The Underlying Trends At Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) Look Strong

Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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 ran our eye over Fastenal's (NASDAQ:FAST) 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 Fastenal:

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

0.32 = US$1.1b ÷ (US$4.1b - US$603m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

Thus, Fastenal has an ROCE of 32%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 8.1% earned by companies in a similar industry.

Check out our latest analysis for Fastenal

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Fastenal 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.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

It's hard not to be impressed by Fastenal's returns on capital. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 32% and the business has deployed 65% more capital into its operations. Returns like this are the envy of most businesses and given it has repeatedly reinvested at these rates, that's even better. If these trends can continue, it wouldn't surprise us if the company became a multi-bagger.

The Bottom Line On Fastenal's ROCE

In short, we'd argue Fastenal has the makings of a multi-bagger since its been able to compound its capital at very profitable rates of return. And long term investors would be thrilled with the 178% return they've received over the last five years. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.

On a final note, we've found 1 warning sign for Fastenal that we think you should be aware of.

Fastenal is not the only stock earning high returns. If you'd like to see more, check out our free list of companies earning high returns on equity with solid fundamentals.

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