What Do You Get For Owning Christie Group plc (LON:CTG)?

This analysis is intended to introduce important early concepts to people who are starting to invest and want a simplistic look at the return on Christie Group plc (LON:CTG) stock.

Christie Group stock represents an ownership share in the company. Owing to this, it is important that the underlying business is producing a sufficient amount of income from the capital invested by stockholders. You need to pay attention to this because your return on investment is linked to dividends and internal investments to improve the business, which can only occur if the company is expected to produce adequate earnings with the capital that has been provided. Thus, to understand how your money can grow by investing in Christie Group, you need to look at what the company returns to owners for the use of their capital, which can be done in many ways but today we will use return on capital employed (ROCE).

View our latest analysis for Christie Group

ROCE: Explanation and Calculation

As an investor you have many alternative companies to choose from, which means there is an opportunity cost in any investment you make in the form of a foregone investment in another company. Therefore all else aside, your investment in a certain company represents a vote of confidence that the money used to buy the stock will grow larger than if invested elsewhere. So the business' ability to grow the size of your capital is very important and can be assessed by comparing the return on capital you can get on your investment with a hurdle rate that depends on the other return possibilities you can identify. To determine Christie Group's capital return we will use ROCE, which tells us how much the company makes from the capital employed in their operations (for things like machinery, wages etc). Take a look at the formula box beneath:

CTG’s 28.59% ROCE means that for every £100 you invest, the company creates £28.6. Comparing this to a healthy 15% benchmark shows Christie Group is currently able to return a fantastic amount to owners for the use of their capital, which is a good sign for those who believe this will continue and the company’s management will find good uses for the earnings they create.

Does this mean I should invest?

Christie Group's relatively strong ROCE is tied to the movement in two factors that change over time: earnings and capital requirements. At the moment Christie Group is in a favourable position, but this can change if these factors underperform. Therefore, investors need to be confident in the trend of the inputs in the formula above, so that Christie Group will continue the solid returns. If you go back three years, you'll find that CTG’s ROCE has decreased from 44.83%. With this, the current earnings of UK£3.15m actually declined from UK£3.36m whilst capital employed has increased due to an increase in total assets employed , which means the company's ROCE has shrunk as a result of falling earnings and simultaneous increases in capital requirements.

Next Steps

Despite CTG's downward trend in ROCE in the recent past, the company still remains an attractive candidate that is capable of producing solid capital returns and a potentially strong return on investment. Before making any decisions, ROCE does not tell the whole picture so you need to pay attention to other fundamentals like the management team and valuation. If you don't pay attention to these factors you cannot be sure if the downward path is a signal to run, or just a blip in an otherwise solid return profile. If you’re building your portfolio and want to take a deeper look, I’ve added a few links below that will help you further evaluate CTG or other alternatives.

1. Management:Have insiders been ramping up their shares to take advantage of the market's sentiment for Christie Group's future outlook? Check out our management and board analysis with insights on CEO compensation and governance factors.
2. Valuation: What is CTG worth today? Is the stock undervalued, even if its ROCE is factored into its intrinsic value? The intrinsic value infographic in our free research report helps visualize whether CTG is currently mispriced by the market.
3. Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.

To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.

The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.

Simply Wall St analyst Simply Wall St and Simply Wall St have no position in any of the companies mentioned. This article 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.