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Are Steelcase Inc.'s (NYSE:SCS) Fundamentals Good Enough to Warrant Buying Given The Stock's Recent Weakness?

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It is hard to get excited after looking at Steelcase's (NYSE:SCS) recent performance, when its stock has declined 42% over the past three months. 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 Steelcase's ROE today.

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. In other words, it is a profitability ratio which measures the rate of return on the capital provided by the company's shareholders.

See our latest analysis for Steelcase

How To Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:


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

21% = US$200m ÷ US$970m (Based on the trailing twelve months to February 2020).

The 'return' refers to a company's earnings over the last year. Another way to think of that is that for every $1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn $0.21 in profit.

What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?

So far, we've learnt 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.

Steelcase's Earnings Growth And 21% ROE

To begin with, Steelcase seems to have a respectable ROE. On comparing with the average industry ROE of 12% the company's ROE looks pretty remarkable. Despite this, Steelcase's five year net income growth was quite low averaging at only 3.8%. This is generally not the case as when a company has a high rate of return it should usually also have a high earnings growth rate. A few likely reasons why this could happen is that the company could have a high payout ratio or the business has allocated capital poorly, for instance.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Steelcase's reported growth was lower than the industry growth of 15% in the same period, which is not something we like to see.

NYSE:SCS Past Earnings Growth May 11th 2020
NYSE:SCS Past Earnings Growth May 11th 2020

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. 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. If you're wondering about Steelcase's's valuation, check out this gauge of its price-to-earnings ratio, as compared to its industry.

Is Steelcase Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

With a high three-year median payout ratio of 53% (or a retention ratio of 47%), most of Steelcase's profits are being paid to shareholders. This definitely contributes to the low earnings growth seen by the company.

Moreover, Steelcase has been paying dividends for at least ten years or more suggesting that management must have perceived that the shareholders prefer dividends over earnings growth. Our latest analyst data shows that the future payout ratio of the company is expected to rise to 69% over the next three years. Consequently, the higher expected payout ratio explains the decline in the company's expected ROE (to 5.4%) over the same period.


On the whole, we do feel that Steelcase has some positive attributes. Although, we are disappointed to see a lack of growth in earnings even in spite of a high ROE. Bear in mind, the company reinvests a small portion of its profits, which means that investors aren't reaping the benefits of the high rate of return. With that said, on studying the latest analyst forecasts, we found that while the company has seen growth in its past earnings, analysts expect its future earnings to shrink. 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.

