Yahoo Finance APAC Realty Limited's (SGX:CLN) Stock Has Shown Weakness Lately But Financial Prospects Look Decent: Is The Market Wrong?
With its stock down 12% over the past three months, it is easy to disregard APAC Realty (SGX:CLN). However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. In this article, we decided to focus on APAC Realty's ROE.
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 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 APAC Realty
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 APAC Realty is:
6.7% = S$11m ÷ S$159m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).
The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. So, this means that for every SGD1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of SGD0.07.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And 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 APAC Realty's Earnings Growth And 6.7% ROE
On the face of it, APAC Realty's ROE is not much to talk about. However, the fact that the its ROE is quite higher to the industry average of 3.1% doesn't go unnoticed by us. However, APAC Realty's five year net income growth was quite low averaging at only 4.5%. Remember, the company's ROE is quite low to begin with, just that it is higher than the industry average. Therefore, the low growth in earnings could also be the result of this.
As a next step, we compared APAC Realty'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 2.7%.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Is CLN fairly valued? This infographic on the company's intrinsic value has everything you need to know.
Is APAC Realty Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?
The high three-year median payout ratio of 76% (that is, the company retains only 24% of its income) over the past three years for APAC Realty suggests that the company's earnings growth was lower as a result of paying out a majority of its earnings.
In addition, APAC Realty has been paying dividends over a period of six years suggesting that keeping up dividend payments is way more important to the management even if it comes at the cost of business growth. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company is expected to keep paying out approximately 76% of its profits over the next three years. Regardless, the future ROE for APAC Realty is predicted to rise to 8.8% despite there being not much change expected in its payout ratio.
Summary
Overall, we feel that APAC Realty certainly does have some positive factors to consider. Especially the substantial growth in earnings backed by a decent ROE. Despite the company reinvesting only a small portion of its profits, it still has managed to grow its earnings so that is appreciable. With that said, the latest industry analyst forecasts reveal that the company's earnings are expected to accelerate. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
