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Salesforce's (NYSE:CRM) stock is up by a considerable 14% over the past three months. As most would know, fundamentals are what usually guide market price movements over the long-term, so we decided to look at the company's key financial indicators today to determine if they have any role to play in the recent price movement. In this article, we decided to focus on Salesforce'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. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.
View our latest analysis for Salesforce
How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?
Return on equity can be calculated by using the formula:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Salesforce is:
10% = US$5.9b ÷ US$59b (Based on the trailing twelve months to October 2024).
The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every $1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of $0.10.
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. 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.
A Side By Side comparison of Salesforce's Earnings Growth And 10% ROE
On the face of it, Salesforce's ROE is not much to talk about. However, given that the company's ROE is similar to the average industry ROE of 12%, we may spare it some thought. Looking at Salesforce's exceptional 26% five-year net income growth in particular, we are definitely impressed. Taking into consideration that the ROE is not particularly high, we reckon that there could also be other factors at play which could be influencing the company's growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.
As a next step, we compared Salesforce's net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 20%.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is CRM worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether CRM is currently mispriced by the market.