Returns On Capital Are A Standout For VIP Gloves (ASX:VIP)

There are a few key trends to look for if we want to identify the next multi-bagger. Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. So when we looked at the ROCE trend of VIP Gloves (ASX:VIP) we really liked what we saw.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for VIP Gloves:

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

0.33 = AU$5.5m ÷ (AU$25m - AU$7.9m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2020).

Thus, VIP Gloves has an ROCE of 33%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Medical Equipment industry average of 8.8%.

Check out our latest analysis for VIP Gloves

While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you'd like to look at how VIP Gloves has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Can We Tell From VIP Gloves' ROCE Trend?

VIP Gloves is displaying some positive trends. The data shows that returns on capital have increased substantially over the last five years to 33%. The amount of capital employed has increased too, by 171%. This can indicate that there's plenty of opportunities to invest capital internally and at ever higher rates, a combination that's common among multi-baggers.

One more thing to note, VIP Gloves has decreased current liabilities to 32% of total assets over this period, which effectively reduces the amount of funding from suppliers or short-term creditors. So shareholders would be pleased that the growth in returns has mostly come from underlying business performance.

The Bottom Line On VIP Gloves' ROCE

All in all, it's terrific to see that VIP Gloves is reaping the rewards from prior investments and is growing its capital base. However the stock is down a substantial 76% in the last five years so there could be other areas of the business hurting its prospects. Regardless, we think the underlying fundamentals warrant this stock for further investigation.

One more thing: We've identified 5 warning signs with VIP Gloves (at least 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) , and understanding them would certainly be useful.

If you want to search for more stocks that have been earning high returns, check out this free list of stocks with solid balance sheets that are also earning high returns on equity.

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