Declining Stock and Decent Financials: Is The Market Wrong About Enfusion, Inc. (NYSE:ENFN)?

Simply Wall St · 01/29 10:44

Enfusion (NYSE:ENFN) has had a rough month with its share price down 13%. However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Enfusion's ROE today.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

See our latest analysis for Enfusion

How Is ROE Calculated?

The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Enfusion is:

12% = US$9.1m ÷ US$73m (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. One way to conceptualize this is that for each $1 of shareholders' capital it has, the company made $0.12 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. 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. Assuming everything else remains unchanged, the higher the ROE and profit retention, the higher the growth rate of a company compared to companies that don't necessarily bear these characteristics.

Enfusion's Earnings Growth And 12% ROE

To start with, Enfusion's ROE looks acceptable. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 9.8% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. Needless to say, we are quite surprised to see that Enfusion's net income shrunk at a rate of 19% over the past five years. We reckon that there could be some other factors at play here that are preventing the company's growth. For example, it could be that the company has a high payout ratio or the business has allocated capital poorly, for instance.

That being said, we compared Enfusion's performance with the industry and were concerned when we found that while the company has shrunk its earnings, the industry has grown its earnings at a rate of 17% in the same 5-year period.

past-earnings-growth
NYSE:ENFN Past Earnings Growth January 29th 2024

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. What is ENFN worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether ENFN is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Enfusion Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Because Enfusion doesn't pay any dividends, we infer that it is retaining all of its profits, which is rather perplexing when you consider the fact that there is no earnings growth to show for it. It looks like there might be some other reasons to explain the lack in that respect. For example, the business could be in decline.

Summary

In total, it does look like Enfusion has some positive aspects to its business. However, given the high ROE and high profit retention, we would expect the company to be delivering strong earnings growth, but that isn't the case here. This suggests that there might be some external threat to the business, that's hampering its growth. That being so, the latest industry analyst forecasts show that the analysts are expecting to see a huge improvement in the company's earnings growth rate. To know more about the company's future earnings growth forecasts take a look at this free report on analyst forecasts for the company to find out more.