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Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? Firstly, we'll want to see a proven return on capital employed (ROCE) that is increasing, and secondly, an expanding base of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at Chemring Group (LON:CHG) so let's look a bit deeper.
Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?
For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Chemring Group:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.099 = UK£46m ÷ (UK£637m - UK£174m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to April 2020).
Thus, Chemring Group has an ROCE of 9.9%. In absolute terms, that's a low return but it's around the Aerospace & Defense industry average of 11%.
View our latest analysis for Chemring Group
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Chemring Group compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Chemring Group here for free.
What Can We Tell From Chemring Group's ROCE Trend?
Chemring Group's ROCE growth is quite impressive. More specifically, while the company has kept capital employed relatively flat over the last five years, the ROCE has climbed 520% in that same time. 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. It's worth looking deeper into this though because while it's great that the business is more efficient, it might also mean that going forward the areas to invest internally for the organic growth are lacking.
For the record though, there was a noticeable increase in the company's current liabilities over the period, so we would attribute some of the ROCE growth to that. Effectively this means that suppliers or short-term creditors are now funding 27% of the business, which is more than it was five years ago. It's worth keeping an eye on this because as the percentage of current liabilities to total assets increases, some aspects of risk also increase.
What We Can Learn From Chemring Group's ROCE
In summary, we're delighted to see that Chemring Group has been able to increase efficiencies and earn higher rates of return on the same amount of capital. Since the stock has only returned 32% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.