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What You Must Know About Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc’s (NYSE:FDP) Return on Equity

Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc (NYSE:FDP) generated a below-average return on equity of 6.65% in the past 12 months, while its industry returned 12.01%. An investor may attribute an inferior ROE to a relatively inefficient performance, and whilst this can often be the case, knowing the nuts and bolts of the ROE calculation may change that perspective and give you a deeper insight into FDP’s past performance. I will take you through how metrics such as financial leverage impact ROE which may affect the overall sustainability of FDP’s returns. Check out our latest analysis for Fresh Del Monte Produce

Peeling the layers of ROE – trisecting a company’s profitability

Firstly, Return on Equity, or ROE, is simply the percentage of last years’ earning against the book value of shareholders’ equity. An ROE of 6.65% implies $0.07 returned on every $1 invested. Generally speaking, a higher ROE is preferred; however, there are other factors we must also consider before making any conclusions.

Return on Equity = Net Profit ÷ Shareholders Equity

ROE is assessed against cost of equity, which is measured using the Capital Asset Pricing Model (CAPM) – but let’s not dive into the details of that today. For now, let’s just look at the cost of equity number for Fresh Del Monte Produce, which is 8.49%. Given a discrepancy of -1.84% between return and cost, this indicated that Fresh Del Monte Produce may be paying more for its capital than what it’s generating in return. ROE can be dissected into three distinct ratios: net profit margin, asset turnover, and financial leverage. This is called the Dupont Formula:

Dupont Formula

ROE = profit margin × asset turnover × financial leverage

ROE = (annual net profit ÷ sales) × (sales ÷ assets) × (assets ÷ shareholders’ equity)

ROE = annual net profit ÷ shareholders’ equity

NYSE:FDP Last Perf Mar 2nd 18
NYSE:FDP Last Perf Mar 2nd 18

The first component is profit margin, which measures how much of sales is retained after the company pays for all its expenses. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue Fresh Del Monte Produce can make from its asset base. Finally, financial leverage will be our main focus today. It shows how much of assets are funded by equity and can show how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. Since ROE can be artificially increased through excessive borrowing, we should check Fresh Del Monte Produce’s historic debt-to-equity ratio. At 19.96%, Fresh Del Monte Produce’s debt-to-equity ratio appears low and indicates that Fresh Del Monte Produce still has room to increase leverage and grow its profits.

NYSE:FDP Historical Debt Mar 2nd 18
NYSE:FDP Historical Debt Mar 2nd 18

Next Steps:

While ROE is a relatively simple calculation, it can be broken down into different ratios, each telling a different story about the strengths and weaknesses of a company. Fresh Del Monte Produce’s below-industry ROE is disappointing, furthermore, its returns were not even high enough to cover its own cost of equity. However, ROE is not likely to be inflated by excessive debt funding, giving shareholders more conviction in the sustainability of returns, which has headroom to increase further. ROE is a helpful signal, but it is definitely not sufficient on its own to make an investment decision.

For Fresh Del Monte Produce, I’ve compiled three important factors you should further research:

  1. Financial Health: Does it have a healthy balance sheet? Take a look at our free balance sheet analysis with six simple checks on key factors like leverage and risk.

  2. Valuation: What is Fresh Del Monte Produce worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even when its growth outlook is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether Fresh Del Monte Produce is currently mispriced by the market.

  3. Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Fresh Del Monte Produce? Explore our interactive list of stocks with large growth potential to get an idea of what else is out there you may be missing!


To help readers see pass the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned.

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