Are Ansell Limited's (ASX:ANN) Fundamentals Good Enough to Warrant Buying Given The Stock's Recent Weakness?

It is hard to get excited after looking at Ansell's (ASX:ANN) recent performance, when its stock has declined 19% over the past three months. But if you pay close attention, you might find that its key financial indicators look quite decent, which could mean that the stock could potentially rise in the long-term given how markets usually reward more resilient long-term fundamentals. Specifically, we decided to study Ansell's ROE in this article.

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.

View our latest analysis for Ansell

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 Ansell is:

9.3% = US$150m ÷ US$1.6b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. That means that for every A$1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated A$0.09 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.

Ansell's Earnings Growth And 9.3% ROE

When you first look at it, Ansell's ROE doesn't look that attractive. However, its ROE is similar to the industry average of 9.3%, so we won't completely dismiss the company. On the other hand, Ansell reported a moderate 7.2% net income growth over the past five years. Considering the moderately low ROE, it is quite possible that there might be some other aspects that are positively influencing the company's earnings 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.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Ansell's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 5.8% in the same period, which is great to see.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. What is ANN worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether ANN is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Ansell Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Ansell has a healthy combination of a moderate three-year median payout ratio of 41% (or a retention ratio of 59%) and a respectable amount of growth in earnings as we saw above, meaning that the company has been making efficient use of its profits.

Besides, Ansell has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. 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 is expected to keep paying out approximately 42% of its profits over the next three years. As a result, Ansell's ROE is not expected to change by much either, which we inferred from the analyst estimate of 9.1% for future ROE.

Summary

In total, it does look like Ansell has some positive aspects to its business. Even in spite of the low rate of return, the company has posted impressive earnings growth as a result of reinvesting heavily into its business. We also studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that the company's earnings growth is expected be similar to its current growth rate. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts 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.