Are CLPS Incorporation's (NASDAQ:CLPS) Statutory Earnings A Good Guide To Its Underlying Profitability?

Broadly speaking, profitable businesses are less risky than unprofitable ones. 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 CLPS Incorporation (NASDAQ:CLPS).

While CLPS Incorporation was able to generate revenue of US$89.4m in the last twelve months, we think its profit result of US$2.94m was more important.

See our latest analysis for CLPS Incorporation

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. So today we'll look at what CLPS Incorporation's cashflow tells us about its earnings, as well as examining how issuing shares is impacting shareholder value. Note: we always recommend investors check balance sheet strength. Click here to be taken to our balance sheet analysis of CLPS Incorporation.

A Closer Look At CLPS Incorporation's Earnings

In high finance, the key ratio used to measure how well a company converts reported profits into free cash flow (FCF) is the accrual ratio (from cashflow). In plain english, this ratio subtracts FCF from net profit, and divides that number by the company's average operating assets over that period. You could think of the accrual ratio from cashflow as the 'non-FCF profit ratio'.

That means a negative accrual ratio is a good thing, because it shows that the company is bringing in more free cash flow than its profit would suggest. While it's not a problem to have a positive accrual ratio, indicating a certain level of non-cash profits, a high accrual ratio is arguably a bad thing, because it indicates paper profits are not matched by cash flow. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, "firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future".

Over the twelve months to June 2020, CLPS Incorporation recorded an accrual ratio of -0.17. Therefore, its statutory earnings were very significantly less than its free cashflow. To wit, it produced free cash flow of US$5.7m during the period, dwarfing its reported profit of US$2.94m. Given that CLPS Incorporation had negative free cash flow in the prior corresponding period, the trailing twelve month resul of US$5.7m would seem to be a step in the right direction. Unfortunately for shareholders, the company has also been issuing new shares, diluting their share of future earnings.

One essential aspect of assessing earnings quality is to look at how much a company is diluting shareholders. As it happens, CLPS Incorporation issued 16% more new shares over the last year. As a result, its net income is now split between a greater number of shares. To celebrate net income while ignoring dilution is like rejoicing because you have a single slice of a larger pizza, but ignoring the fact that the pizza is now cut into many more slices. Check out CLPS Incorporation's historical EPS growth by clicking on this link.

How Is Dilution Impacting CLPS Incorporation's Earnings Per Share? (EPS)

Unfortunately, we don't have any visibility into its profits three years back, because we lack the data. And even focusing only on the last twelve months, we don't have a meaningful growth rate because it made a loss a year ago, too. But mathematics aside, it is always good to see when a formerly unprofitable business come good (though we accept profit would have been higher if dilution had not been required). So you can see that the dilution has had a bit of an impact on shareholders. Therefore, the dilution is having a noteworthy influence on shareholder returns. And so, you can see quite clearly that dilution is influencing shareholder earnings.

In the long term, if CLPS Incorporation's earnings per share can increase, then the share price should too. But on the other hand, we'd be far less excited to learn profit (but not EPS) was improving. For the ordinary retail shareholder, EPS is a great measure to check your hypothetical "share" of the company's profit.

Our Take On CLPS Incorporation's Profit Performance

In conclusion, CLPS Incorporation has a strong cashflow relative to earnings, which indicates good quality earnings, but the dilution means its earnings per share are dropping faster than its profit. Considering all the aforementioned, we'd venture that CLPS Incorporation's profit result is a pretty good guide to its true profitability, albeit a bit on the conservative side. 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 4 warning signs for CLPS Incorporation (1 is concerning!) that we believe deserve your full attention.

Our examination of CLPS Incorporation has focussed on certain factors that can make its earnings look better than they are. 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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