Heng Hup Holdings (HKG:1891) Shareholders Will Want The ROCE Trajectory To Continue

Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at Heng Hup Holdings (HKG:1891) so let's look a bit deeper.

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Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Heng Hup Holdings:

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

0.12 = RM30m ÷ (RM409m - RM164m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

Thus, Heng Hup Holdings has an ROCE of 12%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Trade Distributors industry average of 5.6% it's much better.

View our latest analysis for Heng Hup Holdings

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for Heng Hup Holdings' ROCE against it's prior returns. If you'd like to look at how Heng Hup Holdings has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of Heng Hup Holdings' past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Does the ROCE Trend For Heng Hup Holdings Tell Us?

Investors would be pleased with what's happening at Heng Hup Holdings. Over the last five years, returns on capital employed have risen substantially to 12%. Basically the business is earning more per dollar of capital invested and in addition to that, 31% more capital is being employed now too. The increasing returns on a growing amount of capital is common amongst multi-baggers and that's why we're impressed.

On a side note, we noticed that the improvement in ROCE appears to be partly fueled by an increase in current liabilities. Effectively this means that suppliers or short-term creditors are now funding 40% of the business, which is more than it was five years ago. Given it's pretty high ratio, we'd remind investors that having current liabilities at those levels can bring about some risks in certain businesses.

The Bottom Line

A company that is growing its returns on capital and can consistently reinvest in itself is a highly sought after trait, and that's what Heng Hup Holdings has. Since the stock has only returned 13% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.

Heng Hup Holdings does have some risks, we noticed 3 warning signs (and 1 which shouldn't be ignored) 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.