If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. 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. Although, when we looked at HONG RI DA Technology (SZSE:301285), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.

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. To calculate this metric for HONG RI DA Technology, this is the formula:

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

0.027 = CN¥30m ÷ (CN¥1.9b - CN¥768m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

Therefore, HONG RI DA Technology has an ROCE of 2.7%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Electronic industry average of 5.3%.

While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you're interested in investigating HONG RI DA Technology's past further, check out this free graph covering HONG RI DA Technology's past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What Does the ROCE Trend For HONG RI DA Technology Tell Us?

When we looked at the ROCE trend at HONG RI DA Technology, we didn't gain much confidence. To be more specific, ROCE has fallen from 19% over the last five years. However, given capital employed and revenue have both increased it appears that the business is currently pursuing growth, at the consequence of short term returns. If these investments prove successful, this can bode very well for long term stock performance.

On a side note, HONG RI DA Technology has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 41% of total assets. That could partly explain why the ROCE has dropped. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE. Keep in mind 41% is still pretty high, so those risks are still somewhat prevalent.

Our Take On HONG RI DA Technology's ROCE

While returns have fallen for HONG RI DA Technology in recent times, we're encouraged to see that sales are growing and that the business is reinvesting in its operations. Furthermore the stock has climbed 56% over the last year, it would appear that investors are upbeat about the future. So should these growth trends continue, we'd be optimistic on the stock going forward.

One more thing: We've identified 3 warning signs with HONG RI DA Technology (at least 2 which don't sit too well with us) , and understanding these would certainly be useful.

While HONG RI DA Technology 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.