TPC Plus Berhad (KLSE:TPC) has had a rough three months with its share price down 4.6%. However, the company’s fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Particularly, we will be paying attention to TPC Plus Berhad’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.
View our latest analysis for TPC Plus Berhad
How Is ROE Calculated?
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 TPC Plus Berhad is:
20% = RM17m ÷ RM83m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).
The ‘return’ refers to a company’s earnings over the last year. So, this means that for every MYR1 of its shareholder’s investments, the company generates a profit of MYR0.20.
Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?
So far, we’ve learned that ROE is a measure of a company’s profitability. Based on how much of its profits the company chooses to reinvest or “retain”, we are then able to evaluate a company’s future ability to generate profits. Assuming everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don’t necessarily bear these characteristics.
TPC Plus Berhad’s Earnings Growth And 20% ROE
To start with, TPC Plus Berhad’s ROE looks acceptable. Especially when compared to the industry average of 7.6% the company’s ROE looks pretty impressive. Needless to say, we are quite surprised to see that TPC Plus Berhad’s net income shrunk at a rate of 3.3% over the past five years. Based on this, we feel that there might be other reasons which haven’t been discussed so far in this article that could be hampering the company’s growth. For example, it could be that the company has a high payout ratio or the business has allocated capital poorly, for instance.
So, as a next step, we compared TPC Plus Berhad’s performance against the industry and were disappointed to discover that while the company has been shrinking its earnings, the industry has been growing its earnings at a rate of 23% over the last few years.
Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. 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 TPC Plus Berhad is trading on a high P/E or a low P/E, relative to its industry.
Is TPC Plus Berhad Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
TPC Plus Berhad doesn’t pay any dividend, meaning that potentially all of its profits are being reinvested in the business, which doesn’t explain why the company’s earnings have shrunk if it is retaining all of its profits. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.
Conclusion
Overall, we feel that TPC Plus Berhad certainly does have some positive factors to consider. Although, we are disappointed to see a lack of growth in earnings even in spite of a high ROE and and a high reinvestment rate. We believe that there might be some outside factors that could be having a negative impact on the business. While we won’t completely dismiss the company, what we would do, is try to ascertain how risky the business is to make a more informed decision around the company. You can see the 2 risks we have identified for TPC Plus Berhad by visiting our risks dashboard for free on our platform here.
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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.
