Burger Fuel Group Limited's (NZSE:BFG) Stock is Soaring But Financials Seem Inconsistent: Will The Uptrend Continue?

Burger Fuel Group (NZSE:BFG) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 10% over the last week. However, we decided to pay attention to the company's fundamentals which don't appear to give a clear sign about the company's financial health. Specifically, we decided to study Burger Fuel Group's ROE in this article.

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 Burger Fuel Group

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 Burger Fuel Group is:

10% = NZ$1.3m ÷ NZ$13m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. So, this means that for every NZ$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of NZ$0.10.

Why Is ROE Important For 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. 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.

Burger Fuel Group's Earnings Growth And 10% ROE

When you first look at it, Burger Fuel Group's ROE doesn't look that attractive. Yet, a closer study shows that the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 9.4%. On the other hand, Burger Fuel Group reported a fairly low 3.5% net income growth over the past five years. Remember, the company's ROE is not particularly great to begin with. Hence, this does provide some context to low earnings growth seen by the company.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Burger Fuel Group's reported growth was lower than the industry growth of 17% over the last few years, which is not something we like to see.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). 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 Burger Fuel Group's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Burger Fuel Group Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Burger Fuel Group doesn't pay any regular dividends currently which essentially means that it has been reinvesting all of its profits into the business. This doesn't explain the low earnings growth number that we discussed above. Therefore, there might be some other reasons to explain the lack in that respect. For example, the business could be in decline.

Conclusion

On the whole, we feel that the performance shown by Burger Fuel Group can be open to many interpretations. 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. To know the 2 risks we have identified for Burger Fuel Group visit our risks dashboard for free.

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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.