Can Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust Limited's (LON:SREI) Weak Financials Pull The Plug On The Stock's Current Momentum On Its Share Price?

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Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust's (LON:SREI) stock is up by a considerable 12% over the past three months. We, however wanted to have a closer look at its key financial indicators as the markets usually pay for long-term fundamentals, and in this case, they don't look very promising. In this article, we decided to focus on Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust'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.

See our latest analysis for Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

ROE 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 Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust is:

1.0% = UK£3.0m ÷ UK£287m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. One way to conceptualize this is that for each £1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made £0.01 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.

Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust's Earnings Growth And 1.0% ROE

As you can see, Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust's ROE looks pretty weak. Even when compared to the industry average of 5.4%, the ROE figure is pretty disappointing. Therefore, it might not be wrong to say that the five year net income decline of 4.3% seen by Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust was possibly a result of it having a lower ROE. We believe that there also might be other aspects that are negatively influencing the company's earnings prospects. Such as - low earnings retention or poor allocation of capital.

However, when we compared Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust's growth with the industry we found that while the company's earnings have been shrinking, the industry has seen an earnings growth of 13% in the same period. This is quite worrisome.

past-earnings-growth
LSE:SREI Past Earnings Growth September 13th 2024

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. 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 Schroder Real Estate Investment Trust is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.