Has Royal Gold, Inc. (NASDAQ:RGLD) Stock's Recent Performance Got Anything to Do With Its Financial Health?

Royal Gold’s ROE.” data-reactid=”28″>Royal Gold’s (NASDAQ:RGLD) stock up by 2.7% 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. In this article, we decided to focus on Royal Gold’s ROE.

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company’s management is utilizing the company’s capital. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

View our latest analysis for Royal Gold ” data-reactid=”30″> View our latest analysis for Royal Gold

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

Return on Equity = Net Profit (from continuing operations) ÷ Shareholders’ Equity

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Royal Gold is:

8.5% = US$196m ÷ US$2.3b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).

The ‘return’ refers to a company’s earnings over the last year. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders’ equity, the company generated $0.09 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. Depending on how much of these profits the company reinvests or “retains”, and how effectively it does so, we are then able to assess a company’s earnings growth potential. 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.

A Side By Side comparison of Royal Gold’s Earnings Growth And 8.5% ROE

On the face of it, Royal Gold’s ROE is not much to talk about. A quick further study shows that the company’s ROE doesn’t compare favorably to the industry average of 11% either. Despite this, surprisingly, Royal Gold saw an exceptional 33% net income growth over the past five years. We reckon that there could be other factors at play here. Such as – high earnings retention or an efficient management in place.

As a next step, we compared Royal Gold’s net income growth with the industry and found that the company has a similar growth figure when compared with the industry average growth rate of 33% in the same period.

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intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether RGLD is currently mispriced by the market.” data-reactid=”58″>The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. Doing so will help them establish if the stock’s future looks promising or ominous. What is RGLD worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether RGLD is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Royal Gold Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

The three-year median payout ratio for Royal Gold is 43%, which is moderately low. The company is retaining the remaining 57%. So it seems that Royal Gold is reinvesting efficiently in a way that it sees impressive growth in its earnings (discussed above) and pays a dividend that’s well covered.

Additionally, Royal Gold has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years which means that the company is pretty serious about sharing its profits with shareholders. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company is expected to drop to 31% over the next three years. Despite the lower expected payout ratio, the company’s ROE is not expected to change by much.