Life360 (ASX:360) has had a great run on the share market with its stock up by a significant 76% over the last three months. But the company's key financial indicators appear to be differing across the board and that makes us question whether or not the company's current share price momentum can be maintained. Particularly, we will be paying attention to Life360's ROE today.

ROE or return on equity is a useful tool to assess how effectively a company can generate returns on the investment it received from its shareholders. Simply put, it is used to assess the profitability of a company in relation to its equity capital.

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How Do You Calculate Return On Equity?

The formula for ROE is:

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

So, based on the above formula, the ROE for Life360 is:

2.6% = US$9.6m ÷ US$376m (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2025).

The 'return' is the yearly profit. Another way to think of that is that for every A$1 worth of equity, the company was able to earn A$0.03 in profit.

Check out our latest analysis for Life360

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.

Life360's Earnings Growth And 2.6% ROE

It is hard to argue that Life360's ROE is much good in and of itself. Even compared to the average industry ROE of 12%, the company's ROE is quite dismal. Hence, the flat earnings seen by Life360 over the past five years could probably be the result of it having a lower ROE.

Next, on comparing with the industry net income growth, we found that Life360's reported growth was lower than the industry growth of 7.0% over the last few years, which is not something we like to see.

Earnings growth is an important metric to consider when valuing a stock. What investors need to determine next is if the expected earnings growth, or the lack of it, is already built into the share price. By doing so, they will have an idea if the stock is headed into clear blue waters or if swampy waters await. What is 360 worth today? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether 360 is currently mispriced by the market.

Is Life360 Efficiently Re-investing Its Profits?

Life360 doesn't pay any regular dividends, meaning that the company is keeping all of its profits, which makes us wonder why it is retaining its earnings if it can't use them to grow its business. So there might be other factors at play here which could potentially be hampering growth. For example, the business has faced some headwinds.

Summary

Overall, we have mixed feelings about Life360. While the company does have a high rate of reinvestment, the low ROE means that all that reinvestment is not reaping any benefit to its investors, and moreover, its having a negative impact on the earnings growth. Having said that, looking at the current analyst estimates, we found that the company's earnings are expected to gain momentum. 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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