Fibon Berhad's (KLSE:FIBON) Stock is Soaring But Financials Seem Inconsistent: Will The Uptrend Continue?

Fibon Berhad's (KLSE:FIBON) stock is up by a considerable 44% over the past month. However, we wonder if the company's inconsistent financials would have any adverse impact on the current share price momentum. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Fibon Berhad's ROE today.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

Check out our latest analysis for Fibon Berhad

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Fibon Berhad is:

3.4% = RM1.7m ÷ RM51m (Based on the trailing twelve months to November 2020).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each MYR1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made MYR0.03 in profit.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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. 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 Fibon Berhad's Earnings Growth And 3.4% ROE

It is quite clear that Fibon Berhad's ROE is rather low. Even compared to the average industry ROE of 5.4%, the company's ROE is quite dismal. For this reason, Fibon Berhad's five year net income decline of 22% is not surprising given its lower ROE. We reckon that there could also be other factors at play here. Such as - low earnings retention or poor allocation of capital.

As a next step, we compared Fibon Berhad's performance with the industry and found thatFibon Berhad's performance is depressing even when compared with the industry, which has shrunk its earnings at a rate of 9.3% in the same period, which is a slower than the company.

The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. One good indicator of expected earnings growth is the P/E ratio which determines the price the market is willing to pay for a stock based on its earnings prospects. So, you may want to check if Fibon Berhad is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.

Is Fibon Berhad Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

In spite of a normal three-year median payout ratio of 29% (that is, a retention ratio of 71%), the fact that Fibon Berhad's earnings have shrunk is quite puzzling. 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, Fibon Berhad 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.

Conclusion

Overall, we have mixed feelings about Fibon Berhad. 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. You can see the 4 risks we have identified for Fibon Berhad by visiting our risks dashboard for free on our platform here.

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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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