Should You Rely On Celanese's (NYSE:CE) Earnings Growth?

As a general rule, we think profitable companies are less risky than companies that lose money. That said, the current statutory profit is not always a good guide to a company's underlying profitability. In this article, we'll look at how useful this year's statutory profit is, when analysing Celanese (NYSE:CE).

While Celanese was able to generate revenue of US$5.66b in the last twelve months, we think its profit result of US$2.00b was more important. Even though its revenue is down over the last three years, its profit has actually increased, as you can see, below.

Check out our latest analysis for Celanese

Importantly, statutory profits are not always the best tool for understanding a company's true earnings power, so it's well worth examining profits in a little more detail. This article will focus on the impact unusual items have had on Celanese's statutory earnings. That might leave you wondering what analysts are forecasting in terms of future profitability. Luckily, you can click here to see an interactive graph depicting future profitability, based on their estimates.

The Impact Of Unusual Items On Profit

For anyone who wants to understand Celanese's profit beyond the statutory numbers, it's important to note that during the last twelve months statutory profit gained from US$1.4b worth of unusual items. While it's always nice to have higher profit, a large contribution from unusual items sometimes dampens our enthusiasm. When we crunched the numbers on thousands of publicly listed companies, we found that a boost from unusual items in a given year is often not repeated the next year. And, after all, that's exactly what the accounting terminology implies. We can see that Celanese's positive unusual items were quite significant relative to its profit in the year to December 2020. As a result, we can surmise that the unusual items are making its statutory profit significantly stronger than it would otherwise be.

Our Take On Celanese's Profit Performance

As previously mentioned, Celanese's large boost from unusual items won't be there indefinitely, so its statutory earnings are probably a poor guide to its underlying profitability. As a result, we think it may well be the case that Celanese's underlying earnings power is lower than its statutory profit. But the good news is that its EPS growth over the last three years has been very impressive. The goal of this article has been to assess how well we can rely on the statutory earnings to reflect the company's potential, but there is plenty more to consider. With this in mind, we wouldn't consider investing in a stock unless we had a thorough understanding of the risks. When we did our research, we found 3 warning signs for Celanese (1 shouldn't be ignored!) that we believe deserve your full attention.

This note has only looked at a single factor that sheds light on the nature of Celanese's profit. But there are plenty of other ways to inform your opinion of a company. Some people consider a high return on equity to be a good sign of a quality business. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks that insiders are buying.

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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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