Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) Shareholders Will Want The ROCE Trajectory To Continue

If you're not sure where to start when looking for the next multi-bagger, there are a few key trends you should keep an eye out for. One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. 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 when we looked at Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

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

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. The formula for this calculation on Amazon.com is:

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

0.14 = US$30b ÷ (US$323b - US$115b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

Therefore, Amazon.com has an ROCE of 14%. By itself that's a normal return on capital and it's in line with the industry's average returns of 14%.

Check out our latest analysis for Amazon.com

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Amazon.com compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Amazon.com here for free.

What Can We Tell From Amazon.com's ROCE Trend?

Investors would be pleased with what's happening at Amazon.com. The data shows that returns on capital have increased substantially over the last five years to 14%. The amount of capital employed has increased too, by 530%. This can indicate that there's plenty of opportunities to invest capital internally and at ever higher rates, a combination that's common among multi-baggers.

On a related note, the company's ratio of current liabilities to total assets has decreased to 36%, which basically reduces it's funding from the likes of short-term creditors or suppliers. So shareholders would be pleased that the growth in returns has mostly come from underlying business performance.

What We Can Learn From Amazon.com's ROCE

In summary, it's great to see that Amazon.com can compound returns by consistently reinvesting capital at increasing rates of return, because these are some of the key ingredients of those highly sought after multi-baggers. And with the stock having performed exceptionally well over the last five years, these patterns are being accounted for by investors. So given the stock has proven it has promising trends, it's worth researching the company further to see if these trends are likely to persist.

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.

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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