Energiedienst Holding (VTX:EDHN) Is Looking To Continue Growing Its Returns On Capital

Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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 Energiedienst Holding (VTX:EDHN) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Energiedienst Holding is:

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

0.11 = €136m ÷ (€1.7b - €440m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).

So, Energiedienst Holding has an ROCE of 11%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Electric Utilities industry average of 8.4% it's much better.

See our latest analysis for Energiedienst Holding

In the above chart we have measured Energiedienst Holding'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.

How Are Returns Trending?

Energiedienst Holding is showing promise given that its ROCE is trending up and to the right. The figures show that over the last five years, ROCE has grown 110% whilst employing roughly the same amount of capital. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. On that front, things are looking good so it's worth exploring what management has said about growth plans going forward.

On a side note, we noticed that the improvement in ROCE appears to be partly fueled by an increase in current liabilities. Effectively this means that suppliers or short-term creditors are now funding 25% of the business, which is more than it was five years ago. 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 bring it all together, Energiedienst Holding has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. Since the stock has returned a solid 99% to shareholders over the last five years, it's fair to say investors are beginning to recognize these changes. With that being said, we still think the promising fundamentals mean the company deserves some further due diligence.

One more thing, we've spotted 1 warning sign facing Energiedienst Holding that you might find interesting.

While Energiedienst Holding 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.