Northern Star Resources Limited's (ASX:NST) Stock Has Shown A Decent Performance: Have Financials A Role To Play?

Northern Star Resources' (ASX:NST) stock is up by 7.9% over the past three months. As most would know, long-term fundamentals have a strong correlation with market price movements, so we decided to look at the company's key financial indicators today to determine if they have any role to play in the recent price movement. Specifically, we decided to study Northern Star Resources' 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 Northern Star Resources

How Is ROE Calculated?

ROE 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 Northern Star Resources is:

8.7% = AU$736m ÷ AU$8.5b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

The 'return' is the profit 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$0.09 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. 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. 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.

Northern Star Resources' Earnings Growth And 8.7% ROE

On the face of it, Northern Star Resources' ROE is not much to talk about. However, given that the company's ROE is similar to the average industry ROE of 11%, we may spare it some thought. Moreover, we are quite pleased to see that Northern Star Resources' net income grew significantly at a rate of 21% over the last five years. Given the slightly low ROE, it is likely that there could be some other aspects that are driving this growth. Such as - high earnings retention or an efficient management in place.

Next, on comparing Northern Star Resources' net income growth with the industry, we found that the company's reported growth is similar to the industry average growth rate of 21% over the last few years.

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. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. What is NST worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether NST is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Northern Star Resources Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

The three-year median payout ratio for Northern Star Resources is 47%, which is moderately low. The company is retaining the remaining 53%. So it seems that Northern Star Resources is reinvesting efficiently in a way that it sees impressive growth in its earnings (discussed above) and pays a dividend that's well covered.

Additionally, Northern Star Resources has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years which means that the company is pretty serious about sharing its profits with shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 45% 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 10%.

Conclusion

On the whole, we do feel that Northern Star Resources has some positive attributes. Despite its low rate of return, the fact that the company reinvests a very high portion of its profits into its business, no doubt contributed to its high earnings growth. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings growth is expected to slow down. 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.