Ramkrishna Forgings (NSE:RKFORGE) Is Experiencing Growth In Returns On Capital

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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at Ramkrishna Forgings (NSE:RKFORGE) so let's look a bit deeper.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Ramkrishna Forgings is:

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

0.17 = ₹3.5b ÷ (₹35b - ₹14b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2022).

Thus, Ramkrishna Forgings has an ROCE of 17%. By itself that's a normal return on capital and it's in line with the industry's average returns of 17%.

View our latest analysis for Ramkrishna Forgings

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 Ramkrishna Forgings has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

So How Is Ramkrishna Forgings' ROCE Trending?

We like the trends that we're seeing from Ramkrishna Forgings. Over the last five years, returns on capital employed have risen substantially to 17%. The company is effectively making more money per dollar of capital used, and it's worth noting that the amount of capital has increased too, by 118%. So we're very much inspired by what we're seeing at Ramkrishna Forgings thanks to its ability to profitably reinvest capital.

Another thing to note, Ramkrishna Forgings has a high ratio of current liabilities to total assets of 41%. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. Ideally we'd like to see this reduce as that would mean fewer obligations bearing risks.

The Bottom Line On Ramkrishna Forgings' ROCE

In summary, it's great to see that Ramkrishna Forgings 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. Since the stock has returned a solid 60% to shareholders over the last five years, it's fair to say investors are beginning to recognize these changes. So given the stock has proven it has promising trends, it's worth researching the company further to see if these trends are likely to persist.

One final note, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Ramkrishna Forgings (including 1 which makes us a bit uncomfortable) .

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.