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Today we’ll look at Banco Products (India) Limited (NSE:BANCOINDIA) and reflect on its potential as an investment. To be precise, we’ll consider its Return On Capital Employed (ROCE), as that will inform our view of the quality of the business.
Firstly, we’ll go over how we calculate ROCE. Second, we’ll look at its ROCE compared to similar companies. Finally, we’ll look at how its current liabilities affect its ROCE.
Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)
ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. In general, businesses with a higher ROCE are usually better quality. In brief, it is a useful tool, but it is not without drawbacks. Renowned investment researcher Michael Mauboussin has suggested that a high ROCE can indicate that ‘one dollar invested in the company generates value of more than one dollar’.
How Do You Calculate Return On Capital Employed?
The formula for calculating the return on capital employed is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets – Current Liabilities)
Or for Banco Products (India):
0.18 = ₹1.7b ÷ (₹13b – ₹3.7b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2018.)
Therefore, Banco Products (India) has an ROCE of 18%.
View our latest analysis for Banco Products (India)
Is Banco Products (India)’s ROCE Good?
One way to assess ROCE is to compare similar companies. We can see Banco Products (India)’s ROCE is around the 16% average reported by the Auto Components industry. Regardless of where Banco Products (India) sits next to its industry, its ROCE in absolute terms appears satisfactory, and this company could be worth a closer look.
As we can see, Banco Products (India) currently has an ROCE of 18% compared to its ROCE 3 years ago, which was 12%. This makes us think the business might be improving.
It is important to remember that ROCE shows past performance, and is not necessarily predictive. Companies in cyclical industries can be difficult to understand using ROCE, as returns typically look high during boom times, and low during busts. ROCE is only a point-in-time measure. You can check if Banco Products (India) has cyclical profits by looking at this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.
What Are Current Liabilities, And How Do They Affect Banco Products (India)’s ROCE?
Short term (or current) liabilities, are things like supplier invoices, overdrafts, or tax bills that need to be paid within 12 months. Due to the way ROCE is calculated, a high level of current liabilities makes a company look as though it has less capital employed, and thus can (sometimes unfairly) boost the ROCE. To check the impact of this, we calculate if a company has high current liabilities relative to its total assets.
Banco Products (India) has total liabilities of ₹3.7b and total assets of ₹13b. Therefore its current liabilities are equivalent to approximately 29% of its total assets. Low current liabilities are not boosting the ROCE too much.
What We Can Learn From Banco Products (India)’s ROCE
Overall, Banco Products (India) has a decent ROCE and could be worthy of further research. Banco Products (India) shapes up well under this analysis, but it is far from the only business delivering excellent numbers . You might also want to check this free collection of companies delivering excellent earnings growth.
I will like Banco Products (India) better if I see some big insider buys. While we wait, check out this free list of growing companies with considerable, recent, insider buying.
We aim to bring you long-term focused research analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material.
If you spot an error that warrants correction, please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com. This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. Simply Wall St has no position in the stocks mentioned. Thank you for reading.