Orla Mining (TSE:OLA) Shareholders Will Want The ROCE Trajectory To Continue

If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. So when we looked at Orla Mining (TSE:OLA) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Orla Mining:

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

0.19 = US$96m ÷ (US$614m - US$98m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2022).

So, Orla Mining has an ROCE of 19%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 2.1% generated by the Metals and Mining industry.

See our latest analysis for Orla Mining

In the above chart we have measured Orla Mining'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 Does the ROCE Trend For Orla Mining Tell Us?

We're delighted to see that Orla Mining is reaping rewards from its investments and is now generating some pre-tax profits. Shareholders would no doubt be pleased with this because the business was loss-making five years ago but is is now generating 19% on its capital. And unsurprisingly, like most companies trying to break into the black, Orla Mining is utilizing 304% more capital than it was five years ago. This can indicate that there's plenty of opportunities to invest capital internally and at ever higher rates, both common traits of a multi-bagger.

For the record though, there was a noticeable increase in the company's current liabilities over the period, so we would attribute some of the ROCE growth to that. The current liabilities has increased to 16% of total assets, so the business is now more funded by the likes of its suppliers or short-term creditors. It's worth keeping an eye on this because as the percentage of current liabilities to total assets increases, some aspects of risk also increase.

In Conclusion...

To the delight of most shareholders, Orla Mining has now broken into profitability. And with the stock having performed exceptionally well over the last five years, these patterns are being accounted for by investors. So given the stock has proven it has promising trends, it's worth researching the company further to see if these trends are likely to persist.

On a final note, we found 3 warning signs for Orla Mining (1 is significant) you should be aware of.

While Orla Mining isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.