HCL Technologies Limited's (NSE:HCLTECH) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financial Prospects Look Decent: Is The Market Wrong?

It is hard to get excited after looking at HCL Technologies' (NSE:HCLTECH) recent performance, when its stock has declined 10% over the past three months. But if you pay close attention, you might find that its key financial indicators look quite decent, which could mean that the stock could potentially rise in the long-term given how markets usually reward more resilient long-term fundamentals. Specifically, we decided to study HCL Technologies' 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 simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.

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How To Calculate Return On Equity?

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 HCL Technologies is:

24% = US$2.0b ÷ US$8.2b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2025).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every ₹1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn ₹0.24 in profit.

See our latest analysis for HCL Technologies

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. Based on how much of its profits the company chooses to reinvest or "retain", we are then able to evaluate a company's future ability to generate profits. Assuming everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.

HCL Technologies' Earnings Growth And 24% ROE

At first glance, HCL Technologies seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 16% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, HCL Technologies was able to see a decent growth of 5.4% over the last five years.

As a next step, we compared HCL Technologies' net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 26% in the same period.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. 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. If you're wondering about HCL Technologies''s valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is HCL Technologies Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

While HCL Technologies has a three-year median payout ratio of 86% (which means it retains 14% of profits), the company has still seen a fair bit of earnings growth in the past, meaning that its high payout ratio hasn't hampered its ability to grow.

Besides, HCL Technologies has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 82% of its profits over the next three years. As a result, HCL Technologies' ROE is not expected to change by much either, which we inferred from the analyst estimate of 28% for future ROE.

Summary

In total, it does look like HCL Technologies has some positive aspects to its business. Its earnings have grown respectably as we saw earlier, which was likely due to the company reinvesting its earnings at a pretty high rate of return. However, given the high ROE, we do think that the company is reinvesting a small portion of its profits. This could likely be preventing the company from growing to its full extent. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings are expected to accelerate. 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. 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.