The market rallied behind Qantas Airways Limited's (ASX:QAN) stock, leading do a rise in the share price after its recent weak earnings report. While shareholders may be willing to overlook soft profit numbers, we believe that they should also be taking into account some other factors which may be cause for concern.

View our latest analysis for Qantas Airways

Zooming In On Qantas Airways' Earnings

As finance nerds would already know, the accrual ratio from cashflow is a key measure for assessing how well a company's free cash flow (FCF) matches its profit. To get the accrual ratio we first subtract FCF from profit for a period, and then divide that number by the average operating assets for the period. This ratio tells us how much of a company's profit is not backed by free cashflow.

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. That is not intended to imply we should worry about a positive accrual ratio, but it's worth noting where the accrual ratio is rather high. To quote a 2014 paper by Lewellen and Resutek, "firms with higher accruals tend to be less profitable in the future".

Qantas Airways has an accrual ratio of 0.21 for the year to June 2024. Therefore, we know that it's free cashflow was significantly lower than its statutory profit, which is hardly a good thing. To wit, it produced free cash flow of AU$680m during the period, falling well short of its reported profit of AU$1.26b. Qantas Airways shareholders will no doubt be hoping that its free cash flow bounces back next year, since it was down over the last twelve months. The good news for shareholders is that Qantas Airways' accrual ratio was much better last year, so this year's poor reading might simply be a case of a short term mismatch between profit and FCF. As a result, some shareholders may be looking for stronger cash conversion in the current year.

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 Qantas Airways' Profit Performance

Qantas Airways didn't convert much of its profit to free cash flow in the last year, which some investors may consider rather suboptimal. Because of this, we think that it may be that Qantas Airways' statutory profits are better than its underlying earnings power. In further bad news, its earnings per share decreased in the last year. The goal of this article has been to assess how well we can rely on the statutory earnings to reflect the company's potential, but there is plenty more to consider. Keep in mind, when it comes to analysing a stock it's worth noting the risks involved. To help with this, we've discovered 3 warning signs (1 is a bit unpleasant!) that you ought to be aware of before buying any shares in Qantas Airways.