It is hard to get excited after looking at Duxton Water's (ASX:D2O) recent performance, when its stock has declined 6.1% over the past week. However, the company's fundamentals look pretty decent, and long-term financials are usually aligned with future market price movements. In this article, we decided to focus on Duxton Water's ROE.

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.

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Duxton Water is:

5.9% = AU$12m ÷ AU$201m (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. Another way to think of that is that for every A$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn A$0.06 in profit.

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. 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.

At first glance, Duxton Water's ROE doesn't look very promising. A quick further study shows that the company's ROE doesn't compare favorably to the industry average of 8.5% either. Although, we can see that Duxton Water saw a modest net income growth of 6.9% over the past five years. So, the growth in the company's earnings could probably have been caused by other variables. For instance, the company has a low payout ratio or is being managed efficiently.

We then compared Duxton Water's net income growth with the industry and we're pleased to see that the company's growth figure is higher when compared with the industry which has a growth rate of 5.6% in the same 5-year period.

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

Duxton Water has a significant three-year median payout ratio of 88%, meaning that it is left with only 12% to reinvest into its business. This implies that the company has been able to achieve decent earnings growth despite returning most of its profits to shareholders.

Moreover, Duxton Water is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of seven years of paying a dividend.

Overall, we feel that Duxton Water certainly does have some positive factors to consider. Namely, its high earnings growth. We do however feel that the earnings growth number could have been even higher, had the company been reinvesting more of its earnings and paid out less dividends. 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.