If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look for? Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing 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. Looking at Best Buy (NYSE:BBY), it does have a high ROCE right now, but lets see how returns are trending.

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 Best Buy, this is the formula:

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

0.25 = US$1.8b ÷ (US$16b - US$8.5b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to August 2024).

Therefore, Best Buy has an ROCE of 25%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Specialty Retail industry average of 12%.

In the above chart we have measured Best Buy's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for Best Buy .

What Does the ROCE Trend For Best Buy Tell Us?

Things have been pretty stable at Best Buy, with its capital employed and returns on that capital staying somewhat the same for the last five years. Businesses with these traits tend to be mature and steady operations because they're past the growth phase. Although current returns are high, we'd need more evidence of underlying growth for it to look like a multi-bagger going forward. This probably explains why Best Buy is paying out 47% of its income to shareholders in the form of dividends. Unless businesses have highly compelling growth opportunities, they'll typically return some money to shareholders.

On a side note, Best Buy's current liabilities are still rather high at 54% of total assets. This effectively means that suppliers (or short-term creditors) are funding a large portion of the business, so just be aware that this can introduce some elements of risk. Ideally we'd like to see this reduce as that would mean fewer obligations bearing risks.

The Key Takeaway

While Best Buy has impressive profitability from its capital, it isn't increasing that amount of capital. Unsurprisingly, the stock has only gained 29% over the last five years, which potentially indicates that investors are accounting for this going forward. As a result, if you're hunting for a multi-bagger, we think you'd have more luck elsewhere.

Best Buy could be trading at an attractive price in other respects, so you might find our free intrinsic value estimation for BBY on our platform quite valuable.

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.

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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.