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. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. However, after investigating Tongyu Heavy Industry (SZSE:300185), we don't think it's current trends fit the mold of a multi-bagger.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Tongyu Heavy Industry is:

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

0.059 = CN¥528m ÷ (CN¥17b - CN¥7.8b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

Therefore, Tongyu Heavy Industry has an ROCE of 5.9%. On its own that's a low return on capital but it's in line with the industry's average returns of 6.1%.

See our latest analysis for Tongyu Heavy Industry

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Tongyu Heavy Industry compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.

How Are Returns Trending?

In terms of Tongyu Heavy Industry's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. Over the last five years, returns on capital have decreased to 5.9% from 8.2% five years ago. 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 may take some time before the company starts to see any change in earnings from these investments.

Another thing to note, Tongyu Heavy Industry has a high ratio of current liabilities to total assets of 47%. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. Ideally we'd like to see this reduce as that would mean fewer obligations bearing risks.

What We Can Learn From Tongyu Heavy Industry's ROCE

In summary, Tongyu Heavy Industry is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Since the stock has gained an impressive 57% 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.

On a final note, we found 2 warning signs for Tongyu Heavy Industry (1 is potentially serious) you should be aware of.

If you want to search for solid companies with great earnings, check out this free list of companies with good balance sheets and impressive 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.