Are Reliance Worldwide Corporation Limited's (ASX:RWC) Fundamentals Good Enough to Warrant Buying Given The Stock's Recent Weakness?

With its stock down 8.2% over the past three months, it is easy to disregard Reliance Worldwide (ASX:RWC). However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Reliance Worldwide'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 short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.

See our latest analysis for Reliance Worldwide

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Reliance Worldwide is:

9.9% = US$124m ÷ US$1.2b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every A$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of A$0.10.

Why Is ROE Important For 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.

A Side By Side comparison of Reliance Worldwide's Earnings Growth And 9.9% ROE

When you first look at it, Reliance Worldwide's ROE doesn't look that attractive. However, given that the company's ROE is similar to the average industry ROE of 9.8%, we may spare it some thought. On the other hand, Reliance Worldwide reported a moderate 15% net income growth over the past 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 Reliance Worldwide's net income growth with the industry and found that the company has a similar growth figure when compared with the industry average growth rate of 13% in the same period.

The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. If you're wondering about Reliance Worldwide's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Reliance Worldwide Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Reliance Worldwide has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 74%, meaning that it is left with only 26% to reinvest into its business. This implies that the company has been able to achieve decent earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Besides, Reliance Worldwide has been paying dividends over a period of seven years. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 25% over the next three years. Despite the lower expected payout ratio, the company's ROE is not expected to change by much.

Summary

On the whole, we do feel that Reliance Worldwide has some positive attributes. While no doubt its earnings growth is pretty substantial, we do feel that the reinvestment rate is pretty low, meaning, the earnings growth number could have been significantly higher had the company been retaining more of its profits. On studying current analyst estimates, we found that analysts expect the company to continue its recent growth streak. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company.

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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.