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Should You Expect China Life Insurance Company Limited (HKG:2628) To Continue Delivering An ROE Of 11.81%?

This article is intended for those of you who are at the beginning of your investing journey and want to start learning about core concepts of fundamental analysis on practical examples from today’s market.

With an ROE of 11.81%, China Life Insurance Company Limited (HKG:2628) outpaced its own industry which delivered a less exciting 11.54% over the past year. Superficially, this looks great since we know that 2628 has generated big profits with little equity capital; however, ROE doesn’t tell us how much 2628 has borrowed in debt. Today, we’ll take a closer look at some factors like financial leverage to see how sustainable 2628’s ROE is.

See our latest analysis for China Life Insurance

Peeling the layers of ROE – trisecting a company’s profitability

Return on Equity (ROE) weighs China Life Insurance’s profit against the level of its shareholders’ equity. For example, if the company invests HK$1 in the form of equity, it will generate HK$0.12 in earnings from this. Generally speaking, a higher ROE is preferred; however, there are other factors we must also consider before making any conclusions.

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Return on Equity = Net Profit ÷ Shareholders Equity

ROE is measured against cost of equity in order to determine the efficiency of China Life Insurance’s equity capital deployed. Its cost of equity is 9.16%. This means China Life Insurance returns enough to cover its own cost of equity, with a buffer of 2.65%. This sustainable practice implies that the company pays less for its capital than what it generates in return. ROE can be dissected into three distinct 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

SEHK:2628 Last Perf August 17th 18
SEHK:2628 Last Perf August 17th 18

Basically, profit margin measures how much of revenue trickles down into earnings which illustrates how efficient the business is with its cost management. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue China Life Insurance 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 artificially increased through excessive borrowing, we should check China Life Insurance’s historic debt-to-equity ratio. At 32.40%, China Life Insurance’s debt-to-equity ratio appears low and indicates the above-average ROE is generated from its capacity to increase profit without a large debt burden.

SEHK:2628 Historical Debt August 17th 18
SEHK:2628 Historical Debt August 17th 18

Next Steps:

ROE is one of many ratios which meaningfully dissects financial statements, which illustrates the quality of a company. China Life Insurance’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 China Life Insurance, there are three essential aspects you should further examine:

  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 China Life Insurance 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 China Life Insurance is currently mispriced by the market.

  3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of China Life Insurance? 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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.