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Yahoo Finance Plus Is Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company's (NYSE:HPE) Recent Stock Performance Influenced By Its Financials In Any Way?
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's (NYSE:HPE) stock up by 2.8% 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Hewlett Packard Enterprise's ROE today.
Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.
See our latest analysis for Hewlett Packard Enterprise
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 Hewlett Packard Enterprise is:
5.2% = US$1.1b ÷ US$21b (Based on the trailing twelve months to July 2023).
The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.05 in profit.
What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?
Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. 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. 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.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise's Earnings Growth And 5.2% ROE
When you first look at it, Hewlett Packard Enterprise's ROE doesn't look that attractive. Next, when compared to the average industry ROE of 12%, the company's ROE leaves us feeling even less enthusiastic. Hewlett Packard Enterprise was still able to see a decent net income growth of 13% over the past five years. So, there might be other aspects that are positively influencing the company's earnings growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.
As a next step, we compared Hewlett Packard Enterprise'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 9.1%.
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. What is HPE worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether HPE is currently mispriced by the market.
Is Hewlett Packard Enterprise Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?
While Hewlett Packard Enterprise has a three-year median payout ratio of 58% (which means it retains 42% of profits), the company has still seen a fair bit of earnings growth in the past, meaning that its high payout ratio hasn't hampered its ability to grow.
Besides, Hewlett Packard Enterprise has been paying dividends over a period of eight years. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to drop to 24% over the next three years. As a result, the expected drop in Hewlett Packard Enterprise's payout ratio explains the anticipated rise in the company's future ROE to 12%, over the same period.
Conclusion
On the whole, we do feel that Hewlett Packard Enterprise has some positive attributes. While no doubt its earnings growth is pretty substantial, we do feel that the reinvestment rate is pretty low, meaning, the earnings growth number could have been significantly higher had the company been retaining more of its profits. That being so, the latest analyst forecasts show that the company will continue to see an expansion in its earnings. 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.
