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. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. Speaking of which, we noticed some great changes in Tecsys' (TSE:TCS) returns on capital, so let's have a look.
Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)
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 Tecsys:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.088 = CA$7.4m ÷ (CA$127m - CA$43m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to October 2020).
Therefore, Tecsys has an ROCE of 8.8%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Software industry average of 19%.
Check out our latest analysis for Tecsys
In the above chart we have measured Tecsys' 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.
So How Is Tecsys' ROCE Trending?
Even though ROCE is still low in absolute terms, it's good to see it's heading in the right direction. The numbers show that in the last five years, the returns generated on capital employed have grown considerably to 8.8%. The amount of capital employed has increased too, by 224%. The increasing returns on a growing amount of capital is common amongst multi-baggers and that's why we're impressed.
The Bottom Line On Tecsys' ROCE
In summary, it's great to see that Tecsys can compound returns by consistently reinvesting capital at increasing rates of return, because these are some of the key ingredients of those highly sought after multi-baggers. Since the stock has returned a staggering 604% to shareholders over the last five years, it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. In light of that, we think it's worth looking further into this stock because if Tecsys can keep these trends up, it could have a bright future ahead.
On a separate note, we've found 3 warning signs for Tecsys you'll probably want to know about.
For those who like to invest in solid companies, check out this free list of companies with solid balance sheets and high returns on equity.
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