Stonehorse Energy Limited (ASX:SHE) Stock's Been Sliding But Fundamentals Look Decent: Will The Market Correct The Share Price In The Future?

Stonehorse Energy (ASX:SHE) has had a rough month with its share price down 20%. However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Specifically, we decided to study Stonehorse Energy's 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. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

See our latest analysis for Stonehorse Energy

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Stonehorse Energy is:

13% = AU$1.3m ÷ AU$10m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).

The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each A$1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made A$0.13 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. We now need to evaluate how much profit the company reinvests or "retains" for future growth which then gives us an idea about the growth potential of the company. 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.

Stonehorse Energy's Earnings Growth And 13% ROE

At first glance, Stonehorse Energy seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 8.5% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. However, we are curious as to how the high returns still resulted in flat growth for Stonehorse Energy in the past five years. Therefore, there could be some other aspects that could potentially be preventing the company from growing. These include low earnings retention or poor allocation of capital.

As a next step, we compared Stonehorse Energy'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 12% in the same period.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. 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 Stonehorse Energy is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.

Is Stonehorse Energy Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Stonehorse Energy doesn't pay any dividend, which means that it is retaining all of its earnings. This makes us question why the company is retaining so much of its profits and still generating almost no growth? So there could be some other explanations in that regard. For instance, the company's business may be deteriorating.

Conclusion

In total, it does look like Stonehorse Energy has some positive aspects to its business. Yet, the low earnings growth is a bit concerning, especially given that the company has a high rate of return and is reinvesting ma huge portion of its profits. By the looks of it, there could be some other factors, not necessarily in control of the business, that's preventing growth. So far, we've only made a quick discussion around the company's earnings growth. You can do your own research on Stonehorse Energy and see how it has performed in the past by looking at this FREE detailed graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flows.

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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.