Guangzhou Sie Consulting (SZSE:300687) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 64% over the last month. Since the market usually pay for a company's long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company's key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. In this article, we decided to focus on Guangzhou Sie Consulting's ROE.

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. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

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 Guangzhou Sie Consulting is:

9.4% = CN¥263m ÷ CN¥2.8b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each CN¥1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made CN¥0.09 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.

Guangzhou Sie Consulting's Earnings Growth And 9.4% ROE

At first glance, Guangzhou Sie Consulting's ROE doesn't look very promising. However, the fact that the company's ROE is higher than the average industry ROE of 4.5%, is definitely interesting. Particularly, the substantial 21% net income growth seen by Guangzhou Sie Consulting over the past five years is impressive . That being said, the company does have a slightly low ROE to begin with, just that it is higher than the industry average. Hence, there might be some other aspects that are causing earnings to grow. For example, it is possible that the broader industry is going through a high growth phase, or that the company has a low payout ratio.

As a next step, we compared Guangzhou Sie Consulting's net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 0.8%.

The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Is Guangzhou Sie Consulting fairly valued compared to other companies? These 3 valuation measures might help you decide.

Is Guangzhou Sie Consulting Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Guangzhou Sie Consulting's three-year median payout ratio to shareholders is 20%, which is quite low. This implies that the company is retaining 80% of its profits. So it seems like the management is reinvesting profits heavily to grow its business and this reflects in its earnings growth number.

Additionally, Guangzhou Sie Consulting has paid dividends over a period of five years which means that the company is pretty serious about sharing its profits with shareholders. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company over the next three years is expected to be approximately 18%. Regardless, the future ROE for Guangzhou Sie Consulting is predicted to rise to 12% despite there being not much change expected in its payout ratio.

Summary

In total, we are pretty happy with Guangzhou Sie Consulting's performance. In particular, it's great to see that the company has seen significant growth in its earnings backed by a respectable ROE and a high reinvestment rate. The latest industry analyst forecasts show that the company is expected to maintain its current growth rate. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts 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.