Is Vtech Holdings Limited's (HKG:303) Recent Stock Performance Influenced By Its Fundamentals In Any Way?

Vtech Holdings' (HKG:303) stock is up by a considerable 19% over the past three months. As most would know, fundamentals are what usually guide market price movements over the long-term, so we decided to look at the company's key financial indicators today to determine if they have any role to play in the recent price movement. Specifically, we decided to study Vtech Holdings' ROE in this article.

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 Vtech Holdings

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Vtech Holdings is:

30% = US$196m ÷ US$649m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every HK$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of HK$0.30.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And 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.

Vtech Holdings' Earnings Growth And 30% ROE

To begin with, Vtech Holdings has a pretty high ROE which is interesting. Secondly, even when compared to the industry average of 4.9% the company's ROE is quite impressive. Despite this, Vtech Holdings' five year net income growth was quite flat over the past five years. So, there could be some other aspects that could potentially be preventing the company from growing. Such as, the company pays out a huge portion of its earnings as dividends, or is faced with competitive pressures.

As a next step, we compared Vtech Holdings' net income growth with the industry and found that the company has a similar growth figure when compared with the industry average growth rate of 1.6% in the same period.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. Has the market priced in the future outlook for 303? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.

Is Vtech Holdings Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Vtech Holdings has a high three-year median payout ratio of 90% (or a retention ratio of 9.8%), meaning that the company is paying most of its profits as dividends to its shareholders. This does go some way in explaining why there's been no growth in its earnings.

In addition, Vtech Holdings has been paying dividends over a period of at least ten years suggesting that keeping up dividend payments is way more important to the management even if it comes at the cost of business growth. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 97%. Therefore, the company's future ROE is also not expected to change by much with analysts predicting an ROE of 29%.

Summary

Overall, we feel that Vtech Holdings certainly does have some positive factors to consider. The company has grown its earnings moderately as a result of its impressive ROE. Yet, the business is retaining hardly any of its profits. This might have negative implications on the company's future growth. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts 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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