Can Sandridge Mississippian Trust II (NYSE:SDR) Continue To Outperform Its Industry?
With an ROE of 24.70%, Sandridge Mississippian Trust II (NYSE:SDR) outpaced its own industry which delivered a less exciting 10.65% over the past year. While the impressive ratio tells us that SDR has made significant profits from little equity capital, ROE doesn’t tell us if SDR has borrowed debt to make this happen. Today, we’ll take a closer look at some factors like financial leverage to see how sustainable SDR’s ROE is. See our latest analysis for Sandridge Mississippian Trust II
What you must know about ROE
Firstly, Return on Equity, or ROE, is simply the percentage of last years’ earning against the book value of shareholders’ equity. It essentially shows how much the company can generate in earnings given the amount of equity it has raised. 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
Returns are usually compared to costs to measure the efficiency of capital. Sandridge Mississippian Trust II’s cost of equity is 10.30%. Since Sandridge Mississippian Trust II’s return covers its cost in excess of 14.39%, its use of equity capital is efficient and likely to be sustainable. Simply put, Sandridge Mississippian Trust II pays less for its capital than what it generates 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
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 Sandridge Mississippian Trust II can make from its asset base. And finally, financial leverage is simply how much of assets are funded by equity, which exhibits how sustainable the company’s capital structure is. Since ROE can be inflated by excessive debt, we need to examine Sandridge Mississippian Trust II’s debt-to-equity level. Currently, Sandridge Mississippian Trust II has no debt which means its returns are driven purely by equity capital. Therefore, the level of financial leverage has no impact on ROE, and the ratio is a representative measure of the efficiency of all its capital employed firm-wide.
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. Sandridge Mississippian Trust II’s above-industry ROE is encouraging, and is also in excess of its cost of equity. Its high ROE is not likely to be driven by high debt. Therefore, investors may have more confidence in the sustainability of this level of returns going forward. ROE is a helpful signal, but it is definitely not sufficient on its own to make an investment decision.
For Sandridge Mississippian Trust II, I’ve put together three key factors you should further examine:
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.
Valuation: What is Sandridge Mississippian Trust II 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 Sandridge Mississippian Trust II is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of Sandridge Mississippian Trust II? 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.
