If you're looking at a mature business that's past the growth phase, what are some of the underlying trends that pop up? Businesses in decline often have two underlying trends, firstly, a declining return on capital employed (ROCE) and a declining base of capital employed. This reveals that the company isn't compounding shareholder wealth because returns are falling and its net asset base is shrinking. Having said that, after a brief look, InNature Berhad (KLSE:INNATURE) we aren't filled with optimism, but let's investigate further.

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for InNature Berhad:

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

0.17 = RM25m ÷ (RM178m - RM29m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2023).

Thus, InNature Berhad has an ROCE of 17%. In absolute terms, that's a pretty normal return, and it's somewhat close to the Specialty Retail industry average of 19%.

Check out our latest analysis for InNature Berhad

In the above chart we have measured InNature Berhad's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

So How Is InNature Berhad's ROCE Trending?

In terms of InNature Berhad's historical ROCE movements, the trend doesn't inspire confidence. To be more specific, the ROCE was 24% five years ago, but since then it has dropped noticeably. Meanwhile, capital employed in the business has stayed roughly the flat over the period. This combination can be indicative of a mature business that still has areas to deploy capital, but the returns received aren't as high due potentially to new competition or smaller margins. So because these trends aren't typically conducive to creating a multi-bagger, we wouldn't hold our breath on InNature Berhad becoming one if things continue as they have.

What We Can Learn From InNature Berhad's ROCE

In summary, it's unfortunate that InNature Berhad is generating lower returns from the same amount of capital. Yet despite these concerning fundamentals, the stock has performed strongly with a 69% return over the last three years, so investors appear very optimistic. In any case, the current underlying trends don't bode well for long term performance so unless they reverse, we'd start looking elsewhere.