Uno&Company.,Ltd.'s (KOSDAQ:114630) Stock Is Rallying But Financials Look Ambiguous: Will The Momentum Continue?

Most readers would already be aware that Uno&Company.Ltd's (KOSDAQ:114630) stock increased significantly by 47% over the past three months. However, we wonder if the company's inconsistent financials would have any adverse impact on the current share price momentum. Specifically, we decided to study Uno&Company.Ltd's 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 Uno&Company.Ltd

How Do You 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 Uno&Company.Ltd is:

6.4% = ₩4.7b ÷ ₩73b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. Another way to think of that is that for every ₩1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn ₩0.06 in profit.

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 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.

Uno&Company.Ltd's Earnings Growth And 6.4% ROE

When you first look at it, Uno&Company.Ltd's ROE doesn't look that attractive. Yet, a closer study shows that the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 8.0%. But Uno&Company.Ltd saw a five year net income decline of 28% over the past five years. Remember, the company's ROE is a bit low to begin with. Hence, this goes some way in explaining the shrinking earnings.

However, when we compared Uno&Company.Ltd's growth with the industry we found that while the company's earnings have been shrinking, the industry has seen an earnings growth of 7.7% in the same period. This is quite worrisome.

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. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. If you're wondering about Uno&Company.Ltd's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Uno&Company.Ltd Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Looking at its LTM (or last twelve month) payout ratio of 28% (or a retention ratio of 72%) which is pretty normal, Uno&Company.Ltd's declining earnings is rather baffling as one would expect to see a fair bit of growth when a company is retaining a good portion of its profits. It looks like there might be some other reasons to explain the lack in that respect. For example, the business could be in decline.

In addition, Uno&Company.Ltd 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.

Summary

On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by Uno&Company.Ltd can be open to many interpretations. Even though it appears to be retaining most of its profits, given the low ROE, investors may not be benefitting from all that reinvestment after all. The low earnings growth suggests our theory correct. 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 4 risks we have identified for Uno&Company.Ltd.

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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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