What trends should we look for it we want to identify stocks that can multiply in value over the long term? Typically, we'll want to notice a trend of growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and alongside that, an expanding 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. Speaking of which, we noticed some great changes in United Malacca Berhad's (KLSE:UMCCA) returns on capital, so let's have a look.

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. To calculate this metric for United Malacca Berhad, this is the formula:

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

0.066 = RM110m ÷ (RM1.8b - RM136m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to January 2023).

Therefore, United Malacca Berhad has an ROCE of 6.6%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Food industry average of 8.9%.

View our latest analysis for United Malacca Berhad

In the above chart we have measured United Malacca Berhad's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

United Malacca Berhad is showing promise given that its ROCE is trending up and to the right. More specifically, while the company has kept capital employed relatively flat over the last five years, the ROCE has climbed 266% in that same time. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. It's worth looking deeper into this though because while it's great that the business is more efficient, it might also mean that going forward the areas to invest internally for the organic growth are lacking.

The Bottom Line On United Malacca Berhad's ROCE

To bring it all together, United Malacca Berhad has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. And given the stock has remained rather flat over the last five years, there might be an opportunity here if other metrics are strong. With that in mind, we believe the promising trends warrant this stock for further investigation.