if the company's decent financials had a hand to play in the recent price move. Specifically, we decided to study Peet's ROE in this article.
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.
Check out our latest analysis for Peet
How Is ROE Calculated?
Return on equity can be calculated by using the formula:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Peet is:
8.6% = AU$50m ÷ AU$582m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).
The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each A$1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made A$0.09 in profit.
Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?
We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. 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.
Peet's Earnings Growth And 8.6% ROE
At first glance, Peet's ROE doesn't look very promising. However, its ROE is similar to the industry average of 7.4%, so we won't completely dismiss the company. Moreover, we are quite pleased to see that Peet's net income grew significantly at a rate of 22% over the last five years. Taking into consideration that the ROE is not particularly high, we reckon that there could also be other factors at play which could be influencing the company's growth. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio.
As a next step, we compared Peet'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 11%.
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). This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. One good indicator of expected earnings growth is the P/E ratio which determines the price the market is willing to pay for a stock based on its earnings prospects. So, you may want to check if Peet is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.
Is Peet Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?
The high three-year median payout ratio of 56% (implying that it keeps only 44% of profits) for Peet suggests that the company's growth wasn't really hampered despite it returning most of the earnings to its shareholders.
Moreover, Peet is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of paying a dividend for at least ten years.
Conclusion
Overall, we feel that Peet certainly does have some positive factors to consider. Namely, its high earnings growth. We do however feel that the earnings growth number could have been even higher, had the company been reinvesting more of its earnings and paid out less dividends. Until now, we have only just grazed the surface of the company's past performance by looking at the company's fundamentals. So it may be worth checking this free detailed graph of Peet's past earnings, as well as revenue and cash flows to get a deeper insight into the company's performance.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.
