Kraft Heinz's (NASDAQ:KHC) stock up by 8.6% over the past three months. 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. Specifically, we decided to study Kraft Heinz's ROE in this article.

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 Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders' Equity

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Kraft Heinz is:

3.9% = US$1.9b ÷ US$49b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders' equity, the company generated $0.04 in profit.

What Has ROE Got To Do With 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 Kraft Heinz's Earnings Growth And 3.9% ROE

It is quite clear that Kraft Heinz's ROE is rather low. Not just that, even compared to the industry average of 11%, the company's ROE is entirely unremarkable. However, we we're pleasantly surprised to see that Kraft Heinz grew its net income at a significant rate of 61% in the last five years. Therefore, there could be other reasons behind this growth. Such as - high earnings retention or an efficient management in place.

We then compared Kraft Heinz's net income growth with the industry and we're pleased to see that the company's growth figure is higher when compared with the industry which has a growth rate of 9.7% in the same 5-year period.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. If you're wondering about Kraft Heinz's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Kraft Heinz Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Kraft Heinz has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 84%, meaning the company only retains 16% of its income. This implies that the company has been able to achieve high earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Moreover, Kraft Heinz is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of nine years of paying a dividend. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 49% over the next three years. The fact that the company's ROE is expected to rise to 7.7% over the same period is explained by the drop in the payout ratio.

Conclusion

In total, it does look like Kraft Heinz has some positive aspects to its business. That is, quite an impressive growth in earnings. However, the low profit retention means that the company's earnings growth could have been higher, had it been reinvesting a higher portion of its profits. That being so, a study of the latest analyst forecasts show that the company is expected to see a slowdown in its future earnings growth. 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.