Is Sea1 Offshore Inc.'s (OB:SEA1) Latest Stock Performance A Reflection Of Its Financial Health?

Sea1 Offshore (OB:SEA1) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 14% over the last week. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company’s key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. In this article, we decided to focus on Sea1 Offshore's ROE.

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

Check out our latest analysis for Sea1 Offshore

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 Sea1 Offshore is:

70% = US$300m ÷ US$428m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each NOK1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made NOK0.70 in profit.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. 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. Assuming all else is equal, companies that have both a higher return on equity and higher profit retention are usually the ones that have a higher growth rate when compared to companies that don't have the same features.

Sea1 Offshore's Earnings Growth And 70% ROE

Firstly, we acknowledge that Sea1 Offshore has a significantly high ROE. Secondly, even when compared to the industry average of 9.8% the company's ROE is quite impressive. So, the substantial 64% net income growth seen by Sea1 Offshore over the past five years isn't overly surprising.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Sea1 Offshore's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 38% in the same period, which is great to see.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. If you're wondering about Sea1 Offshore's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Sea1 Offshore Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Sea1 Offshore has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 57%, meaning the company only retains 43% of its income. This implies that the company has been able to achieve high earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Moreover, Sea1 Offshore is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of paying a dividend for at least ten years. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 25% over the next three years. However, Sea1 Offshore's future ROE is expected to decline to 19% despite the expected decline in its payout ratio. We infer that there could be other factors that could be steering the foreseen decline in the company's ROE.

Conclusion

In total, we are pretty happy with Sea1 Offshore's performance. In particular, its high ROE is quite noteworthy and also the probable explanation behind its considerable earnings growth. Yet, the company is retaining a small portion of its profits. Which means that the company has been able to grow its earnings in spite of it, so that's not too bad. Having said that, on studying current analyst estimates, we were concerned to see that while the company has grown its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to shrink in the future. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company.

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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.