HEICO (NYSE:HEI) 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to HEICO's ROE today.
Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
View our latest analysis for HEICO
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 HEICO is:
12% = US$278m ÷ US$2.4b (Based on the trailing twelve months to April 2021).
The 'return' is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn $0.12 in profit.
Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?
So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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.
A Side By Side comparison of HEICO's Earnings Growth And 12% ROE
At first glance, HEICO seems to have a decent ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 8.7% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. Probably as a result of this, HEICO was able to see a decent growth of 16% over the last five years.
As a next step, we compared HEICO's net income growth with the industry and found that the company has a similar growth figure when compared with the industry average growth rate of 19% in the same period.
Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. One good indicator of expected earnings growth is the P/E ratio which determines the price the market is willing to pay for a stock based on its earnings prospects. So, you may want to check if HEICO is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.