We Like These Underlying Return On Capital Trends At City Service (WSE:CTS)

Finding a business that has the potential to grow substantially is not easy, but it is possible if we look at a few key financial metrics. 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. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. So when we looked at City Service (WSE:CTS) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked 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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for City Service:

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

0.13 = €10m ÷ (€120m - €42m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2020).

Thus, City Service has an ROCE of 13%. In absolute terms, that's a pretty normal return, and it's somewhat close to the Commercial Services industry average of 12%.

Check out our latest analysis for City Service

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

What Can We Tell From City Service's ROCE Trend?

City Service is showing promise given that its ROCE is trending up and to the right. Looking at the data, we can see that even though capital employed in the business has remained relatively flat, the ROCE generated has risen by 77% over the last five years. So it's likely that the business is now reaping the full benefits of its past investments, since the capital employed hasn't changed considerably. The company is doing well in that sense, and it's worth investigating what the management team has planned for long term growth prospects.

In Conclusion...

As discussed above, City Service appears to be getting more proficient at generating returns since capital employed has remained flat but earnings (before interest and tax) are up. And a remarkable 176% total return over the last five years tells us that investors are expecting more good things to come in the future. Therefore, we think it would be worth your time to check if these trends are going to continue.

If you want to know some of the risks facing City Service we've found 4 warning signs (1 is significant!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

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. 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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