Finding a business that has the potential to grow substantially is not easy, but it is possible if we look at a few key financial metrics. One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. With that in mind, the ROCE of DRA Global (ASX:DRA) looks decent, right now, so lets see what the trend of returns can tell us.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for DRA Global:

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

0.15 = AU$49m ÷ (AU$640m - AU$306m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).

Thus, DRA Global has an ROCE of 15%. That's a relatively normal return on capital, and it's around the 14% generated by the Construction industry.

Check out our latest analysis for DRA Global

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for DRA Global's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you want to delve into the historical earnings, revenue and cash flow of DRA Global, check out these free graphs here.

So How Is DRA Global's ROCE Trending?

The trend of ROCE doesn't stand out much, but returns on a whole are decent. The company has employed 28% more capital in the last four years, and the returns on that capital have remained stable at 15%. Since 15% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Stable returns in this ballpark can be unexciting, but if they can be maintained over the long run, they often provide nice rewards to shareholders.

Another thing to note, DRA Global has a high ratio of current liabilities to total assets of 48%. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

The Key Takeaway

In the end, DRA Global has proven its ability to adequately reinvest capital at good rates of return. Yet over the last year the stock has declined 37%, so the decline might provide an opening. For that reason, savvy investors might want to look further into this company in case it's a prime investment.