Yahoo Finance How TAL Education Group (NYSE:TAL) Delivered A Better ROE Than Its Industry
I am writing today to help inform people who are new to the stock market and want to begin learning the link between company’s fundamentals and stock market performance.
TAL Education Group (NYSE:TAL) outperformed the Education Services industry on the basis of its ROE – producing a higher 12.8% relative to the peer average of 12.4% over the past 12 months. While the impressive ratio tells us that TAL has made significant profits from little equity capital, ROE doesn’t tell us if TAL has borrowed debt to make this happen. We’ll take a closer look today at factors like financial leverage to determine whether TAL’s ROE is actually sustainable.
See our latest analysis for TAL Education Group
Breaking down Return on Equity
Firstly, Return on Equity, or ROE, is simply the percentage of last years’ earning against the book value of shareholders’ equity. For example, if the company invests $1 in the form of equity, it will generate $0.13 in earnings from this. In most cases, a higher ROE is preferred; however, there are many other factors we must consider prior to making any investment decisions.
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 TAL Education Group, which is 10.0%. This means TAL Education Group returns enough to cover its own cost of equity, with a buffer of 2.8%. This sustainable practice implies that the company pays less for its capital than what it generates in return. ROE can be broken down into three different 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
Essentially, profit margin shows how much money the company makes after paying for all its expenses. The other component, asset turnover, illustrates how much revenue TAL Education Group 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 TAL Education Group’s historic debt-to-equity ratio. At 12.9%, TAL Education Group’s debt-to-equity ratio appears low and indicates the above-average ROE is generated from its capacity to increase profit without a large debt burden.
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. TAL Education Group’s above-industry ROE is encouraging, and is also in excess of its cost of equity. ROE is not likely to be inflated by excessive debt funding, giving shareholders more conviction in the sustainability of high returns. Although ROE can be a useful metric, it is only a small part of diligent research.
For TAL Education Group, I’ve compiled three essential aspects you should further research:
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 TAL Education Group 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 TAL Education Group is currently mispriced by the market.
Other High-Growth Alternatives : Are there other high-growth stocks you could be holding instead of TAL Education Group? 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 past 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. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
