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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. Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. Put simply, these types of businesses are compounding machines, meaning they are continually reinvesting their earnings at ever-higher rates of return. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at OM Holdings (ASX:OMH) so let's look a bit deeper.
Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)
For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on OM Holdings is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.024 = AU$22m ÷ (AU$1.2b - AU$318m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).
Therefore, OM Holdings has an ROCE of 2.4%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Metals and Mining industry average of 9.6%.
View our latest analysis for OM Holdings
While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you want to delve into the historical earnings, revenue and cash flow of OM Holdings, check out these free graphs here.
The Trend Of ROCE
OM Holdings has broken into the black (profitability) and we're sure it's a sight for sore eyes. While the business was unprofitable in the past, it's now turned things around and is earning 2.4% on its capital. On top of that, what's interesting is that the amount of capital being employed has remained steady, so the business hasn't needed to put any additional money to work to generate these higher returns. With no noticeable increase in capital employed, it's worth knowing what the company plans on doing going forward in regards to reinvesting and growing the business. Because in the end, a business can only get so efficient.
The Bottom Line
To sum it up, OM Holdings is collecting higher returns from the same amount of capital, and that's impressive. And a remarkable 169% total return over the last five years tells us that investors are expecting more good things to come in the future. In light of that, we think it's worth looking further into this stock because if OM Holdings can keep these trends up, it could have a bright future ahead.