If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. 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. That's why when we briefly looked at Universal Music Group's (AMS:UMG) ROCE trend, we were very happy with what we saw.

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

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Universal Music Group:

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

0.21 = €1.7b ÷ (€15b - €7.2b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

Thus, Universal Music Group has an ROCE of 21%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Entertainment industry average of 13%.

Check out our latest analysis for Universal Music Group

In the above chart we have measured Universal Music Group'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 analyst report for Universal Music Group .

What Can We Tell From Universal Music Group's ROCE Trend?

We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like Universal Music Group. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 21% and the business has deployed 71% more capital into its operations. Returns like this are the envy of most businesses and given it has repeatedly reinvested at these rates, that's even better. If these trends can continue, it wouldn't surprise us if the company became a multi-bagger.

On a separate but related note, it's important to know that Universal Music Group has a current liabilities to total assets ratio of 47%, which we'd consider pretty high. This effectively means that suppliers (or short-term creditors) are funding a large portion of the business, so just be aware that this can introduce some elements of risk. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

Our Take On Universal Music Group's ROCE

In summary, we're delighted to see that Universal Music Group has been compounding returns by reinvesting at consistently high rates of return, as these are common traits of a multi-bagger. In light of this, the stock has only gained 3.4% over the last three years for shareholders who have owned the stock in this period. So because of the trends we're seeing, we'd recommend looking further into this stock to see if it has the makings of a multi-bagger.