Why Red Hill Minerals' (ASX:RHI) Healthy Earnings Aren't As Good As They Seem

Yahoo

18-03-2025

Investors appear disappointed with Red Hill Minerals Limited's (ASX:RHI) recent earnings, despite the decent statutory profit number. We think that they may be worried about something else, so we did some analysis and found that investors have noticed some soft numbers underlying the profit.
Check out our latest analysis for Red Hill Minerals
One key financial ratio used to measure how well a company converts its profit to free cash flow (FCF) is the accrual ratio. The accrual ratio subtracts the FCF from the profit for a given period, and divides the result by the average operating assets of the company over that time. You could think of the accrual ratio from cashflow as the 'non-FCF profit ratio'.
As a result, a negative accrual ratio is a positive for the company, and a positive accrual ratio is a negative. While having an accrual ratio above zero is of little concern, we do think it's worth noting when a company has a relatively high accrual ratio. Notably, there is some academic evidence that suggests that a high accrual ratio is a bad sign for near-term profits, generally speaking.
Red Hill Minerals has an accrual ratio of 11.38 for the year to December 2024. Statistically speaking, that's a real negative for future earnings. 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 AU$44m despite its profit of AU$158.3m, mentioned above. We also note that Red Hill Minerals' free cash flow was actually negative last year as well, so we could understand if shareholders were bothered by its outflow of AU$44m. However, that's not all there is to consider. We can see that unusual items have impacted its statutory profit, and therefore the accrual ratio.
Note: we always recommend investors check balance sheet strength. Click here to be taken to our balance sheet analysis of Red Hill Minerals.
The fact that the company had unusual items boosting profit by AU$200m, in the last year, probably goes some way to explain why its accrual ratio was so weak. We can't deny that higher profits generally leave us optimistic, but we'd prefer it if the profit were to be sustainable. We ran the numbers on most publicly listed companies worldwide, and it's very common for unusual items to be once-off in nature. And, after all, that's exactly what the accounting terminology implies. Red Hill Minerals had a rather significant contribution from unusual items relative to its profit to December 2024. As a result, we can surmise that the unusual items are making its statutory profit significantly stronger than it would otherwise be.
Red Hill Minerals had a weak accrual ratio, but its profit did receive a boost from unusual items. For all the reasons mentioned above, we think that, at a glance, Red Hill Minerals' statutory profits could be considered to be low quality, because they are likely to give investors an overly positive impression of the company. With this in mind, we wouldn't consider investing in a stock unless we had a thorough understanding of the risks. For example, Red Hill Minerals has 2 warning signs (and 1 which is significant) we think you should know about.
In this article we've looked at a number of factors that can impair the utility of profit numbers, and we've come away cautious. But there is always more to discover if you are capable of focussing your mind on minutiae. 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. So you may wish to see this free collection of companies boasting high return on equity, or this list of stocks with high insider ownership.
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