Intertek Group (LON:ITRK) Knows How To Allocate Capital

If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's amount of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. So, when we ran our eye over Intertek Group's (LON:ITRK) 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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Intertek Group:

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

0.21 = UK£399m ÷ (UK£2.6b - UK£751m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2020).

Therefore, Intertek Group has an ROCE of 21%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Professional Services industry average of 12%.

See our latest analysis for Intertek Group

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Intertek Group compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

The Trend Of ROCE

Intertek Group deserves to be commended in regards to it's returns. The company has employed 50% more capital in the last five years, and the returns on that capital have remained stable at 21%. Returns like this are the envy of most businesses and given it has repeatedly reinvested at these rates, that's even better. If these trends can continue, it wouldn't surprise us if the company became a multi-bagger.

The Key Takeaway

In short, we'd argue Intertek Group has the makings of a multi-bagger since its been able to compound its capital at very profitable rates of return. And the stock has done incredibly well with a 102% return over the last five years, so long term investors are no doubt ecstatic with that result. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

Intertek Group does have some risks though, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Intertek Group that you might be interested in.

If you'd like to see other companies earning high returns, check out our free list of companies earning high returns with solid balance sheets here.

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