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When it comes to investing, there are some useful financial metrics that can warn us when a business is potentially in trouble. When we see a declining return on capital employed (ROCE) in conjunction with a declining base of capital employed, that's often how a mature business shows signs of aging. This combination can tell you that not only is the company investing less, it's earning less on what it does invest. So after we looked into Sligro Food Group (AMS:SLIGR), the trends above didn't look too great.
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 Sligro Food Group is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.035 = €27m ÷ (€1.5b - €712m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).
So, Sligro Food Group has an ROCE of 3.5%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Consumer Retailing industry average of 11%.
View our latest analysis for Sligro Food Group
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Sligro Food Group 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 analyst report for Sligro Food Group .
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
We are a bit worried about the trend of returns on capital at Sligro Food Group. Unfortunately the returns on capital have diminished from the 7.3% that they were earning five years ago. Meanwhile, capital employed in the business has stayed roughly the flat over the period. This combination can be indicative of a mature business that still has areas to deploy capital, but the returns received aren't as high due potentially to new competition or smaller margins. If these trends continue, we wouldn't expect Sligro Food Group to turn into a multi-bagger.
While on the subject, we noticed that the ratio of current liabilities to total assets has risen to 48%, which has impacted the ROCE. Without this increase, it's likely that ROCE would be even lower than 3.5%. What this means is that in reality, a rather large portion of the business is being funded by the likes of the company's suppliers or short-term creditors, which can bring some risks of its own.
The Bottom Line On Sligro Food Group's ROCE
All in all, the lower returns from the same amount of capital employed aren't exactly signs of a compounding machine. It should come as no surprise then that the stock has fallen 56% over the last five years, so it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. With underlying trends that aren't great in these areas, we'd consider looking elsewhere.