Is Wesfarmers Limited's (ASX:WES) Recent Stock Performance Tethered To Its Strong Fundamentals?

Wesfarmers' (ASX:WES) stock is up by a considerable 15% over the past three months. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company’s key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. Specifically, we decided to study Wesfarmers' ROE in this article.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

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How To Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Wesfarmers is:

29% = AU$2.6b ÷ AU$9.0b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every A$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn A$0.29 in profit.

Check out our latest analysis for Wesfarmers

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.

Wesfarmers' Earnings Growth And 29% ROE

Firstly, we acknowledge that Wesfarmers has a significantly high ROE. Additionally, the company's ROE is higher compared to the industry average of 8.8% which is quite remarkable. Probably as a result of this, Wesfarmers was able to see a decent net income growth of 7.6% over the last five years.

We then performed a comparison between Wesfarmers' net income growth with the industry, which revealed that the company's growth is similar to the average industry growth of 7.6% in the same 5-year 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. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. Is Wesfarmers fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is Wesfarmers Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Wesfarmers has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 88%, meaning that it is left with only 12% 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, Wesfarmers 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 88% 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 33%.

Summary

In total, we are pretty happy with Wesfarmers' 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. 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.