Neurones S.A.'s (EPA:NRO) Stock's On An Uptrend: Are Strong Financials Guiding The Market?

Most readers would already be aware that Neurones' (EPA:NRO) stock increased significantly by 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. In this article, we decided to focus on Neurones' 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 simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.

See our latest analysis for Neurones

How Do You 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 Neurones is:

10% = €35m ÷ €337m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 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 €0.10 in profit.

What Has ROE Got To Do With 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. 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.

Neurones' Earnings Growth And 10% ROE

At first glance, Neurones seems to have a decent ROE. And on comparing with the industry, we found that the the average industry ROE is similar at 11%. Consequently, this likely laid the ground for the decent growth of 6.1% seen over the past five years by Neurones.

As a next step, we compared Neurones' net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 11% in the same 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. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is NRO worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether NRO is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Neurones Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

In Neurones' case, its respectable earnings growth can probably be explained by its low three-year median payout ratio of 5.5% (or a retention ratio of 94%), which suggests that the company is investing most of its profits to grow its business.

Besides, Neurones has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders.

Conclusion

Overall, we are quite pleased with Neurones' performance. 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 a good amount of growth in its earnings. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings are expected to accelerate. 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. 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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