Apex International Co., Ltd. (TPE:4927) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financials Look Strong: Should Prospective Shareholders Make The Leap?

Apex International (TPE:4927) has had a rough month with its share price down 12%. However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, which in this case looks quite promising. In this article, we decided to focus on Apex International'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. 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 Apex International

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

ROE can be calculated by using the formula:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Apex International is:

15% = NT$1.0b ÷ NT$7.2b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. So, this means that for every NT$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of NT$0.15.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. 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 Apex International's Earnings Growth And 15% ROE

To begin with, Apex International seems to have a respectable ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 9.9% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. This probably laid the ground for Apex International's significant 25% net income growth seen over the past five years. We reckon that there could also be other factors at play here. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio.

As a next step, we compared Apex International's net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 9.2%.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. What is 4927 worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether 4927 is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Apex International Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Apex International has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 66%, meaning the company only retains 34% of its income. This implies that the company has been able to achieve high earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Additionally, Apex International has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years which means that the company is pretty serious about sharing its profits with shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 55% of its profits over the next three years. Regardless, the future ROE for Apex International is predicted to rise to 21% despite there being not much change expected in its payout ratio.

Conclusion

In total, we are pretty happy with Apex International's performance. We are particularly impressed by the considerable earnings growth posted by the company, which was likely backed by its high ROE. While the company is paying out most of its earnings as dividends, it has been able to grow its earnings in spite of it, so that's probably a good sign. We also studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that the company's earnings growth is expected be similar to its current 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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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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