Petropavlovsk (LON:POG) Might Have The Makings Of A Multi-Bagger

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. Speaking of which, we noticed some great changes in Petropavlovsk's (LON:POG) returns on capital, so let's have a look.

What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

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 Petropavlovsk is:

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

0.031 = US$48m ÷ (US$1.8b - US$233m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2021).

Therefore, Petropavlovsk has an ROCE of 3.1%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Metals and Mining industry average of 18%.

View our latest analysis for Petropavlovsk

In the above chart we have measured Petropavlovsk'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 report for Petropavlovsk.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

While in absolute terms it isn't a high ROCE, it's promising to see that it has been moving in the right direction. The data shows that returns on capital have increased substantially over the last five years to 3.1%. The amount of capital employed has increased too, by 58%. The increasing returns on a growing amount of capital is common amongst multi-baggers and that's why we're impressed.

One more thing to note, Petropavlovsk has decreased current liabilities to 13% of total assets over this period, which effectively reduces the amount of funding from suppliers or short-term creditors. So shareholders would be pleased that the growth in returns has mostly come from underlying business performance.

The Bottom Line On Petropavlovsk's ROCE

In summary, it's great to see that Petropavlovsk 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. And with the stock having performed exceptionally well over the last five years, these patterns are being accounted for by investors. In light of that, we think it's worth looking further into this stock because if Petropavlovsk can keep these trends up, it could have a bright future ahead.

Petropavlovsk does come with some risks though, we found 3 warning signs in our investment analysis, and 1 of those is a bit unpleasant...

While Petropavlovsk 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.