Our Take On The Returns On Capital At Exide Industries (NSE:EXIDEIND)

If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look for? Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's amount of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. That's why when we briefly looked at Exide Industries' (NSE:EXIDEIND) 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 Exide Industries, this is the formula:

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

0.12 = ₹26b ÷ (₹244b - ₹33b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).

Therefore, Exide Industries has an ROCE of 12%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Auto Components industry average of 7.1% it's much better.

Check out our latest analysis for Exide Industries

While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you'd like to look at how Exide Industries has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

How Are Returns Trending?

The trend of ROCE doesn't stand out much, but returns on a whole are decent. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 12% and the business has deployed 81% more capital into its operations. Since 12% 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.

The Bottom Line

The main thing to remember is that Exide Industries has proven its ability to continually reinvest at respectable rates of return. And since the stock has risen strongly over the last five years, it appears the market might expect this trend to continue. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

Exide Industries could be trading at an attractive price in other respects, so you might find our free intrinsic value estimation on our platform quite valuable.

While Exide Industries 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. 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.
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