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What are the early trends we should look for to identify a stock that could multiply in value over the long term? 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 Northwest Pipe (NASDAQ:NWPX) so let's look a bit deeper.
Understanding 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. The formula for this calculation on Northwest Pipe is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.088 = US$29m ÷ (US$367m - US$38m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).
Thus, Northwest Pipe has an ROCE of 8.8%. On its own, that's a low figure but it's around the 10% average generated by the Construction industry.
View our latest analysis for Northwest Pipe
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Northwest Pipe 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.
So How Is Northwest Pipe's ROCE Trending?
We're delighted to see that Northwest Pipe is reaping rewards from its investments and is now generating some pre-tax profits. Shareholders would no doubt be pleased with this because the business was loss-making five years ago but is is now generating 8.8% on its capital. Not only that, but the company is utilizing 29% more capital than before, but that's to be expected from a company trying to break into profitability. This can indicate that there's plenty of opportunities to invest capital internally and at ever higher rates, both common traits of a multi-bagger.
The Key Takeaway
To the delight of most shareholders, Northwest Pipe has now broken into profitability. Since the stock has returned a staggering 207% to shareholders over the last five years, it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. With that being said, we still think the promising fundamentals mean the company deserves some further due diligence.
On the other side of ROCE, we have to consider valuation. That's why we have a FREE intrinsic value estimation on our platform that is definitely worth checking out.