Is General Dynamics Corporation's (NYSE:GD) Recent Stock Performance Influenced By Its Financials In Any Way?

Simply Wall St · 09/15/2023 11:32

General Dynamics' (NYSE:GD) stock is up by 1.9% 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. Specifically, we decided to study General Dynamics' ROE in this article.

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. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

View our latest analysis for General Dynamics

How Is ROE Calculated?

The formula for return on equity is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for General Dynamics is:

17% = US$3.4b ÷ US$19b (Based on the trailing twelve months to July 2023).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn $0.17 in profit.

What Is The Relationship Between ROE And Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learned that ROE is a measure of a company's profitability. 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. Generally speaking, other things being equal, firms with a high return on equity and profit retention, have a higher growth rate than firms that don’t share these attributes.

General Dynamics' Earnings Growth And 17% ROE

At first glance, General Dynamics seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE compares quite favorably to the industry average of 12%. However, we are curious as to how the high returns still resulted in flat growth for General Dynamics in the past five years. Based on this, we feel that there might be other reasons which haven't been discussed so far in this article that could be hampering the company's growth. Such as, the company pays out a huge portion of its earnings as dividends, or is faced with competitive pressures.

As a next step, we compared General Dynamics' net income growth with the industry and were disappointed to see that the company's growth is lower than the industry average growth of 5.8% in the same period.

past-earnings-growth
NYSE:GD Past Earnings Growth September 15th 2023

Earnings growth is a huge factor in stock valuation. It’s important for an investor to know whether the market has priced in the company's expected earnings growth (or decline). This then helps them determine if the stock is placed for a bright or bleak future. What is GD worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether GD is currently mispriced by the market.

Is General Dynamics Making Efficient Use Of Its Profits?

In spite of a normal three-year median payout ratio of 41% (or a retention ratio of 59%), General Dynamics hasn't seen much growth in its earnings. So there could be some other explanation in that regard. For instance, the company's business may be deteriorating.

Additionally, General Dynamics 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 over the next three years is expected to be approximately 38%. Accordingly, forecasts suggest that General Dynamics' future ROE will be 20% which is again, similar to the current ROE.

Summary

Overall, we feel that General Dynamics certainly does have some positive factors to consider. Yet, the low earnings growth is a bit concerning, especially given that the company has a high rate of return and is reinvesting ma huge portion of its profits. By the looks of it, there could be some other factors, not necessarily in control of the business, that's preventing growth. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. To know more about the latest analysts predictions for the company, check out this visualization of analyst forecasts for the company.