There are a few key trends to look for if we want to identify the next multi-bagger. 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. That's why when we briefly looked at Fuyao Glass Industry Group's (SHSE:600660) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with what we saw.

Understanding 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. The formula for this calculation on Fuyao Glass Industry Group is:

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

0.15 = CN¥6.1b ÷ (CN¥57b - CN¥15b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

Thus, Fuyao Glass Industry Group has an ROCE of 15%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Auto Components industry average of 6.6% it's much better.

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Fuyao Glass Industry Group 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 Fuyao Glass Industry Group for free.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

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 15% and the business has deployed 88% more capital into its operations. Since 15% 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.

In Conclusion...

To sum it up, Fuyao Glass Industry Group has simply been reinvesting capital steadily, at those decent rates of return. And the stock has followed suit returning a meaningful 89% to shareholders over the last five years. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

Fuyao Glass Industry Group could be trading at an attractive price in other respects, so you might find our free intrinsic value estimation for 600660 on our platform quite valuable.

While Fuyao Glass Industry 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.

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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.