Today we’ll look at Asaleo Care Limited (ASX:AHY) and reflect on its potential as an investment. Specifically, we’ll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), since that will give us an insight into how efficiently the business can generate profits from the capital it requires.
First, we’ll go over how we calculate ROCE. Next, we’ll compare it to others in its industry. Last but not least, we’ll look at what impact its current liabilities have on its ROCE.
What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?
ROCE is a measure of a company’s yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. In general, businesses with a higher ROCE are usually better quality. Ultimately, it is a useful but imperfect metric. Renowned investment researcher Michael Mauboussin has suggested that a high ROCE can indicate that ‘one dollar invested in the company generates value of more than one dollar’.
How Do You Calculate Return On Capital Employed?
Analysts use this formula to calculate return on capital employed:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets – Current Liabilities)
Or for Asaleo Care:
0.14 = AU$54m ÷ (AU$481m – AU$91m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2019.)
Therefore, Asaleo Care has an ROCE of 14%.
Check out our latest analysis for Asaleo Care
Does Asaleo Care Have A Good ROCE?
ROCE can be useful when making comparisons, such as between similar companies. We can see Asaleo Care’s ROCE is around the 15% average reported by the Personal Products industry. Separate from Asaleo Care’s performance relative to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms looks satisfactory, and it may be worth researching in more depth.
You can click on the image below to see (in greater detail) how Asaleo Care’s past growth compares to other companies.
When considering this metric, keep in mind that it is backwards looking, and not necessarily predictive. ROCE can be misleading for companies in cyclical industries, with returns looking impressive during the boom times, but very weak during the busts. This is because ROCE only looks at one year, instead of considering returns across a whole cycle. What happens in the future is pretty important for investors, so we have prepared a free report on analyst forecasts for Asaleo Care.
Do Asaleo Care’s Current Liabilities Skew Its ROCE?
Current liabilities are short term bills and invoices that need to be paid in 12 months or less. The ROCE equation subtracts current liabilities from capital employed, so a company with a lot of current liabilities appears to have less capital employed, and a higher ROCE than otherwise. To counter this, investors can check if a company has high current liabilities relative to total assets.
Asaleo Care has current liabilities of AU$91m and total assets of AU$481m. As a result, its current liabilities are equal to approximately 19% of its total assets. A fairly low level of current liabilities is not influencing the ROCE too much.
What We Can Learn From Asaleo Care’s ROCE
With that in mind, Asaleo Care’s ROCE appears pretty good. Asaleo Care looks strong on this analysis, but there are plenty of other companies that could be a good opportunity . Here is a free list of companies growing earnings rapidly.
I will like Asaleo Care better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.
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