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If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's 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. Having said that, from a first glance at Darden Restaurants (NYSE:DRI) we aren't jumping out of our chairs at how returns are trending, but let's have a deeper look.
What is 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 Darden Restaurants is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.013 = US$108m ÷ (US$9.9b - US$1.5b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to November 2020).
Thus, Darden Restaurants has an ROCE of 1.3%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Hospitality industry average of 4.6%.
Check out our latest analysis for Darden Restaurants
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Darden Restaurants 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 Darden Restaurants here for free.
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
The trend of ROCE doesn't look fantastic because it's fallen from 17% five years ago, while the business's capital employed increased by 149%. That being said, Darden Restaurants raised some capital prior to their latest results being released, so that could partly explain the increase in capital employed. Darden Restaurants probably hasn't received a full year of earnings yet from the new funds it raised, so these figures should be taken with a grain of salt.
On a side note, Darden Restaurants has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 16% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. What's more, this can reduce some aspects of risk to the business because now the company's suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of its operations. Some would claim this reduces the business' efficiency at generating ROCE since it is now funding more of the operations with its own money.
The Bottom Line
We're a bit apprehensive about Darden Restaurants because despite more capital being deployed in the business, returns on that capital and sales have both fallen. Yet despite these poor fundamentals, the stock has gained a huge 127% over the last five years, so investors appear very optimistic. Regardless, we don't feel too comfortable with the fundamentals so we'd be steering clear of this stock for now.