Is Crane NXT, Co.'s (NYSE:CXT) Stock's Recent Performance Being Led By Its Attractive Financial Prospects?

Crane NXT (NYSE:CXT) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 10% over the last three months. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company’s key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. Specifically, we decided to study Crane NXT'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. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

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How Is ROE Calculated?

The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Crane NXT is:

13% = US$151m ÷ US$1.2b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2025).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.13 in profit.

See our latest analysis for Crane NXT

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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. Assuming everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.

Crane NXT's Earnings Growth And 13% ROE

At first glance, Crane NXT seems to have a decent ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 10% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. Probably as a result of this, Crane NXT was able to see a decent growth of 9.9% over the last five years.

As a next step, we compared Crane NXT's net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 13% in the same period.

The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. Has the market priced in the future outlook for CXT? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.

Is Crane NXT Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

In Crane NXT's case, its respectable earnings growth can probably be explained by its low three-year median payout ratio of 19% (or a retention ratio of 81%), which suggests that the company is investing most of its profits to grow its business.

While Crane NXT has been growing its earnings, it only recently started to pay dividends which likely means that the company decided to impress new and existing shareholders with a dividend. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 14% over the next three years. The fact that the company's ROE is expected to rise to 19% over the same period is explained by the drop in the payout ratio.

Conclusion

In total, we are pretty happy with Crane NXT's performance. Specifically, we like that the company is reinvesting a huge chunk of its profits at a high rate of return. This of course has caused the company to see a good amount of growth in its earnings. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings are expected to accelerate. 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. 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.