Has SG Fleet Group Limited's (ASX:SGF) Impressive Stock Performance Got Anything to Do With Its Fundamentals?

SG Fleet Group's (ASX:SGF) stock is up by a considerable 24% over the past three months. Given that stock prices are usually aligned with a company's financial performance in the long-term, we decided to study its financial indicators more closely to see if they had a hand to play in the recent price move. Specifically, we decided to study SG Fleet Group's ROE in this article.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

See our latest analysis for SG Fleet Group

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 SG Fleet Group is:

20% = AU$56m ÷ AU$281m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every A$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn A$0.20 in profit.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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. 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.

SG Fleet Group's Earnings Growth And 20% ROE

To start with, SG Fleet Group's ROE looks acceptable. Especially when compared to the industry average of 9.0% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, SG Fleet Group was able to see a decent growth of 8.4% over the last five years.

As a next step, we compared SG Fleet Group's net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 23% in the same period.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Is SGF fairly valued? This infographic on the company's intrinsic value has everything you need to know.

Is SG Fleet Group Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

While SG Fleet Group has a three-year median payout ratio of 71% (which means it retains 29% of profits), the company has still seen a fair bit of earnings growth in the past, meaning that its high payout ratio hasn't hampered its ability to grow.

Moreover, SG Fleet Group is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of six years of paying a dividend. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 68% of its profits over the next three years. Therefore, the company's future ROE is also not expected to change by much with analysts predicting an ROE of 18%.

Summary

In total, it does look like SG Fleet Group has some positive aspects to its business. Its earnings growth is decent, and the high ROE does contribute to that growth. However, investors could have benefitted even more from the high ROE, had the company been reinvesting more of its earnings. Up till now, we've only made a short study of the company's growth data. So it may be worth checking this free detailed graph of SG Fleet Group'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. 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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