Hualan Biological Engineering's (SZSE:002007) stock up by 3.2% over the past month. As most would know, long-term fundamentals have a strong correlation with market price movements, 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Hualan Biological Engineering's ROE today.

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.

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

ROE 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 Hualan Biological Engineering is:

11% = CN¥1.5b ÷ CN¥14b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. So, this means that for every CN¥1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of CN¥0.11.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don't share these attributes.

Hualan Biological Engineering's Earnings Growth And 11% ROE

At first glance, Hualan Biological Engineering seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 5.9% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Given the circumstances, we can't help but wonder why Hualan Biological Engineering saw little to no growth in the past five years. We reckon that there could be some other factors at play here that's limiting the company's growth. Such as, the company pays out a huge portion of its earnings as dividends, or is faced with competitive pressures.

As a next step, we compared Hualan Biological Engineering's net income growth with the industry and discovered that the industry saw an average growth of 7.6% in the same period.

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. 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. What is 002007 worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether 002007 is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Hualan Biological Engineering Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Despite having a moderate three-year median payout ratio of 39% (meaning the company retains61% of profits) in the last three-year period, Hualan Biological Engineering's earnings growth was more or les flat. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.

Additionally, Hualan Biological Engineering has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years, which means that the company's management is determined to pay dividends even if it means little to no earnings growth. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 34%. Therefore, the company's future ROE is also not expected to change by much with analysts predicting an ROE of 13%.

Conclusion

Overall, we feel that Hualan Biological Engineering 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. Having said that, looking at current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings growth rate is expected to see a huge improvement. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page 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.