With its stock down 22% over the past three months, it is easy to disregard California Resources (NYSE:CRC). However, stock prices are usually driven by a company’s financial performance over the long term, which in this case looks quite promising. Particularly, we will be paying attention to California Resources' ROE today.

Return on Equity or ROE is a test of how effectively a company is growing its value and managing investors’ money. Put another way, it reveals the company's success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

View our latest analysis for California Resources

How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

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 California Resources is:

15% = US$531m ÷ US$3.5b (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

The 'return' is the profit over the last twelve months. So, this means that for every $1 of its shareholder's investments, the company generates a profit of $0.15.

What Has ROE Got To Do With Earnings Growth?

We have already established that ROE serves as an efficient profit-generating gauge for a company's future earnings. 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.

California Resources' Earnings Growth And 15% ROE

At first glance, California Resources seems to have a decent ROE. Further, the company's ROE is similar to the industry average of 14%. Consequently, this likely laid the ground for the decent growth of 10% seen over the past five years by California Resources.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that California Resources' reported growth was lower than the industry growth of 39% over the last few years, which is not something we like to see.

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). Doing so will help them establish if the stock's future looks promising or ominous. What is CRC worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether CRC is currently mispriced by the market.

Is California Resources Using Its Retained Earnings Effectively?

In California Resources' case, its respectable earnings growth can probably be explained by its low three-year median payout ratio of 9.7% (or a retention ratio of 90%), which suggests that the company is investing most of its profits to grow its business.

Moreover, California Resources is determined to keep sharing its profits with shareholders which we infer from its long history of three years of paying a dividend. Upon studying the latest analysts' consensus data, we found that the company's future payout ratio is expected to rise to 36% over the next three years. Consequently, the higher expected payout ratio explains the decline in the company's expected ROE (to 8.8%) over the same period.

Summary

On the whole, we feel that California Resources' performance has been quite good. 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 a good amount of 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 company's future earnings growth forecasts take a look at this free report on analyst forecasts for the company to find out more.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.