Intouch Insight Ltd.'s (CVE:INX) Stock is Soaring But Financials Seem Inconsistent: Will The Uptrend Continue?

Intouch Insight (CVE:INX) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 29% over the last week. But the company's key financial indicators appear to be differing across the board and that makes us question whether or not the company's current share price momentum can be maintained. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Intouch Insight's ROE today.

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 other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

View our latest analysis for Intouch Insight

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

Return on equity 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 Intouch Insight is:

2.2% = CA$97k ÷ CA$4.4m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each CA$1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made CA$0.02 in profit.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.

Intouch Insight's Earnings Growth And 2.2% ROE

It is quite clear that Intouch Insight's ROE is rather low. Even compared to the average industry ROE of 8.5%, the company's ROE is quite dismal. Therefore, it might not be wrong to say that the five year net income decline of 31% seen by Intouch Insight was possibly a result of it having a lower ROE. We believe that there also might be other aspects that are negatively influencing the company's earnings prospects. Such as - low earnings retention or poor allocation of capital.

That being said, we compared Intouch Insight's performance with the industry and were concerned when we found that while the company has shrunk its earnings, the industry has grown its earnings at a rate of 7.7% in the same period.

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. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. Is Intouch Insight fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is Intouch Insight Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Summary

On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by Intouch Insight can be open to many interpretations. Even though it appears to be retaining most of its profits, given the low ROE, investors may not be benefitting from all that reinvestment after all. The low earnings growth suggests our theory correct. Wrapping up, we would proceed with caution with this company and one way of doing that would be to look at the risk profile of the business. Our risks dashboard would have the 3 risks we have identified for Intouch Insight.

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