The Return Trends At Shenzhen Energy Group (SZSE:000027) Look Promising

If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. 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. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. So when we looked at Shenzhen Energy Group (SZSE:000027) 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. To calculate this metric for Shenzhen Energy Group, this is the formula:

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

0.056 = CN¥6.7b ÷ (CN¥153b - CN¥33b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Thus, Shenzhen Energy Group has an ROCE of 5.6%. Even though it's in line with the industry average of 5.8%, it's still a low return by itself.

See our latest analysis for Shenzhen Energy Group

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 want to delve into the historical earnings , check out these free graphs detailing revenue and cash flow performance of Shenzhen Energy Group.

The Trend Of ROCE

We're glad to see that ROCE is heading in the right direction, even if it is still low at the moment. The numbers show that in the last five years, the returns generated on capital employed have grown considerably to 5.6%. The company is effectively making more money per dollar of capital used, and it's worth noting that the amount of capital has increased too, by 102%. 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.

The Bottom Line On Shenzhen Energy Group's ROCE

In summary, it's great to see that Shenzhen Energy Group 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. Investors may not be impressed by the favorable underlying trends yet because over the last five years the stock has only returned 37% to shareholders. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.

Shenzhen Energy Group does have some risks, we noticed 2 warning signs (and 1 which is potentially serious) we think you should 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.

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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.