Can IHH Healthcare Berhad (KLSE:IHH) Performance Keep Up Given Its Mixed Bag Of Fundamentals?

IHH Healthcare Berhad's (KLSE:IHH) stock up by 5.1% over the past three months. Given that the stock prices usually follow long-term business performance, we wonder if the company's mixed financials could have any adverse effect on its current price price movement Specifically, we decided to study IHH Healthcare Berhad'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. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

Check out our latest analysis for IHH Healthcare Berhad

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 IHH Healthcare Berhad is:

0.8% = RM206m ÷ RM27b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2020).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. That means that for every MYR1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated MYR0.01 in profit.

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.

IHH Healthcare Berhad's Earnings Growth And 0.8% ROE

It is hard to argue that IHH Healthcare Berhad's ROE is much good in and of itself. Not just that, even compared to the industry average of 7.4%, the company's ROE is entirely unremarkable. For this reason, IHH Healthcare Berhad's five year net income decline of 33% is not surprising given its lower ROE. We believe that there also might be other aspects that are negatively influencing the company's earnings prospects. For instance, the company has a very high payout ratio, or is faced with competitive pressures.

That being said, we compared IHH Healthcare Berhad's performance with the industry and were concerned when we found that while the company has shrunk its earnings, the industry has grown its earnings at a rate of 5.3% in the same period.

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

Is IHH Healthcare Berhad Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?

In spite of a normal three-year median payout ratio of 46% (that is, a retention ratio of 54%), the fact that IHH Healthcare Berhad's earnings have shrunk is quite puzzling. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.

Additionally, IHH Healthcare Berhad has paid dividends over a period of seven years, which means that the company's management is rather focused on keeping up its dividend payments, regardless of the shrinking earnings. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 36% over the next three years. The fact that the company's ROE is expected to rise to 6.2% over the same period is explained by the drop in the payout ratio.

Conclusion

On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by IHH Healthcare Berhad can be open to many interpretations. While the company does have a high rate of profit retention, its low rate of return is probably hampering its earnings growth. That being so, the latest industry analyst forecasts show that the analysts are expecting to see a huge improvement in the company's earnings growth rate. 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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