REA Group Limited (ASX:REA) Delivered A Better ROE Than The Industry, Here’s Why

I am writing today to help inform people who are new to the stock market and want to learn about Return on Equity using a real-life example.

REA Group Limited (ASX:REA) outperformed the internet software and services industry on the basis of its ROE – producing a higher 26.9% relative to the peer average of 9.8% over the past 12 months. But what is more interesting is whether REA can sustain this above-average ratio. A measure of sustainable returns is REA’s financial leverage. If REA borrows debt to invest in its business, its profits will be higher. But ROE does not capture any debt, so we only see high profits and low equity, which is great on the surface. But today let’s take a deeper dive below this surface.

Check out our latest analysis for REA Group

Peeling the layers of ROE – trisecting a company’s profitability

Return on Equity (ROE) is a measure of REA Group’s profit relative to its shareholders’ equity. For example, if the company invests A$1 in the form of equity, it will generate A$0.27 in earnings from this. If investors diversify their portfolio by industry, they may want to maximise their return in the Internet Software and Services sector by investing in the highest returning stock. But this can be misleading as each company has different costs of equity and also varying debt levels, which could artificially push up ROE whilst accumulating high interest expense.

Returns are usually compared to costs to measure the efficiency of capital. REA Group’s cost of equity is 8.6%. Given a positive discrepancy of 18.3% between return and cost, this indicates that REA Group pays less for its capital than what it generates in return, which is a sign of capital efficiency. ROE can be dissected into three distinct ratios: net profit margin, asset turnover, and financial leverage. This is called the Dupont Formula:

The first component is profit margin, which measures how much of sales is retained after the company pays for all its expenses. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue REA Group can make from its asset base. And finally, financial leverage is simply how much of assets are funded by equity, which exhibits how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. ROE can be inflated by disproportionately high levels of debt. This is also unsustainable due to the high interest cost that the company will also incur. Thus, we should look at REA Group’s debt-to-equity ratio to examine sustainability of its returns. Currently the ratio stands at 46.0%, which is reasonable. This means REA Group has not taken on too much leverage, and its above-average ROE is driven by its ability to grow its profit without a huge debt burden.

Next Steps:

ROE is one of many ratios which meaningfully dissects financial statements, which illustrates the quality of a company. REA Group’s above-industry ROE is encouraging, and is also in excess of its cost of equity. ROE is not likely to be inflated by excessive debt funding, giving shareholders more conviction in the sustainability of high returns. ROE is a helpful signal, but it is definitely not sufficient on its own to make an investment decision.

For REA Group, I've put together three key factors you should further examine:

1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.
2. Valuation: What is REA Group worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether REA Group is currently mispriced by the market.
3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of REA Group? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.

Simply Wall St analyst Simply Wall St and Simply Wall St have no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article 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.