One of the best investments we can make is in our own knowledge and skill set. With that in mind, this article will work through how we can use Return On Equity (ROE) to better understand a business. To keep the lesson grounded in practicality, we’ll use ROE to better understand Just Group plc (LON:JUST).

Return on equity or ROE is a key measure used to assess how efficiently a company’s management is utilizing the company’s capital. Put another way, it reveals the company’s success at turning shareholder investments into profits.

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The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Just Group is:

6.4% = UK£80m ÷ UK£1.2b (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024).

The ‘return’ is the amount earned after tax over the last twelve months. That means that for every £1 worth of shareholders’ equity, the company generated £0.06 in profit.

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By comparing a company’s ROE with its industry average, we can get a quick measure of how good it is. The limitation of this approach is that some companies are quite different from others, even within the same industry classification. If you look at the image below, you can see Just Group has a lower ROE than the average (13%) in the Insurance industry classification.

Unfortunately, that’s sub-optimal. That being said, a low ROE is not always a bad thing, especially if the company has low leverage as this still leaves room for improvement if the company were to take on more debt. When a company has low ROE but high debt levels, we would be cautious as the risk involved is too high.

Virtually all companies need money to invest in the business, to grow profits. The cash for investment can come from prior year profits (retained earnings), issuing new shares, or borrowing. In the case of the first and second options, the ROE will reflect this use of cash, for growth. In the latter case, the use of debt will improve the returns, but will not change the equity. In this manner the use of debt will boost ROE, even though the core economics of the business stay the same.

It seems that Just Group uses a huge volume of debt to fund the business, since it has an extremely high debt to equity ratio of 5.24. Most investors would need a low share price to be interested in a company with low ROE and high debt to equity.