Nokia Oyj (HEL:NOKIA) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financials Look Strong: Should Prospective Shareholders Make The Leap?

Nokia Oyj (HEL:NOKIA) has had a rough three months with its share price down 3.2%. However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, which in this case looks quite promising. Specifically, we decided to study Nokia Oyj's 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. In short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.

Check out our latest analysis for Nokia Oyj

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 Nokia Oyj is:

19% = €4.1b ÷ €21b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each €1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made €0.19 in profit.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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.

Nokia Oyj's Earnings Growth And 19% ROE

At first glance, Nokia Oyj seems to have a decent ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 15% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. Probably as a result of this, Nokia Oyj was able to see an impressive net income growth of 56% over the last five years. However, there could also be other causes behind this growth. Such as - high earnings retention or an efficient management in place.

As a next step, we compared Nokia Oyj's net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 26%.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. What is NOKIA worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether NOKIA is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Nokia Oyj Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Nokia Oyj has a three-year median payout ratio of 26% (where it is retaining 74% of its income) which is not too low or not too high. So it seems that Nokia Oyj is reinvesting efficiently in a way that it sees impressive growth in its earnings (discussed above) and pays a dividend that's well covered.

Moreover, Nokia Oyj is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of nine years of paying a dividend. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company is expected to rise to 49% over the next three years. Accordingly, the expected increase in the payout ratio explains the expected decline in the company's ROE to 9.6%, over the same period.

Conclusion

On the whole, we feel that Nokia Oyj's performance has been quite good. Specifically, we like that the company is reinvesting a huge chunk of its profits at a high rate of return. This of course has caused the company to see substantial growth in its earnings. Having said that, on studying current analyst estimates, we were concerned to see that while the company has grown its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to shrink in the future. 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.