Is SoftTech Engineers Limited's (NSE:SOFTTECH) Recent Price Movement Underpinned By Its Weak Fundamentals?

With its stock down 13% over the past three months, it is easy to disregard SoftTech Engineers (NSE:SOFTTECH). We, however decided to study the company's financials to determine if they have got anything to do with the price decline. Stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, and therefore we decided to pay more attention to the company's financial performance. In this article, we decided to focus on SoftTech Engineers' ROE.

ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. 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 SoftTech Engineers is:

2.0% = ₹25m ÷ ₹1.3b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each ₹1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made ₹0.02 in profit.

View our latest analysis for SoftTech Engineers

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. 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.

A Side By Side comparison of SoftTech Engineers' Earnings Growth And 2.0% ROE

It is hard to argue that SoftTech Engineers' ROE is much good in and of itself. Even compared to the average industry ROE of 12%, the company's ROE is quite dismal. For this reason, SoftTech Engineers' five year net income decline of 14% is not surprising given its lower ROE. However, there could also be other factors causing the earnings to decline. For example, the business has allocated capital poorly, or that the company has a very high payout ratio.

However, when we compared SoftTech Engineers' growth with the industry we found that while the company's earnings have been shrinking, the industry has seen an earnings growth of 21% in the same period. This is quite worrisome.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. Is SoftTech Engineers fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is SoftTech Engineers Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

SoftTech Engineers doesn't pay any regular dividends, meaning that the company is keeping all of its profits, which makes us wonder why it is retaining its earnings if it can't use them to grow its business. So there could be some other explanations in that regard. For instance, the company's business may be deteriorating.

Conclusion

In total, we're a bit ambivalent about SoftTech Engineers' performance. While the company does have a high rate of reinvestment, the low ROE means that all that reinvestment is not reaping any benefit to its investors, and moreover, its having a negative impact on the earnings growth. Wrapping up, we would proceed with caution with this company and one way of doing that would be to look at the risk profile of the business. Our risks dashboard would have the 2 risks we have identified for SoftTech Engineers.

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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.