Barrick Gold Corporation's (TSE:ABX) Stock Been Rising: Are Strong Financials Guiding The Market?

Barrick Gold’s ROE today.” data-reactid=”28″>Barrick Gold’s (TSE:ABX) stock is up by 9.2% over the past three months. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term financial health, we decided to study the company’s fundamentals to see if they could be influencing the market. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Barrick Gold’s ROE today.

Return on equity or ROE is an important factor to be considered by a shareholder because it tells them how effectively their capital is being reinvested. In simpler terms, it measures the profitability of a company in relation to shareholder’s equity.

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

How Is ROE Calculated?

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

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

18% = US$5.5b ÷ US$31b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).

The ‘return’ is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every CA$1 of its shareholder’s investments, the company generates a profit of CA$0.18.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company’s future earnings. 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. Assuming all else is equal, companies that have both a higher return on equity and higher profit retention are usually the ones that have a higher growth rate when compared to companies that don’t have the same features.

A Side By Side comparison of Barrick Gold’s Earnings Growth And 18% ROE

At first glance, Barrick Gold seems to have a decent ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 8.3% the company’s ROE looks pretty remarkable. Probably as a result of this, Barrick Gold was able to see an impressive net income growth of 52% over the last five years. However, there could also be other causes behind this growth. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.

As a next step, we compared Barrick Gold’s net income growth with the industry, and pleasingly, we found that the growth seen by the company is higher than the average industry growth of 37%.

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this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.” data-reactid=”58″>Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. The investor should try to establish if the expected growth or decline in earnings, whichever the case may be, is priced in. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. If you’re wondering about Barrick Gold’s’s valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Barrick Gold Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Barrick Gold’s three-year median payout ratio to shareholders is 5.9%, which is quite low. This implies that the company is retaining 94% 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.

Additionally, Barrick 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 rise to 25% over the next three years. Consequently, the higher expected payout ratio explains the decline in the company’s expected ROE (to 7.4%) over the same period.