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Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. However, after investigating Benchmark Electronics (NYSE:BHE), we don't think it's current trends fit the mold of a multi-bagger.
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. To calculate this metric for Benchmark Electronics, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.055 = US$72m ÷ (US$2.0b - US$684m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2022).
Therefore, Benchmark Electronics has an ROCE of 5.5%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Electronic industry average of 11%.
See our latest analysis for Benchmark Electronics
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Benchmark Electronics 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 Benchmark Electronics here for free.
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
Over the past five years, Benchmark Electronics' ROCE and capital employed have both remained mostly flat. This tells us the company isn't reinvesting in itself, so it's plausible that it's past the growth phase. So unless we see a substantial change at Benchmark Electronics in terms of ROCE and additional investments being made, we wouldn't hold our breath on it being a multi-bagger.
Another point to note, we noticed the company has increased current liabilities over the last five years. This is intriguing because if current liabilities hadn't increased to 34% of total assets, this reported ROCE would probably be less than5.5% because total capital employed would be higher.The 5.5% ROCE could be even lower if current liabilities weren't 34% of total assets, because the the formula would show a larger base of total capital employed. So while current liabilities isn't high right now, keep an eye out in case it increases further, because this can introduce some elements of risk.
In Conclusion...
We can conclude that in regards to Benchmark Electronics' returns on capital employed and the trends, there isn't much change to report on. And in the last five years, the stock has given away 27% so the market doesn't look too hopeful on these trends strengthening any time soon. In any case, the stock doesn't have these traits of a multi-bagger discussed above, so if that's what you're looking for, we think you'd have more luck elsewhere.