Why You Should Care About Compass Group's (LON:CPG) Strong Returns On Capital

If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. 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. With that in mind, the ROCE of Compass Group (LON:CPG) looks attractive right now, so lets see what the trend of returns can tell us.

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What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. To calculate this metric for Compass Group, this is the formula:

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

0.20 = US$2.9b ÷ (US$24b - US$10b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

Thus, Compass Group has an ROCE of 20%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 7.8% earned by companies in a similar industry.

View our latest analysis for Compass Group

In the above chart we have measured Compass Group's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for Compass Group .

The Trend Of ROCE

We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like Compass Group. The company has consistently earned 20% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 47% in that time. Returns like this are the envy of most businesses and given it has repeatedly reinvested at these rates, that's even better. If Compass Group can keep this up, we'd be very optimistic about its future.

On a side note, Compass Group's current liabilities are still rather high at 41% of total assets. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

What We Can Learn From Compass Group's ROCE

In the end, the company has proven it can reinvest it's capital at high rates of returns, which you'll remember is a trait of a multi-bagger. And the stock has done incredibly well with a 115% 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.

One more thing, we've spotted 2 warning signs facing Compass Group that you might find interesting.

Compass Group is not the only stock earning high returns. If you'd like to see more, check out our free list of companies earning high returns on equity with solid fundamentals.

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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.