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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. 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. 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 Accsys Technologies (LON:AXS) so let's look a bit deeper.
What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?
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 Accsys Technologies:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.025 = €4.6m ÷ (€207m - €24m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2020).
Therefore, Accsys Technologies has an ROCE of 2.5%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Forestry industry average of 5.6%.
View our latest analysis for Accsys Technologies
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Accsys Technologies compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
The fact that Accsys Technologies is now generating some pre-tax profits from its prior investments is very encouraging. Shareholders would no doubt be pleased with this because the business was loss-making five years ago but is is now generating 2.5% on its capital. And unsurprisingly, like most companies trying to break into the black, Accsys Technologies is utilizing 327% more capital than it was five years ago. This can tell us that the company has plenty of reinvestment opportunities that are able to generate higher returns.
Our Take On Accsys Technologies' ROCE
Overall, Accsys Technologies gets a big tick from us thanks in most part to the fact that it is now profitable and is reinvesting in its business. Since the stock has only returned 36% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. Given that, we'd look further into this stock in case it has more traits that could make it multiply in the long term.
One more thing: We've identified 2 warning signs with Accsys Technologies (at least 1 which is concerning) , and understanding them would certainly be useful.