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1-800-FLOWERS.COM's (NASDAQ:FLWS) stock is up by a considerable 76% over the past three months. Given that stock prices are usually aligned with a company's financial performance in the long-term, we decided to study its financial indicators more closely to see if they had a hand to play in the recent price move. In this article, we decided to focus on 1-800-FLOWERS.COM's ROE.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

View our latest analysis for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM

How Is ROE Calculated?

The formula for return on equity is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for 1-800-FLOWERS.COM is:

11% = US$41m ÷ US$388m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2020).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.11 in profit.

What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or "retains", and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. Assuming all else is equal, companies that have both a higher return on equity and higher profit retention are usually the ones that have a higher growth rate when compared to companies that don't have the same features.

1-800-FLOWERS.COM's Earnings Growth And 11% ROE

At first glance, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM seems to have a decent ROE. Even so, when compared with the average industry ROE of 13%, we aren't very excited. 1-800-FLOWERS.COM was still able to see a decent net income growth of 7.5% over the past five years. So, there might be other aspects that are positively influencing earnings growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently. Bear in mind, the company does have a respectable level of ROE. It is just that the industry ROE is higher. So this also does lend some color to the fairly high earnings growth seen by the company.

We then compared 1-800-FLOWERS.COM's net income growth with the industry and found that the company's growth figure is lower than the average industry growth rate of 21% in the same period, which is a bit concerning.