Should Weakness in Nanosonics Limited's (ASX:NAN) Stock Be Seen As A Sign That Market Will Correct The Share Price Given Decent Financials?

It is hard to get excited after looking at Nanosonics' (ASX:NAN) recent performance, when its stock has declined 17% over the past three months. However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financials over the long term, which in this case look pretty respectable. Specifically, we decided to study Nanosonics' 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 simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder's equity.

View our latest analysis for Nanosonics

How Is ROE Calculated?

The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Nanosonics is:

12% = AU$20m ÷ AU$164m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every A$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn A$0.12 in profit.

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. 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 Nanosonics' Earnings Growth And 12% ROE

To start with, Nanosonics' ROE looks acceptable. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 9.3%. Despite this, Nanosonics' five year net income growth was quite low averaging at only 3.3%. This is interesting as the high returns should mean that the company has the ability to generate high growth but for some reason, it hasn't been able to do so. A few likely reasons why this could happen is that the company could have a high payout ratio or the business has allocated capital poorly, for instance.

We then compared Nanosonics' net income growth with the industry and found that the company's growth figure is lower than the average industry growth rate of 5.8% in the same 5-year period, which is a bit concerning.

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). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is NAN worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether NAN is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Nanosonics Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Nanosonics doesn't pay any dividend currently which essentially means that it has been reinvesting all of its profits into the business. However, this doesn't explain the low earnings growth the company has seen. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.

Summary

In total, it does look like Nanosonics has some positive aspects to its business. However, given the high ROE and high profit retention, we would expect the company to be delivering strong earnings growth, but that isn't the case here. This suggests that there might be some external threat to the business, that's hampering its growth. That being so, the latest analyst forecasts show that the company will continue to see an expansion in its earnings. 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.