Aflac Incorporated's (NYSE:AFL) Stock's On An Uptrend: Are Strong Financials Guiding The Market?

Simply Wall St · 10/15 10:25

Most readers would already be aware that Aflac's (NYSE:AFL) stock increased significantly by 22% over the past three months. Since the market usually pay for a company’s long-term fundamentals, we decided to study the company’s key performance indicators to see if they could be influencing the market. Specifically, we decided to study Aflac's ROE in this article.

ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

View our latest analysis for Aflac

How Is ROE Calculated?

ROE can be calculated by using the formula:

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

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

21% = US$5.5b ÷ US$26b (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. So, this means that for every $1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of $0.21.

Why Is ROE Important For Earnings Growth?

Thus far, we have learned that ROE measures how efficiently a company is generating its profits. Based on how much of its profits the company chooses to reinvest or "retain", we are then able to evaluate a company's future ability to generate profits. 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 Aflac's Earnings Growth And 21% ROE

At first glance, Aflac seems to have a decent ROE. Especially when compared to the industry average of 13% the company's ROE looks pretty impressive. Probably as a result of this, Aflac was able to see a decent growth of 8.6% over the last five years.

We then performed a comparison between Aflac's net income growth with the industry, which revealed that the company's growth is similar to the average industry growth of 10% in the same 5-year period.

past-earnings-growth
NYSE:AFL Past Earnings Growth October 15th 2024

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. This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. Is AFL fairly valued? This infographic on the company's intrinsic value has everything you need to know.

Is Aflac Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

In Aflac's case, its respectable earnings growth can probably be explained by its low three-year median payout ratio of 21% (or a retention ratio of 79%), which suggests that the company is investing most of its profits to grow its business.

Besides, Aflac has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more. This shows that the company is committed to sharing profits with its shareholders. Looking at the current analyst consensus data, we can see that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 30% over the next three years. Accordingly, the expected increase in the payout ratio explains the expected decline in the company's ROE to 13%, over the same period.

Summary

Overall, we are quite pleased with Aflac's performance. Specifically, we like that the company is reinvesting a huge chunk of its profits at a high rate of return. This of course has caused the company to see substantial growth in its earnings. Having said that, on studying current analyst estimates, we were concerned to see that while the company has grown its earnings in the past, analysts expect its earnings to shrink in the future. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.