Air Products and Chemicals (NYSE:APD) has had a rough three months with its share price down 8.2%. However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Specifically, we decided to study Air Products and Chemicals' ROE in this article.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors' money. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

How Is ROE Calculated?

Return on equity 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 Air Products and Chemicals is:

15% = US$2.4b ÷ US$16b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.15 in profit.

Why Is ROE Important For 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 everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.

Air Products and Chemicals' Earnings Growth And 15% ROE

To begin with, Air Products and Chemicals seems to have a respectable ROE. Even when compared to the industry average of 13% the company's ROE looks quite decent. Consequently, this likely laid the ground for the decent growth of 6.6% seen over the past five years by Air Products and Chemicals.

As a next step, we compared Air Products and Chemicals' net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 14% in the same period.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. Has the market priced in the future outlook for APD? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.

Is Air Products and Chemicals Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Air Products and Chemicals has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 64%, meaning that it is left with only 36% to reinvest into its business. This implies that the company has been able to achieve decent earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Moreover, Air Products and Chemicals is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of paying a dividend for at least ten years. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 51% over the next three years. The fact that the company's ROE is expected to rise to 19% over the same period is explained by the drop in the payout ratio.

Conclusion

On the whole, we do feel that Air Products and Chemicals has some positive attributes. Its earnings have grown respectably as we saw earlier, which was likely due to the company reinvesting its earnings at a pretty high rate of return. However, given the high ROE, we do think that the company is reinvesting a small portion of its profits. This could likely be preventing the company from growing to its full extent. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. 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.