While some investors are already well versed in financial metrics (hat tip),bay area badminton tournaments this article is for those who would like to learn about Return On Equity (ROE) and why it is important. We’ll use ROE to examine Hormel Foods Corporation (

NYSE:HRL

), by way of a worked example.

Hormel Foods has a ROE of 18%

, based on the last twelve months. That means that for every $1 worth of shareholders’ equity, it generated $0.18 in profit.

Check out our latest analysis for Hormel Foods

How Do You Calculate ROE?

The

formula for ROE

is:

Return on Equity = Net Profit ÷ Shareholders’ Equity

Or for Hormel Foods:

18% = 1012.14 ÷ US$5.6b (Based on the trailing twelve months to October 2018.)

Most know that net profit is the total earnings after all expenses, but the concept of shareholders’ equity is a little more complicated. It is the capital paid in by shareholders, plus any retained earnings. The easiest way to calculate shareholders’ equity is to subtract the company’s total liabilities from the total assets.

What Does ROE Signify?

Return on Equity measures a company’s profitability against the profit it has kept for the business (plus any capital injections). The ‘return’ is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. A higher profit will lead to a higher ROE. So, all else being equal,

a high ROE is better than a low one

. That means ROE can be used to compare two businesses.

Does Hormel Foods Have A Good ROE?

By comparing a company’s ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. However, this method is only useful as a rough check, because companies do differ quite a bit within the same industry classification. Pleasingly, Hormel Foods has a superior ROE than the average (14%) company in the Food industry.

NYSE:HRL Last Perf January 1st 19

That is a good sign. In my book, a high ROE almost always warrants a closer look. For example

you might check

if insiders are buying shares.

The Importance Of Debt To Return On Equity

Companies usually need to invest money to grow their profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the first and second cases, the ROE will reflect this use of cash for investment in the business. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. That will make the ROE look better than if no debt was used.

Hormel Foods’s Debt And Its 18% ROE

Hormel Foods has a debt to equity ratio of 0.11, which is far from excessive. Its very respectable ROE, combined with only modest debt, suggests the business is in good shape. Conservative use of debt to boost returns is usually a good move for shareholders, though it does leave the company more exposed to interest rate rises.

Story continues

But It’s Just One Metric

Return on equity is one way we can compare the business quality of different companies. A company that can achieve a high return on equity without debt could be considered a high quality business. If two companies have the same ROE, then I would generally prefer the one with less debt.

But ROE is just one piece of a bigger puzzle, since high quality businesses often trade on high multiples of earnings. It is important to consider other factors, such as future profit growth — and how much investment is required going forward. So you might want to take a peek at this

data-rich interactive graph of forecasts for the company

.

If you would prefer check out another company — one with potentially superior financials — then do not miss this

free

list of interesting companies, that have HIGH return on equity and low debt.

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

[email protected]

.

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