Returns On Capital Tell Us A Lot About APB Resources Berhad (KLSE:APB)

When we're researching a company, it's sometimes hard to find the warning signs, but there are some financial metrics that can help spot trouble early. Typically, we'll see the trend of both return on capital employed (ROCE) declining and this usually coincides with a decreasing amount of capital employed. Ultimately this means that the company is earning less per dollar invested and on top of that, it's shrinking its base of capital employed. On that note, looking into APB Resources Berhad (KLSE:APB), we weren't too upbeat about how things were going.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. The formula for this calculation on APB Resources Berhad is:

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

0.019 = RM3.1m ÷ (RM174m - RM11m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

So, APB Resources Berhad has an ROCE of 1.9%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Machinery industry average of 10%.

View our latest analysis for APB Resources Berhad

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for APB Resources Berhad's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you're interested in investigating APB Resources Berhad's past further, check out this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

In terms of APB Resources Berhad's historical ROCE movements, the trend doesn't inspire confidence. To be more specific, the ROCE was 12% five years ago, but since then it has dropped noticeably. On top of that, it's worth noting that the amount of capital employed within the business has remained relatively steady. This combination can be indicative of a mature business that still has areas to deploy capital, but the returns received aren't as high due potentially to new competition or smaller margins. If these trends continue, we wouldn't expect APB Resources Berhad to turn into a multi-bagger.

What We Can Learn From APB Resources Berhad's ROCE

All in all, the lower returns from the same amount of capital employed aren't exactly signs of a compounding machine. It should come as no surprise then that the stock has fallen 52% over the last five years, so it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. That being the case, unless the underlying trends revert to a more positive trajectory, we'd consider looking elsewhere.

APB Resources Berhad does have some risks, we noticed 3 warning signs (and 1 which is concerning) 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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