Yahoo Finance Investors Could Be Concerned With Beacon Lighting Group's (ASX:BLX) Returns On Capital
What are the early trends we should look for to identify a stock that could multiply in value over the long term? Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing amount of capital employed. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. So while Beacon Lighting Group (ASX:BLX) has a high ROCE right now, lets see what we can decipher from how returns are changing.
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 Beacon Lighting Group:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.26 = AU$60m ÷ (AU$319m - AU$92m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2021).
Thus, Beacon Lighting Group has an ROCE of 26%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Specialty Retail industry average of 19%.
See our latest analysis for Beacon Lighting Group
In the above chart we have measured Beacon Lighting Group's 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.
The Trend Of ROCE
In terms of Beacon Lighting Group's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. Historically returns on capital were even higher at 36%, but they have dropped over the last five years. Meanwhile, the business is utilizing more capital but this hasn't moved the needle much in terms of sales in the past 12 months, so this could reflect longer term investments. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.
On a related note, Beacon Lighting Group has decreased its current liabilities to 29% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. What's more, this can reduce some aspects of risk to the business because now the company's suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of its operations. Some would claim this reduces the business' efficiency at generating ROCE since it is now funding more of the operations with its own money.
What We Can Learn From Beacon Lighting Group's ROCE
To conclude, we've found that Beacon Lighting Group is reinvesting in the business, but returns have been falling. Since the stock has gained an impressive 75% over the last five years, investors must think there's better things to come. However, unless these underlying trends turn more positive, we wouldn't get our hopes up too high.
Beacon Lighting Group does have some risks, we noticed 3 warning signs (and 1 which can't be ignored) we think you should know about.
If you want to search for more stocks that have been earning high returns, check out this free list of stocks with solid balance sheets that are also earning high returns on equity.
Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.
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.
Join A Paid User Research Session
You’ll receive a US$30 Amazon Gift card for 1 hour of your time while helping us build better investing tools for the individual investors like yourself. Sign up here
