Capital Investment Trends At Italtile (JSE:ITE) Look Strong

To find a multi-bagger stock, what are the underlying trends we should look for in a business? Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's 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 ran our eye over Italtile's (JSE:ITE) trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

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

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for Italtile, this is the formula:

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

0.34 = R2.6b ÷ (R8.4b - R727m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).

Thus, Italtile has an ROCE of 34%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 16% earned by companies in a similar industry.

See our latest analysis for Italtile

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for Italtile's ROCE against it's prior returns. If you want to delve into the historical earnings, revenue and cash flow of Italtile, check out these free graphs here.

The Trend Of ROCE

We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like Italtile. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 34% and the business has deployed 110% more capital into its operations. With returns that high, it's great that the business can continually reinvest its money at such appealing rates of return. You'll see this when looking at well operated businesses or favorable business models.

The Bottom Line

In short, we'd argue Italtile has the makings of a multi-bagger since its been able to compound its capital at very profitable rates of return. And since the stock has risen strongly over the last five years, it appears the market might expect this trend to continue. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.

One more thing, we've spotted 1 warning sign facing Italtile that you might find interesting.

Italtile 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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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.