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To find a multi-bagger stock, what are the underlying trends we should look for in a business? Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. Although, when we looked at British American Tobacco (LON:BATS), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.
What is 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. The formula for this calculation on British American Tobacco is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.09 = UK£11b ÷ (UK£137b - UK£15b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).
So, British American Tobacco has an ROCE of 9.0%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Tobacco industry average of 15%.
See our latest analysis for British American Tobacco
In the above chart we have measured British American Tobacco'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.
What Can We Tell From British American Tobacco's ROCE Trend?
On the surface, the trend of ROCE at British American Tobacco doesn't inspire confidence. Around five years ago the returns on capital were 19%, but since then they've fallen to 9.0%. On the other hand, the company has been employing more capital without a corresponding improvement in sales in the last year, which could suggest these investments are longer term plays. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.
On a related note, British American Tobacco has decreased its current liabilities to 11% of total assets. That could partly explain why the ROCE has dropped. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE.
The Key Takeaway
To conclude, we've found that British American Tobacco is reinvesting in the business, but returns have been falling. Since the stock has declined 20% over the last five years, investors may not be too optimistic on this trend improving either. 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.