Are MailUp's (BIT:MAIL) Statutory Earnings A Good Reflection Of Its Earnings Potential?

As a general rule, we think profitable companies are less risky than companies that lose money. However, sometimes companies receive a one-off boost (or reduction) to their profit, and it's not always clear whether statutory profits are a good guide, going forward. This article will consider whether MailUp's (BIT:MAIL) statutory profits are a good guide to its underlying earnings.

While MailUp was able to generate revenue of €63.2m in the last twelve months, we think its profit result of €1.14m was more important. In the chart below, you can see that its profit and revenue have both grown over the last three years, although its profit has slipped in the last twelve months.

Check out our latest analysis for MailUp

Not all profits are equal, and we can learn more about the nature of a company's past profitability by diving deeper into the financial statements. So today we'll look at what MailUp's cashflow tells us about the quality of its earnings. That might leave you wondering what analysts are forecasting in terms of future profitability. Luckily, you can click here to see an interactive graph depicting future profitability, based on their estimates.

Zooming In On MailUp's Earnings

As finance nerds would already know, the accrual ratio from cashflow is a key measure for assessing how well a company's free cash flow (FCF) matches its profit. To get the accrual ratio we first subtract FCF from profit for a period, and then divide that number by the average operating assets for the period. You could think of the accrual ratio from cashflow as the 'non-FCF profit ratio'.

As a result, a negative accrual ratio is a positive for the company, and a positive accrual ratio is a negative. That is not intended to imply we should worry about a positive accrual ratio, but it's worth noting where the accrual ratio is rather high. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, "firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future".

Over the twelve months to June 2020, MailUp recorded an accrual ratio of -0.12. That indicates that its free cash flow was a fair bit more than its statutory profit. In fact, it had free cash flow of €2.3m in the last year, which was a lot more than its statutory profit of €1.14m. Given that MailUp had negative free cash flow in the prior corresponding period, the trailing twelve month resul of €2.3m would seem to be a step in the right direction.

Our Take On MailUp's Profit Performance

MailUp's accrual ratio is solid, and indicates strong free cash flow, as we discussed, above. Because of this, we think MailUp's earnings potential is at least as good as it seems, and maybe even better! Unfortunately, though, its earnings per share actually fell back over the last year. At the end of the day, it's essential to consider more than just the factors above, if you want to understand the company properly. With this in mind, we wouldn't consider investing in a stock unless we had a thorough understanding of the risks. While conducting our analysis, we found that MailUp has 1 warning sign and it would be unwise to ignore it.

Today we've zoomed in on a single data point to better understand the nature of MailUp's profit. But there is always more to discover if you are capable of focussing your mind on minutiae. Some people consider a high return on equity to be a good sign of a quality business. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.

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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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