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Infomedia Ltd's (ASX:IFM) Stock Is Going Strong: Have Financials A Role To Play?

Infomedia (ASX:IFM) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 13% over the last 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 Infomedia's ROE.

Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. In short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.

Check out our latest analysis for Infomedia

How Is ROE Calculated?

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 Infomedia is:

26% = AU$18m ÷ AU$68m (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. So, this means that for every A$1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of A$0.26.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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. 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.

Infomedia's Earnings Growth And 26% ROE

Firstly, we acknowledge that Infomedia has a significantly high ROE. Second, a comparison with the average ROE reported by the industry of 14% also doesn't go unnoticed by us. Probably as a result of this, Infomedia was able to see a decent net income growth of 6.1% over the last five years.

As a next step, we compared Infomedia's net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 14% in the same period.

past-earnings-growth
past-earnings-growth

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). By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. Is IFM fairly valued? This infographic on the company's intrinsic value has everything you need to know.

Is Infomedia Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?

The high three-year median payout ratio of 75% (or a retention ratio of 25%) for Infomedia suggests that the company's growth wasn't really hampered despite it returning most of its income to its shareholders.

Besides, Infomedia has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company is expected to rise to 96% over the next three years. Accordingly, the expected increase in the payout ratio explains the expected decline in the company's ROE to 18%, over the same period.

Summary

Overall, we feel that Infomedia certainly does have some positive factors to consider. The company has grown its earnings moderately as previously discussed. Still, the high ROE could have been even more beneficial to investors had the company been reinvesting more of its profits. As highlighted earlier, the current reinvestment rate appears to be quite low. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.

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