Did PAO Severstal (LON:SVST) Create Value For Shareholders?

This article is intended for those of you who are at the beginning of your investing journey and want to learn about Return on Equity using a real-life example.

PAO Severstal (LON:SVST) outperformed the steel industry on the basis of its ROE – producing a higher 58.3% relative to the peer average of 12.9% over the past 12 months. However, whether this above-industry ROE is actually impressive depends on if it can be maintained. This can be measured by looking at the company’s financial leverage. With more debt, SVST can invest even more and earn more money, thus pushing up its returns. However, ROE only measures returns against equity, not debt. This can be distorted, so let’s take a look at it further.

View our latest analysis for PAO Severstal

What you must know about ROE

Return on Equity (ROE) weighs PAO Severstal’s profit against the level of its shareholders’ equity. For example, if the company invests $1 in the form of equity, it will generate $0.58 in earnings from this. If investors diversify their portfolio by industry, they may want to maximise their return in the Steel sector by investing in the highest returning stock. However, this can be misleading as each firm has different costs of equity and debt levels i.e. the more debt PAO Severstal has, the higher ROE is pumped up in the short term, at the expense of long term interest payment burden.

ROE is assessed against cost of equity, which is measured using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) – but let’s not dive into the details of that today. For now, let’s just look at the cost of equity number for PAO Severstal, which is 9.7%. Given a positive discrepancy of 48.6% between return and cost, this indicates that PAO Severstal 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:

Basically, profit margin measures how much of revenue trickles down into earnings which illustrates how efficient the business is with its cost management. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue PAO Severstal can make from its asset base. Finally, financial leverage will be our main focus today. It shows how much of assets are funded by equity and can show how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. We can determine if PAO Severstal’s ROE is inflated by borrowing high levels of debt. Generally, a balanced capital structure means its returns will be sustainable over the long run. We can examine this by looking at PAO Severstal’s debt-to-equity ratio. The most recent ratio is 47.5%, which is sensible and indicates PAO Severstal has not taken on too much leverage. Thus, we can conclude its above-average ROE is generated from its capacity to increase profit without a large debt burden.

Next Steps:

ROE is one of many ratios which meaningfully dissects financial statements, which illustrates the quality of a company. PAO Severstal’s above-industry ROE is encouraging, and is also in excess of its cost of equity. Its high ROE is not likely to be driven by high debt. Therefore, investors may have more confidence in the sustainability of this level of returns going forward. ROE is a helpful signal, but it is definitely not sufficient on its own to make an investment decision.

For PAO Severstal, I've compiled three relevant factors you should look at:

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 PAO Severstal 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 PAO Severstal is currently mispriced by the market.
3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of PAO Severstal? 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.

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Simply Wall St has no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article 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.
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