We're Watching These Trends At Warehouse Group (NZSE:WHS)

If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. 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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. That's why when we briefly looked at Warehouse Group's (NZSE:WHS) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with what we saw.

Understanding 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. The formula for this calculation on Warehouse Group is:

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

0.13 = NZ$158m ÷ (NZ$1.9b - NZ$626m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to August 2020).

Thus, Warehouse Group has an ROCE of 13%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 6.3% generated by the Multiline Retail industry.

View our latest analysis for Warehouse Group

roce

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Warehouse Group compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for Warehouse Group.

So How Is Warehouse Group's ROCE Trending?

While the current returns on capital are decent, they haven't changed much. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 13% and the business has deployed 57% more capital into its operations. Since 13% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Over long periods of time, returns like these might not be too exciting, but with consistency they can pay off in terms of share price returns.

The Bottom Line On Warehouse Group's ROCE

The main thing to remember is that Warehouse Group has proven its ability to continually reinvest at respectable rates of return. However, over the last five years, the stock has only delivered a 30% return to shareholders who held over that period. That's why it could be worth your time looking into this stock further to discover if it has more traits of a multi-bagger.

If you'd like to know about the risks facing Warehouse Group, we've discovered 2 warning signs that you should be aware of.

While Warehouse Group may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

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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