Is Anexo Group Plc's(LON:ANX) Recent Stock Performance Tethered To Its Strong Fundamentals?

Anexo Group's's (LON:ANX) stock is up by a considerable 15% over the past 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. In this article, we decided to focus on Anexo Group's ROE.

ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

See our latest analysis for Anexo Group

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Anexo Group is:

20% = UK£18m ÷ UK£92m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. So, this means that for every £1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of £0.20.

What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learnt 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. 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.

Anexo Group's Earnings Growth And 20% ROE

At first glance, Anexo Group seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 16% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, Anexo Group was able to see a decent growth of 13% over the last five years.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Anexo Group's reported growth was lower than the industry growth of 30% in the same period, which is not something we like to see.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. 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. Is Anexo Group fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is Anexo Group Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Anexo Group's three-year median payout ratio to shareholders is 16% (implying that it retains 84% of its income), which is on the lower side, so it seems like the management is reinvesting profits heavily to grow its business.

While Anexo Group has seen growth in its earnings, it only recently started to pay a dividend. It is most likely that the company decided to impress new and existing shareholders with a dividend. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 17%. As a result, Anexo Group's ROE is not expected to change by much either, which we inferred from the analyst estimate of 16% for future ROE.

Conclusion

In total, we are pretty happy with Anexo Group'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. We also studied the latest analyst forecasts and found that the company's earnings growth is expected be similar to its current growth rate. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company.

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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