SPS Commerce, Inc.'s (NASDAQ:SPSC) recent earnings report didn't offer any surprises, with the shares unchanged over the last week. We did some digging, and we think that investors are missing some encouraging factors in the underlying numbers.

Check out our latest analysis for SPS Commerce

Examining Cashflow Against SPS Commerce's Earnings

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'.

Therefore, it's actually considered a good thing when a company has a negative accrual ratio, but a bad thing if its accrual ratio is positive. 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".

For the year to June 2024, SPS Commerce had an accrual ratio of -0.13. That implies it has good cash conversion, and implies that its free cash flow solidly exceeded its profit last year. Indeed, in the last twelve months it reported free cash flow of US$122m, well over the US$71.9m it reported in profit. SPS Commerce shareholders are no doubt pleased that free cash flow improved over the last twelve months.

That might leave you wondering what analysts are forecasting in terms of future profitability. Luckily, you can click here to see an interactive graph depicting future profitability, based on their estimates.

Our Take On SPS Commerce's Profit Performance

As we discussed above, SPS Commerce has perfectly satisfactory free cash flow relative to profit. Based on this observation, we consider it likely that SPS Commerce's statutory profit actually understates its earnings potential! And on top of that, its earnings per share have grown at 53% per year over the last three years. Of course, we've only just scratched the surface when it comes to analysing its earnings; one could also consider margins, forecast growth, and return on investment, among other factors. In light of this, if you'd like to do more analysis on the company, it's vital to be informed of the risks involved. While conducting our analysis, we found that SPS Commerce has 1 warning sign and it would be unwise to ignore this.