Is Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's (EPA:ALFOC) Stock's Recent Performance Being Led By Its Attractive Financial Prospects?

Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's (EPA:ALFOC) stock is up by a considerable 36% 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. In this article, we decided to focus on Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's ROE.

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.

See our latest analysis for Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme

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 Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme is:

20% = €13m ÷ €64m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each €1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made €0.20 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. 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.

Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's Earnings Growth And 20% ROE

To start with, Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's ROE looks acceptable. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 8.7%. This certainly adds some context to Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's exceptional 23% net income growth seen over the past five years. We reckon that there could also be other factors at play here. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 3.7% in the same period, which is great to see.

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 ALFOC worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether ALFOC is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

While the company did pay out a portion of its dividend in the past, it currently doesn't pay a dividend. This is likely what's driving the high earnings growth number discussed above.

Existing analyst estimates suggest that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 4.1% over the next three years. Accordingly, the expected drop in the payout ratio explains the expected increase in the company's ROE to 24%, over the same period.

Conclusion

On the whole, we feel that Focus Home Interactive Société anonyme's performance has been quite good. Particularly, we like that the company is reinvesting heavily into its business, and at a high rate of return. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an impressive earnings growth. We also studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that the company's earnings growth is expected be similar to its current growth rate. 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. 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.
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