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Finance and capital markets
Course: Finance and capital markets > Unit 6
Lesson 4: Corporate metrics and valuationROA discussion 1
A discussion of the various ways to measure return on assets. Created by Sal Khan.
Want to join the conversation?
- Does a publicly traded company actually receive money when the market price of its share increases? How does it benefit/suffer financially from a higher or lower market share price?(3 votes)
- I am only starting to learn about finance, but I think that the company does not directly benefit from its own share price increasing, unless the company itself has bought some of these shares. Only in the initial public offering (IPO) does the company get money because this is when the shares of the company are first sold by the company to investors.
Indirectly, the company does benefit because it will keep the company stockholders happy. Remember that stockholders have certain powers which they can exert on the company if they are not happy with how things are going. Therefore the company will have to keep doing well so that the stock price goes higher (it usually follows company performance) which in turn keeps the stockholders happy.(5 votes)
- Does net income of a company always considers its non-operating profit into the equation? If so, does that mean ratios like P/E and EPS also considers non-operating profit into calculation?(2 votes)
- A company will often list 'net income' and 'net income from continuing operations.' The latter omits one time charges that won't be part of the company's business in the future. You can calculate P/E and EPS using either number, although most will use net income from continuing operations.(1 vote)
- when calculating ROA, how do I find after-tax operating income(1 vote)
- Yes, you can subtract tax from operating income, but remember that you don't need after-tax operating income to calculate RoA (if you are doing it like Sal). You need EBIT/TA.(2 votes)
- What about Operating Profit / Operating Assets, I think it's the best way to know how well the management perform in generating profit from their core business (not from cap. market investment, parked cash, financing, tax efficiency, etc.). Is it representative?(1 vote)
- I am not sure why you would compare OP to a market value number like EV to gauge management performance. Maybe OP/assets would be better. OP/EV would be a useful valuation metric though if you were planning to buy the company.(1 vote)
- For the ROA definition that is calculated by "(Net Income + interest - tax savings) / assets," what is the purpose of unwinding the debt and tax effects on your money? Why is this metric relevant compared with the other definition?(1 vote)
- You have to unwind the debt effect because the point is to see how productive the assets are. The assets don't just generate income to equity holders, they also generate income to debt holders. Companies can alter their financing structure by borrowing money or by issuing stock, but their assets are their assets.(1 vote)
- Then you would see return on equity without being affected by other actions. Wouldn’t that be a better tool? Is there a ratio where you use EBIT/Equity? And my last question Regarding ROI, I have seen different definitions on the net, like NI/TA. Is ROI the same as ROA post tax? And are u using ROI pre tax? which would equal ROA? Contempl. from Sweden very early in the morning!:) Thanks for all your effort and energy you put in to this project, you are amazing Sal! Thank you! Best regards /Håkan(1 vote)
- Should one be suspicious about a company that does not have a lot of operating revenue compared to revenue from interest?
Also, is a low ROA or a high ROA good or bad?(1 vote) - HI Sal,
I am trying to determine how is the tax rate identified in a ROA equation?(1 vote) - Does depreciation come under operating profit or non operating profit ?(1 vote)
- I have a question regarding the definition of the assets when calculating ROA. Are assets valued at market value or book value?
Intuitively I would think that book value would be more appropriate if one want to relate the earning streams generated by the assets. If I buy a machine for $100K and it generates $10 per any arbitrary time unit, a market valuation of those assets to say $200K seems to me like it would distort the actual underlying assets generating the income streams. The doubling of the value of the machine doesn't mean I have twice as many machines working for me. But if the assets are to be valued at market value, what is the rationale for that?(1 vote)
Video transcript
One of the viewers pointed out
not incorrectly that one definition of return on asset--
so this whole video's going to be on return on asset--
that one definition of return on asset, and if you
look it up on some of the finance sites or even some
finance textbooks, they'll tell you it's net income
over total assets. Which is different from
what I told you. And other sources, namely
Wikipedia, will tell you that it is actually-- so this
is one definition of return on asset. Another definition
is net income. I'll just abbreviate
that as NI. Net income plus interest. So
they're adding back your interest. And then they're
subtracting out the tax savings due to interest. And we could a whole video on
the tax savings from interest. And when it makes more sense
to raise money with debt versus equity, because of the
cost of interest. But that also increases your chance
of bankruptcy, the more debt you take on. We could do a series
of videos on that. But tax savings from interest.
Divided by assets. This is a definition that
Wikipedia gives you. And then the very first
definition I gave you was operating profit over assets. And then I'll add one more
definition to this video, just because I think it's worth
talking about. And I think this is kind of a
general theme in finance, is that there's all these
formulas for things. And people memorize them. But in the process, you lose
a lot of the intuition. And it's also important to
realize that there are multiple ways of defining the
exact same terms. So people can confidently say
the ROA is this. And you know what? It's never a bad question
to ask them what they mean by ROA. And I think you'll also be
surprised by how many people won't be able to tell you
what they mean by ROA. But then the last one, if I have
time to go over, we'll call it EBIT. I know that look like
a very strange word. EBIT divided by assets. But just so you know what EBIT
is, EBIT is just Earnings Before Interest and Taxes. So this is just the same thing
as net income plus interest plus taxes. So it's kind of a pre-tax
ROA divided by assets. So these are all different
things. And you might already say, wait
if I took net income-- let's actually talk about
this for a second. Let's compare EBIT to
operating profit. You might immediately say, if
I took net income-- so let's remember EBIT is just an acronym
for Earnings Before Interest and Taxes. So let's see. If our earnings are $350,000. And we were to add back the
taxes and the interest. So we add back the taxes, which
gets us to pre-tax. And we add back the interest,
at least in this example, we get to an operating
profit number. So you might say, why is there
a different term EBIT instead of, why don't people just always
use operating profit? And the reason why there's a
different term is, sometimes you can have the non-operating
profit. So let's say that out of this
$10 million of assets-- and I didn't go there in the first
example because I didn't really want to complicate the
issue, but I'll complicate the issue a little bit now. Let's say out of this $10
million of assets, let's say that $9 million are
operating assets. They're the enterprise. They're the things that are
needed to generate the operating profit. And then you had another
$1 million of assets of this $10 million. That the company really doesn't
need to operate. They just have it around. Maybe they're speculating
on oil prices. Or they're just hedging
something. Or they just have a super
flush bank account. So these assets might
be generating non-operating income. So you could have a line here
for interest income or investment income. Let me put that. Investment income. And then the company might have
made some money there. It might make $10,000 on
investment income. And of course that'll
drop to this line. This'll then become $510,000. The taxes will be $153,000. And the net income
is $357,000. Because we have a
30% tax rate. And that make sense, right? I added an extra $10,000
of income here. And then at the end of the day,
you're going to tax at 30%, so this should be $7,000
more of earnings. So that makes sense. $357,000. But this is the difference
between operating income and EBIT. EBIT in this case would be the
operating profit plus this investment income. So EBIT, in the case that I
just added some investment income, would be $1,010,000,
while operating profit would be $1 million. I didn't want to go there in
the first video, and that's why I just said operating profit
divided by assets. But if you really consider all
of the assets, and if you assume that there are some
assets there that are non-operating. They're not really used to
make widgets, or to sell widgets or market widgets, or
help the CEO in any way do his or her job. Then whatever this generates
is actually non-operating income. And so EBIT factors that in. So EBIT, I kind of view that
it goes backwards. It starts with net income. And then it adds back the taxes
and interest. While operating profit, you start at
the top line and you go down. But in general if you take
EBIT and you take out the non-operating income, you get
back to operating profits. So that's what EBIT
is right here. And so you can already imagine
that both EBIT and the way I defined it initially, operating profit divided by assets. They're ways of saying, before
you consider taxes, what are your assets doing for you? So once again, if this is a
balance sheet, this is the assets, here are your
liabilities. Debt could be one of them. But in general it could be
a bunch of other things. You might owe other vendors
money or whatever. Then you have your equity. It's important whenever
you talk about any of these ratios. What context? Are you trying to pass the CFA
exam, or are you trying to impress your MBA professor? Or are you trying to get an
intuition for helping to become a better investor? And if you are an investor,
you're probably going to want to do the last of the three. And there, ROA, the Return on
Assets is telling you, how good is this company at getting
a return out of this thing right here? I don't care how they paid for
it, whether they had debt. I don't want to think
about, are they good at getting low interest? I don't want to think about, is
their CFO good at getting a better interest rate
than another CFO? Or are they better at evading
taxes than another company? All I care is the assets that
they have, how good are they at putting those
assets to work? And what type of a return
can they get? So if I calculate it using you
EBIT divided by assets, or operating profit divided by
assets, if I use either of these as my metric for ROA and
Company A has a 10% ROA and Company B has a 15% ROA, then
I say, you know what? I don't care whether B's guy
is better at getting a low interest rate. Or getting some type of tax
handout from the government. Or doing something fancy
with where he keeps his subsidiaries. I just want to know which
management is better at getting a return out
of these assets. And these metrics will
tell you that. Because it tells you either how
much operating profit is being generated from here,
or it could tell you how much EBIT. In this case, an EBIT might be a
little bit more informative. Because some of income might
be generated from non-operating assets. So maybe the company holds some
stock, or it holds some gold or something. Or it holds some forward
contracts to hedge its exposure to oil or foreign
currency or something. So in general if you want to
know what I think is the best ROA, I would say it's EBIT over
assets, which is very close to operating profit
over assets. And now you say, well Sal, why
are these other things here? And why don't you like
them as much? Well, net income over assets,
I think the reason why that definition exists is because:
one, net income does factor into these things that frankly
I didn't want to think as much about. But when you talk about return,
what you get off the asset, you still are going
to pay taxes on them. And if you do have some
financing, you will be paying some interest on that. So that's why this comes out. Where they actually just
take the bottom line. When people talk about top line
and bottom line, now you know where those words
come from. Top line is revenue. It's the top line of the
income statement. And your bottom line, that's
the bottom line of the income statement. That's where the word
comes from. So that one definition takes
this and they divide by the total assets. But the reason why I don't like
that is this definition does not separate out that one
company might be better at evading taxes or paying taxes. And another company might be
better at somehow getting better financing
from the bank. And that's not what matters. I care about the assets. I care just about the
left-hand side of the balance sheet. While this is taking into
consideration some of the factors on that side of
the balance sheet. For example, let's say you have
two identical companies. This could be an interesting
example. You have one company-- Actually
I just realized I'm out of time. I'll continue the example in
the next video, and I'll explain a little bit about the
tax savings from carrying debt or interest. See you
in the next video.