Has Oceania Healthcare Limited's (NZSE:OCA) Impressive Stock Performance Got Anything to Do With Its Fundamentals?

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Oceania Healthcare (NZSE:OCA) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 24% over the last 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Oceania Healthcare's ROE today.

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.

See our latest analysis for Oceania Healthcare

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Oceania Healthcare is:

9.5% = NZ$59m ÷ NZ$618m (Based on the trailing twelve months to November 2019).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every NZ$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn NZ$0.10 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.

Oceania Healthcare's Earnings Growth And 9.5% ROE

On the face of it, Oceania Healthcare's ROE is not much to talk about. However, given that the company's ROE is similar to the average industry ROE of 9.5%, we may spare it some thought. On the other hand, Oceania Healthcare reported a moderate 8.2% net income growth over the past five years. Given the slightly low ROE, it is likely that there could be some other aspects that are driving this growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.

We then performed a comparison between Oceania Healthcare's net income growth with the industry, which revealed that the company's growth is similar to the average industry growth of 8.2% in the same period.