Declining Stock and Solid Fundamentals: Is The Market Wrong About Lords Group Trading plc (LON:LORD)?

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It is hard to get excited after looking at Lords Group Trading's (LON:LORD) recent performance, when its stock has declined 14% over the past three months. But if you pay close attention, you might gather that its strong financials could mean that the stock could potentially see an increase in value in the long-term, given how markets usually reward companies with good financial health. In this article, we decided to focus on Lords Group Trading's ROE.

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. In short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.

Check out our latest analysis for Lords Group Trading

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 Lords Group Trading is:

18% = UK£9.5m ÷ UK£52m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2022).

The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each £1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made £0.18 in profit.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. We now need to evaluate how much profit the company reinvests or "retains" for future growth which then gives us an idea about the growth potential of the company. 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.

Lords Group Trading's Earnings Growth And 18% ROE

At first glance, Lords Group Trading seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 15%. This probably laid the ground for Lords Group Trading's significant 51% net income growth seen over the past five years. We believe that there might also be other aspects that are positively influencing the company's earnings growth. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Lords Group Trading's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 11% in the same period, which is great to see.