Austevoll Seafood (OB:AUSS) May Have Issues Allocating Its Capital

If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. Having said that, from a first glance at Austevoll Seafood (OB:AUSS) we aren't jumping out of our chairs at how returns are trending, but let's have a deeper look.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Austevoll Seafood is:

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

0.059 = kr2.1b ÷ (kr41b - kr5.4b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

Thus, Austevoll Seafood has an ROCE of 5.9%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Food industry average of 7.5%.

Check out our latest analysis for Austevoll Seafood

In the above chart we have measured Austevoll Seafood's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Austevoll Seafood here for free.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

On the surface, the trend of ROCE at Austevoll Seafood doesn't inspire confidence. Over the last five years, returns on capital have decreased to 5.9% from 11% five years ago. On the other hand, the company has been employing more capital without a corresponding improvement in sales in the last year, which could suggest these investments are longer term plays. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.

What We Can Learn From Austevoll Seafood's ROCE

In summary, Austevoll Seafood is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Since the stock has gained an impressive 77% over the last five years, investors must think there's better things to come. However, unless these underlying trends turn more positive, we wouldn't get our hopes up too high.

One more thing to note, we've identified 1 warning sign with Austevoll Seafood and understanding this should be part of your investment process.

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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