A Closer Look At The Southern Company's (NYSE:SO) Impressive ROE
A Closer Look At The Southern Company's (NYSE:SO) Impressive ROE
Many investors are still learning about the various metrics that can be useful when analysing a stock. This article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE). By way of learning-by-doing, we'll look at ROE to gain a better understanding of The Southern Company (NYSE:SO).
许多投资者仍在课堂关于分析股票时可以有用的各种指标。本文是为那些想要课堂净资产收益率(roe)的人准备的。通过实践学习,我们将关注roe,以更好地了解南方公司(纽交所:SO)。
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 other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
roe,即净资产收益率,是一种评估公司如何有效地从股东手中获取投资回报的有用工具。换句话说,它是一种盈利能力比率,衡量公司股东提供的资本的回报率。
How To Calculate Return On Equity?
如何计算股东权益报酬率?
The formula for ROE is:
roe的公式是:
Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity
净资产收益率 = 净利润(来自持续经营) ÷ 股东权益
So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Southern is:
因此,基于上述公式,南方公司的roe为:
12% = US$4.6b ÷ US$37b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).
12% = 46亿美金 ÷ 370亿美金(基于截至2024年9月的过去十二个月数据)。
The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.12 in profit.
‘回报’是企业在过去一年内赚取的收入。一种理解方式是,对于每1美元的股东资本,公司赚取了0.12美元的利润。
Does Southern Have A Good Return On Equity?
南方的roe表现好吗?
By comparing a company's ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. Importantly, this is far from a perfect measure, because companies differ significantly within the same industry classification. Pleasingly, Southern has a superior ROE than the average (9.3%) in the Electric Utilities industry.
通过将公司的roe与行业平均水平进行比较,我们可以快速衡量它的表现。值得注意的是,这远非一个完美的指标,因为同一行业分类中的公司差异显著。令人欣慰的是,南方的roe优于公用股行业的平均水平(9.3%)。

That's what we like to see. However, bear in mind that a high ROE doesn't necessarily indicate efficient profit generation. A higher proportion of debt in a company's capital structure may also result in a high ROE, where the high debt levels could be a huge risk . Our risks dashboardshould have the 3 risks we have identified for Southern.
这正是我们想看到的。然而,请记住,高roe并不一定表明利润生成效率高。公司的资本结构中较高的债务比例也可能导致高roe,而高债务水平可能带来巨大风险。我们的风险仪表盘应该列出我们为南方识别出的3个风险。
How Does Debt Impact Return On Equity?
债务如何影响股东回报率?
Most companies need money -- from somewhere -- to grow their profits. That cash can come from retained earnings, issuing new shares (equity), or debt. In the first and second cases, the ROE will reflect this use of cash for investment in the business. In the latter case, the debt used for growth will improve returns, but won't affect the total equity. That will make the ROE look better than if no debt was used.
大多数公司需要资金来增加利润。这笔资金可以来自留存收益、发行新股(股本)或债务。在第一和第二种情况下,ROE将反映这种用于投资业务的现金使用。在后一种情况下,用于增长的债务将改善收益,但不会影响总权益。这将使ROE看起来比没有使用债务时更好。
Combining Southern's Debt And Its 12% Return On Equity
结合南方公司的债务和12%的roe
It's worth noting the high use of debt by Southern, leading to its debt to equity ratio of 1.72. Its ROE is quite low, even with the use of significant debt; that's not a good result, in our opinion. Debt does bring extra risk, so it's only really worthwhile when a company generates some decent returns from it.
值得注意的是南方公司高额使用债务,导致其债务与权益比率为1.72。尽管使用了大量债务,其roe仍然相当低;在我们看来,这并不是一个好结果。债务确实带来额外风险,因此,只有当公司从中获得可观回报时,这样的做法才是值得的。
Conclusion
结论
Return on equity is useful for comparing the quality of different businesses. Companies that can achieve high returns on equity without too much debt are generally of good quality. If two companies have around the same level of debt to equity, and one has a higher ROE, I'd generally prefer the one with higher ROE.
股东权益回报率对比不同企业的质量很有用。没有太多债务就能取得高股东权益回报率的公司通常质量较好。如果两家公司的债权与股权大致相同,而一家公司的股东权益回报率较高,则我通常会更喜欢具有较高股东权益回报率的公司。
But ROE is just one piece of a bigger puzzle, since high quality businesses often trade on high multiples of earnings. The rate at which profits are likely to grow, relative to the expectations of profit growth reflected in the current price, must be considered, too. So you might want to take a peek at this data-rich interactive graph of forecasts for the company.
但ROE只是更大图景中的一部分,因为高质量企业常常以高倍数的市盈率交易。相对于当前价格所反映的盈利增长预期,盈利增长速度必须被考虑在内。所以你可能想看看这个数据丰富的互动图表,了解该公司的预测情况。
If you would prefer check out another company -- one with potentially superior financials -- then do not miss this free list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.
如果您想查看另一家可能具有更好财务状况的公司 - 具有高股本回报率和低债务的公司,那么请不要错过这份有趣公司列表,该列表免费提供。
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