What StrongPoint's (OB:STRONG) Returns On Capital Can Tell Us

Ignoring the stock price of a company, what are the underlying trends that tell us a business is past the growth phase? A business that's potentially in decline often shows two trends, a return on capital employed (ROCE) that's declining, and a base of capital employed that's also declining. 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. So after we looked into StrongPoint (OB:STRONG), the trends above didn't look too great.

What is 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. The formula for this calculation on StrongPoint is:

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

0.11 = kr41m ÷ (kr749m - kr371m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2020).

So, StrongPoint has an ROCE of 11%. That's a relatively normal return on capital, and it's around the 10% generated by the Electronic industry.

View our latest analysis for StrongPoint

Above you can see how the current ROCE for StrongPoint compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

How Are Returns Trending?

We are a bit worried about the trend of returns on capital at StrongPoint. About five years ago, returns on capital were 15%, however they're now substantially lower than that as we saw above. And on the capital employed front, the business is utilizing roughly the same amount of capital as it was back then. 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 StrongPoint to turn into a multi-bagger.

On a separate but related note, it's important to know that StrongPoint has a current liabilities to total assets ratio of 50%, which we'd consider pretty high. 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.

What We Can Learn From StrongPoint's ROCE

In the end, the trend of lower returns on the same amount of capital isn't typically an indication that we're looking at a growth stock. Since the stock has skyrocketed 134% over the last five years, it looks like investors have high expectations of the stock. In any case, the current underlying trends don't bode well for long term performance so unless they reverse, we'd start looking elsewhere.

Like most companies, StrongPoint does come with some risks, and we've found 3 warning signs that you should be aware of.

While StrongPoint may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

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