Declining Stock and Solid Fundamentals: Is The Market Wrong About e.l.f. Beauty, Inc. (NYSE:ELF)?

With its stock down 11% over the past week, it is easy to disregard e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE:ELF). However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, which in this case looks quite promising. Specifically, we decided to study e.l.f. Beauty's ROE in this article.

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company's management is utilizing the company's capital. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

See our latest analysis for e.l.f. Beauty

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 e.l.f. Beauty is:

21% = US$129m ÷ US$614m (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 $0.21 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. 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.

e.l.f. Beauty's Earnings Growth And 21% ROE

To begin with, e.l.f. Beauty seems to have a respectable ROE. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 13%. Probably as a result of this, e.l.f. Beauty was able to see an impressive net income growth of 64% over the last five years. However, there could also be other causes behind this growth. For example, it is possible that the company's management has made some good strategic decisions, or that the company has a low payout ratio.

As a next step, we compared e.l.f. Beauty'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 10%.

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. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Has the market priced in the future outlook for ELF? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.

Is e.l.f. Beauty Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

e.l.f. Beauty doesn't pay any regular dividends currently which essentially means that it has been reinvesting all of its profits into the business. This definitely contributes to the high earnings growth number that we discussed above.

Conclusion

Overall, we are quite pleased with e.l.f. Beauty's performance. Particularly, we like that the company is reinvesting heavily into its business, and at a high rate of return. Unsurprisingly, this has led to an impressive earnings growth. 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. 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.