There are a few key trends to look for if we want to identify the next multi-bagger. Typically, we'll want to notice a trend of growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and alongside that, an expanding base 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 shopper360 (Catalist:1F0) we aren't jumping out of our chairs at how returns are trending, but let's have a deeper look.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for shopper360:

Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)

0.11 = RM7.1m ÷ (RM91m - RM27m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to May 2022).

Thus, shopper360 has an ROCE of 11%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 8.5% generated by the Media industry.

See our latest analysis for shopper360

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for shopper360's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you're interested in investigating shopper360's past further, check out this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

How Are Returns Trending?

On the surface, the trend of ROCE at shopper360 doesn't inspire confidence. To be more specific, ROCE has fallen from 60% over the last five years. However it looks like shopper360 might be reinvesting for long term growth because while capital employed has increased, the company's sales haven't changed much in the last 12 months. It may take some time before the company starts to see any change in earnings from these investments.

On a side note, shopper360 has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 30% 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. 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.

What We Can Learn From shopper360's ROCE

Bringing it all together, while we're somewhat encouraged by shopper360's reinvestment in its own business, we're aware that returns are shrinking. And investors appear hesitant that the trends will pick up because the stock has fallen 44% in the last five years. On the whole, we aren't too inspired by the underlying trends and we think there may be better chances of finding a multi-bagger elsewhere.