Yahoo Finance Declining Stock and Solid Fundamentals: Is The Market Wrong About B2Gold Corp. (TSE:BTO)?
It is hard to get excited after looking at B2Gold's (TSE:BTO) recent performance, when its stock has declined 27% over the past three months. However, a closer look at its sound financials might cause you to think again. Given that fundamentals usually drive long-term market outcomes, the company is worth looking at. Specifically, we decided to study B2Gold's ROE in this article.
ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. In short, ROE shows the profit each dollar generates with respect to its shareholder investments.
Check out our latest analysis for B2Gold
How To Calculate Return On Equity?
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 B2Gold is:
27% = US$677m ÷ US$2.5b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).
The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each CA$1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made CA$0.27 in profit.
What Has ROE Got To Do With 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.
B2Gold's Earnings Growth And 27% ROE
First thing first, we like that B2Gold has an impressive ROE. Additionally, the company's ROE is higher compared to the industry average of 10% which is quite remarkable. Under the circumstances, B2Gold's considerable five year net income growth of 73% was to be expected.
Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that B2Gold's growth is quite high when compared to the industry average growth of 33% in the same period, which is great to see.
The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is BTO worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether BTO is currently mispriced by the market.
Is B2Gold Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?
B2Gold's three-year median payout ratio to shareholders is 8.1%, which is quite low. This implies that the company is retaining 92% of its profits. So it seems like the management is reinvesting profits heavily to grow its business and this reflects in its earnings growth number.
While B2Gold has been growing its earnings, it only recently started to pay dividends which likely means that the company decided to impress new and existing shareholders with a dividend. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 34% over the next three years. Therefore, the expected rise in the payout ratio explains why the company's ROE is expected to decline to 15% over the same period.
Conclusion
In total, we are pretty happy with B2Gold's performance. Specifically, we like that the company is reinvesting a huge chunk of its profits at a high rate of return. This of course has caused the company to see substantial growth in its earnings. With that said, on studying the latest analyst forecasts, we found that while the company has seen growth in its past earnings, analysts expect its future earnings to shrink. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.
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