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

Simply Wall St · 10/18 10:01

Most readers would already know that AMERISAFE's (NASDAQ:AMSF) stock increased by 8.2% 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. Particularly, we will be paying attention to AMERISAFE'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 other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

View our latest analysis for AMERISAFE

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

Return on equity 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 AMERISAFE is:

19% = US$57m ÷ US$301m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

The 'return' is the income the business earned over the last year. So, this means that for every $1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of $0.19.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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.

AMERISAFE's Earnings Growth And 19% ROE

At first glance, AMERISAFE seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 13%. As you might expect, the 11% net income decline reported by AMERISAFE is a bit of a surprise. 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.

So, as a next step, we compared AMERISAFE's performance against the industry and were disappointed to discover that while the company has been shrinking its earnings, the industry has been growing its earnings at a rate of 10% over the last few years.

past-earnings-growth
NasdaqGS:AMSF Past Earnings Growth October 18th 2024

The basis for attaching value to a company is, to a great extent, tied to its earnings growth. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. Has the market priced in the future outlook for AMSF? You can find out in our latest intrinsic value infographic research report.

Is AMERISAFE Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

Despite having a normal three-year median payout ratio of 42% (where it is retaining 58% of its profits), AMERISAFE has seen a decline in earnings as we saw above. So there could be some other explanations in that regard. For instance, the company's business may be deteriorating.

Additionally, AMERISAFE has paid dividends over a period of at least ten years, which means that the company's management is determined to pay dividends even if it means little to no earnings growth. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company is expected to rise to 77% over the next three years. Therefore, the expected rise in the payout ratio explains why the company's ROE is expected to decline to 14% over the same period.

Summary

In total, it does look like AMERISAFE 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. Additionally, the latest industry analyst forecasts show that analysts expect the company's earnings to continue to shrink in the future. Are these analysts expectations based on the broad expectations for the industry, or on the company's fundamentals? Click here to be taken to our analyst's forecasts page for the company.