Declining Stock and Solid Fundamentals: Is The Market Wrong About Encore Wire Corporation (NASDAQ:WIRE)?

It is hard to get excited after looking at Encore Wire's (NASDAQ:WIRE) recent performance, when its stock has declined 11% over the past month. However, a closer look at its sound financials might cause you to think again. Given that fundamentals usually drive long-term market outcomes, the company is worth looking at. Specifically, we decided to study Encore Wire'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. 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 Encore Wire

How Do You 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 Encore Wire is:

11% = US$99m ÷ US$879m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated $0.11 in profit.

What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. We now need to evaluate how much profit the company reinvests or "retains" for future growth which then gives us an idea about the growth potential of the company. 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.

Encore Wire's Earnings Growth And 11% ROE

At first glance, Encore Wire seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 12%. Consequently, this likely laid the ground for the decent growth of 14% seen over the past five years by Encore Wire.

As a next step, we compared Encore Wire'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 8.9%.

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). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Is Encore Wire fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is Encore Wire Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Encore Wire has a low three-year median payout ratio of 2.3%, meaning that the company retains the remaining 98% of its profits. This suggests that the management is reinvesting most of the profits to grow the business.

Besides, Encore Wire has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders.

Conclusion

Overall, we are quite pleased with Encore Wire's performance. Particularly, we like that the company is reinvesting heavily into its business, and at a high rate of return. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an impressive earnings growth. That being so, a study of the latest analyst forecasts show that the company is expected to see a slowdown in its future earnings growth. 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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