Unsurprisingly, Intraco Limited’s (SGX:I06) stock price was strong on the back of its healthy earnings report. However, our analysis suggests that shareholders may be missing some factors that indicate the earnings result was not as good as it looked.
See our latest analysis for Intraco
As finance nerds would already know, the accrual ratio from cashflow is a key measure for assessing how well a company’s free cash flow (FCF) matches its profit. To get the accrual ratio we first subtract FCF from profit for a period, and then divide that number by the average operating assets for the period. You could think of the accrual ratio from cashflow as the ‘non-FCF profit ratio’.
That means a negative accrual ratio is a good thing, because it shows that the company is bringing in more free cash flow than its profit would suggest. While it’s not a problem to have a positive accrual ratio, indicating a certain level of non-cash profits, a high accrual ratio is arguably a bad thing, because it indicates paper profits are not matched by cash flow. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, “firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future”.
Intraco has an accrual ratio of 0.42 for the year to June 2024. As a general rule, that bodes poorly for future profitability. To wit, the company did not generate one whit of free cashflow in that time. In the last twelve months it actually had negative free cash flow, with an outflow of S$11m despite its profit of S$3.05m, mentioned above. We saw that FCF was S$4.0m a year ago though, so Intraco has at least been able to generate positive FCF in the past. The good news for shareholders is that Intraco’s accrual ratio was much better last year, so this year’s poor reading might simply be a case of a short term mismatch between profit and FCF. Shareholders should look for improved cashflow relative to profit in the current year, if that is indeed the case.
Note: we always recommend investors check balance sheet strength. Click here to be taken to our balance sheet analysis of Intraco.
As we have made quite clear, we’re a bit worried that Intraco didn’t back up the last year’s profit with free cashflow. For this reason, we think that Intraco’s statutory profits may be a bad guide to its underlying earnings power, and might give investors an overly positive impression of the company. The silver lining is that its EPS growth over the last year has been really wonderful, even if it’s not a perfect measure. At the end of the day, it’s essential to consider more than just the factors above, if you want to understand the company properly. With this in mind, we wouldn’t consider investing in a stock unless we had a thorough understanding of the risks. For instance, we’ve identified 2 warning signs for Intraco (1 is concerning) you should be familiar with.
This note has only looked at a single factor that sheds light on the nature of Intraco’s profit. But there are plenty of other ways to inform your opinion of a company. For example, many people consider a high return on equity as an indication of favorable business economics, while others like to ‘follow the money’ and search out stocks that insiders are buying. While it might take a little research on your behalf, you may find this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks with significant insider holdings to be useful.