Yahoo Finance Can Rand Merchant Investment Holdings Limited (JSE:OUT) Performance Keep Up Given Its Mixed Bag Of Fundamentals?
Most readers would already know that Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' (JSE:OUT) stock increased by 4.9% over the past three months. However, the company's financials look a bit inconsistent and market outcomes are ultimately driven by long-term fundamentals, meaning that the stock could head in either direction. Specifically, we decided to study Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' ROE in this article.
Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.
Check out our latest analysis for Rand Merchant Investment Holdings
How Is ROE Calculated?
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 Rand Merchant Investment Holdings is:
13% = R1.7b ÷ R13b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).
The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each ZAR1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made ZAR0.13 in profit.
What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?
Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. 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. Assuming everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.
Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' Earnings Growth And 13% ROE
At first glance, Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' ROE doesn't look very promising. However, given that the company's ROE is similar to the average industry ROE of 15%, we may spare it some thought. Having said that, Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' five year net income decline rate was 21%. Bear in mind, the company does have a slightly low ROE. Hence, this goes some way in explaining the shrinking earnings.
As a next step, we compared Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' performance with the industry and found thatRand Merchant Investment Holdings' performance is depressing even when compared with the industry, which has shrunk its earnings at a rate of 10% in the same period, which is a slower than the company.
Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. If you're wondering about Rand Merchant Investment Holdings''s valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.
Is Rand Merchant Investment Holdings Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
In spite of a normal three-year median payout ratio of 43% (that is, a retention ratio of 57%), the fact that Rand Merchant Investment Holdings' earnings have shrunk is quite puzzling. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.
In addition, Rand Merchant Investment Holdings has been paying dividends over a period of at least ten years suggesting that keeping up dividend payments is way more important to the management even if it comes at the cost of business growth. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 77% over the next three years. Regardless, the future ROE for Rand Merchant Investment Holdings is speculated to rise to 34% despite the anticipated increase in the payout ratio. There could probably be other factors that could be driving the future growth in the ROE.
Conclusion
On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by Rand Merchant Investment Holdings can be open to many interpretations. While the company does have a high rate of reinvestment, the low ROE means that all that reinvestment is not reaping any benefit to its investors, and moreover, its having a negative impact on the earnings growth. With that said, we studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that while the company has shrunk its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to grow in the future. To know more about the company's future earnings growth forecasts take a look at this free report on analyst forecasts for the company to find out more.
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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.
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