Investors Met With Slowing Returns on Capital At CGI (TSE:GIB.A)

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. That's why when we briefly looked at CGI's (TSE:GIB.A) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with what we saw.

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

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on CGI is:

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

0.18 = CA$1.9b ÷ (CA$15b - CA$4.1b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

Therefore, CGI has an ROCE of 18%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 13% generated by the IT industry.

See our latest analysis for CGI

Above you can see how the current ROCE for CGI compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for CGI.

So How Is CGI's ROCE Trending?

While the current returns on capital are decent, they haven't changed much. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 18% and the business has deployed 24% more capital into its operations. Since 18% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Stable returns in this ballpark can be unexciting, but if they can be maintained over the long run, they often provide nice rewards to shareholders.

In Conclusion...

The main thing to remember is that CGI has proven its ability to continually reinvest at respectable rates of return. And since the stock has risen strongly over the last five years, it appears the market might expect this trend to continue. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

On a separate note, we've found 1 warning sign for CGI you'll probably want to know about.

If you want to search for solid companies with great earnings, check out this free list of companies with good balance sheets and impressive returns on equity.

If you’re looking to trade a wide range of investments, open an account with the lowest-cost* platform trusted by professionals, Interactive Brokers. Their clients from over 200 countries and territories trade stocks, options, futures, forex, bonds and funds worldwide from a single integrated account. Promoted

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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.
^*Interactive Brokers Rated Lowest Cost Broker by StockBrokers.com Annual Online Review 2020

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.