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Costain Group PLC (LON:COST) announced a healthy earnings result recently, and the market rewarded it with a strong uplift in the stock price. Looking deeper at the numbers, we found several encouraging factors beyond the headline profit numbers.
View our latest analysis for Costain Group
Zooming In On Costain Group's Earnings
Many investors haven't heard of the accrual ratio from cashflow, but it is actually a useful measure of how well a company's profit is backed up by free cash flow (FCF) during a given period. The accrual ratio subtracts the FCF from the profit for a given period, and divides the result by the average operating assets of the company over that time. You could think of the accrual ratio from cashflow as the 'non-FCF profit ratio'.
As a result, a negative accrual ratio is a positive for the company, and a positive accrual ratio is a negative. While having an accrual ratio above zero is of little concern, we do think it's worth noting when a company has a relatively high accrual ratio. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, "firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future".
Over the twelve months to June 2024, Costain Group recorded an accrual ratio of -0.25. Therefore, its statutory earnings were very significantly less than its free cashflow. In fact, it had free cash flow of UK£48m in the last year, which was a lot more than its statutory profit of UK£30.5m. Costain Group did see its free cash flow drop year on year, which is less than ideal, like a Simpson's episode without Groundskeeper Willie. Having said that, there is more to the story. The accrual ratio is reflecting the impact of unusual items on statutory profit, at least in part.
That might leave you wondering what analysts are forecasting in terms of future profitability. Luckily, you can click here to see an interactive graph depicting future profitability, based on their estimates.
The Impact Of Unusual Items On Profit
Costain Group's profit was reduced by unusual items worth UK£8.3m in the last twelve months, and this helped it produce high cash conversion, as reflected by its unusual items. In a scenario where those unusual items included non-cash charges, we'd expect to see a strong accrual ratio, which is exactly what has happened in this case. While deductions due to unusual items are disappointing in the first instance, there is a silver lining. When we analysed the vast majority of listed companies worldwide, we found that significant unusual items are often not repeated. And, after all, that's exactly what the accounting terminology implies. If Costain Group doesn't see those unusual expenses repeat, then all else being equal we'd expect its profit to increase over the coming year.