If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. Speaking of which, we noticed some great changes in Balfour Beatty's (LON:BBY) returns on capital, so let's have a look.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. To calculate this metric for Balfour Beatty, this is the formula:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

0.074 = UK£170m ÷ (UK£5.0b - UK£2.7b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

Therefore, Balfour Beatty has an ROCE of 7.4%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Construction industry average of 12%.

View our latest analysis for Balfour Beatty

In the above chart we have measured Balfour Beatty's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for Balfour Beatty.

What Can We Tell From Balfour Beatty's ROCE Trend?

Balfour Beatty has not disappointed with their ROCE growth. The figures show that over the last five years, ROCE has grown 217% whilst employing roughly the same amount of capital. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. The company is doing well in that sense, and it's worth investigating what the management team has planned for long term growth prospects.

On a side note, Balfour Beatty's current liabilities are still rather high at 54% of total assets. This effectively means that suppliers (or short-term creditors) are funding a large portion of the business, so just be aware that this can introduce some elements of risk. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

Our Take On Balfour Beatty's ROCE

To bring it all together, Balfour Beatty has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. Investors may not be impressed by the favorable underlying trends yet because over the last five years the stock has only returned 30% to shareholders. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.