Returns On Capital At Pentamaster International (HKG:1665) Have Hit The Brakes

If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look 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. That's why when we briefly looked at Pentamaster International's (HKG:1665) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with what we saw.

Understanding 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. To calculate this metric for Pentamaster International, this is the formula:

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

0.19 = RM106m ÷ (RM689m - RM122m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

Therefore, Pentamaster International has an ROCE of 19%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 8.5% generated by the Semiconductor industry.

See our latest analysis for Pentamaster International

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Pentamaster International 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.

How Are Returns Trending?

The trend of ROCE doesn't stand out much, but returns on a whole are decent. The company has consistently earned 19% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 773% in that time. Since 19% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Over long periods of time, returns like these might not be too exciting, but with consistency they can pay off in terms of share price returns.

In Conclusion...

To sum it up, Pentamaster International has simply been reinvesting capital steadily, at those decent rates of return. Therefore it's no surprise that shareholders have earned a respectable 41% return if they held over the last three years. So while the positive underlying trends may be accounted for by investors, we still think this stock is worth looking into further.

If you'd like to know more about Pentamaster International, we've spotted 2 warning signs, and 1 of them makes us a bit uncomfortable.

While Pentamaster International may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

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