tinyBuild (LON:TBLD) Will Want To Turn Around Its Return Trends
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If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. Firstly, we'd want to identify a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and then alongside that, an ever-increasing base of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. Although, when we looked at tinyBuild (LON:TBLD), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.
What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?
If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for tinyBuild, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.17 = US$19m ÷ (US$127m - US$15m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).
Thus, tinyBuild has an ROCE of 17%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 11% generated by the Entertainment industry.
See our latest analysis for tinyBuild
In the above chart we have measured tinyBuild's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for tinyBuild.
What Does the ROCE Trend For tinyBuild Tell Us?
In terms of tinyBuild's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. Over the last four years, returns on capital have decreased to 17% from 27% four years ago. However, given capital employed and revenue have both increased it appears that the business is currently pursuing growth, at the consequence of short term returns. If these investments prove successful, this can bode very well for long term stock performance.
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On a side note, tinyBuild has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 12% of total assets. That could partly explain why the ROCE has dropped. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Some would claim this reduces the business' efficiency at generating ROCE since it is now funding more of the operations with its own money.
Our Take On tinyBuild's ROCE
In summary, despite lower returns in the short term, we're encouraged to see that tinyBuild is reinvesting for growth and has higher sales as a result. And there could be an opportunity here if other metrics look good too, because the stock has declined 47% in the last year. As a result, we'd recommend researching this stock further to uncover what other fundamentals of the business can show us.