Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. So when we looked at Kin and Carta (LON:KCT) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.
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 Kin and Carta, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.087 = UK£10m ÷ (UK£170m - UK£52m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to January 2023).
Therefore, Kin and Carta has an ROCE of 8.7%. In absolute terms, that's a low return but it's around the IT industry average of 11%.
See our latest analysis for Kin and Carta
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Kin and Carta 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 Kin and Carta here for free.
What Does the ROCE Trend For Kin and Carta Tell Us?
It's great to see that Kin and Carta has started to generate some pre-tax earnings from prior investments. While the business is profitable now, it used to be incurring losses on invested capital five years ago. Additionally, the business is utilizing 20% less capital than it was five years ago, and taken at face value, that can mean the company needs less funds at work to get a return. This could potentially mean that the company is selling some of its assets.
On a related note, the company's ratio of current liabilities to total assets has decreased to 30%, which basically reduces it's funding from the likes of short-term creditors or suppliers. Therefore we can rest assured that the growth in ROCE is a result of the business' fundamental improvements, rather than a cooking class featuring this company's books.
In Conclusion...
In summary, it's great to see that Kin and Carta has been able to turn things around and earn higher returns on lower amounts of capital. Considering the stock has delivered 0.1% to its stockholders over the last five years, it may be fair to think that investors aren't fully aware of the promising trends yet. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.