If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look for? 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. Put simply, these types of businesses are compounding machines, meaning they are continually reinvesting their earnings at ever-higher rates of return. However, after briefly looking over the numbers, we don't think SigmaRoc (LON:SRC) has the makings of a multi-bagger going forward, but let's have a look at why that may be.

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. The formula for this calculation on SigmaRoc is:

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

0.051 = UK£41m ÷ (UK£1.0b - UK£212m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

So, SigmaRoc has an ROCE of 5.1%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Basic Materials industry average of 10%.

See our latest analysis for SigmaRoc

Above you can see how the current ROCE for SigmaRoc compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for SigmaRoc .

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

The trend of ROCE doesn't look fantastic because it's fallen from 7.8% five years ago, while the business's capital employed increased by 965%. Usually this isn't ideal, but given SigmaRoc conducted a capital raising before their most recent earnings announcement, that would've likely contributed, at least partially, to the increased capital employed figure. SigmaRoc 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, SigmaRoc's current liabilities have increased over the last five years to 21% of total assets, effectively distorting the ROCE to some degree. If current liabilities hadn't increased as much as they did, the ROCE could actually be even lower. While the ratio isn't currently too high, it's worth keeping an eye on this because if it gets particularly high, the business could then face some new elements of risk.

What We Can Learn From SigmaRoc's ROCE

To conclude, we've found that SigmaRoc is reinvesting in the business, but returns have been falling. Although the market must be expecting these trends to improve because the stock has gained 41% over the last five years. Ultimately, if the underlying trends persist, we wouldn't hold our breath on it being a multi-bagger going forward.