Investors Will Want Amtech Systems' (NASDAQ:ASYS) Growth In ROCE To Persist

If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. Put simply, these types of businesses are compounding machines, meaning they are continually reinvesting their earnings at ever-higher rates of return. So on that note, Amtech Systems (NASDAQ:ASYS) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital.

What is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Amtech Systems:

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

0.003 = US$292k ÷ (US$108m - US$11m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2021).

Thus, Amtech Systems has an ROCE of 0.3%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Semiconductor industry average of 11%.

Check out our latest analysis for Amtech Systems

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Amtech Systems 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're delighted to see that Amtech Systems is reaping rewards from its investments and has now broken into profitability. The company was generating losses five years ago, but has managed to turn it around and as we saw earlier is now earning 0.3%, which is always encouraging. While returns have increased, the amount of capital employed by Amtech Systems has remained flat over the period. With no noticeable increase in capital employed, it's worth knowing what the company plans on doing going forward in regards to reinvesting and growing the business. Because in the end, a business can only get so efficient.

In another part of our analysis, we noticed that the company's ratio of current liabilities to total assets decreased to 9.8%, which broadly means the business is relying less on its suppliers or short-term creditors to fund its operations. Therefore we can rest assured that the growth in ROCE is a result of the business' fundamental improvements, rather than a cooking class featuring this company's books.

What We Can Learn From Amtech Systems' ROCE

To sum it up, Amtech Systems is collecting higher returns from the same amount of capital, and that's impressive. Since the stock has only returned 35% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. So with that in mind, we think the stock deserves further research.

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

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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