Vivid Seats (NASDAQ:SEAT) Shareholders Will Want The ROCE Trajectory To Continue

If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. 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. So on that note, Vivid Seats (NASDAQ:SEAT) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. To calculate this metric for Vivid Seats, this is the formula:

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

0.11 = US$99m ÷ (US$1.3b - US$429m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

Therefore, Vivid Seats has an ROCE of 11%. That's a pretty standard return and it's in line with the industry average of 11%.

Check out our latest analysis for Vivid Seats

In the above chart we have measured Vivid Seats' prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

So How Is Vivid Seats' ROCE Trending?

Shareholders will be relieved that Vivid Seats has broken into profitability. The company was generating losses three years ago, but has managed to turn it around and as we saw earlier is now earning 11%, which is always encouraging. Interestingly, the capital employed by the business has remained relatively flat, so these higher returns are either from prior investments paying off or increased efficiencies. So while we're happy that the business is more efficient, just keep in mind that could mean that going forward the business is lacking areas to invest internally for growth. After all, a company can only become a long term multi-bagger if it continually reinvests in itself at high rates of return.

For the record though, there was a noticeable increase in the company's current liabilities over the period, so we would attribute some of the ROCE growth to that. Effectively this means that suppliers or short-term creditors are now funding 32% of the business, which is more than it was three years ago. It's worth keeping an eye on this because as the percentage of current liabilities to total assets increases, some aspects of risk also increase.

In Conclusion...

To sum it up, Vivid Seats is collecting higher returns from the same amount of capital, and that's impressive. Astute investors may have an opportunity here because the stock has declined 36% in the last three years. So researching this company further and determining whether or not these trends will continue seems justified.

On the other side of ROCE, we have to consider valuation. That's why we have a FREE intrinsic value estimation on our platform that is definitely worth checking out.

For those who like to invest in solid companies, check out this free list of companies with solid balance sheets and high returns on equity.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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.