Is Cochlear Limited's (ASX:COH) Recent Performance Tethered To Its Attractive Financial Prospects?

Cochlear's (ASX:COH) stock is up by 9.9% over the past three months. Given its impressive performance, we decided to study the company's key financial indicators as a company's long-term fundamentals usually dictate market outcomes. Specifically, we decided to study Cochlear'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.

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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 Cochlear is:

20% = AU$389m ÷ AU$2.0b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2025).

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$0.20.

Check out our latest analysis for Cochlear

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

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

A Side By Side comparison of Cochlear's Earnings Growth And 20% ROE

To start with, Cochlear's ROE looks acceptable. Especially when compared to the industry average of 12% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. This certainly adds some context to Cochlear's exceptional 33% net income growth seen over the past five years. However, there could also be other causes behind this growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Cochlear's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 20% in the same period, which is great to see.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. 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 Cochlear is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.

Is Cochlear Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Cochlear has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 73%, meaning the company only retains 27% of its income. This implies that the company has been able to achieve high earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Besides, Cochlear has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 70%. Regardless, the future ROE for Cochlear is predicted to rise to 26% despite there being not much change expected in its payout ratio.

Conclusion

In total, we are pretty happy with Cochlear's performance. Especially the high ROE, Which has contributed to the impressive growth seen in earnings. Despite the company reinvesting only a small portion of its profits, it still has managed to grow its earnings so that is appreciable. Having said that, the company's earnings growth is expected to slow down, as forecasted in the current analyst estimates. 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.