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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. With that in mind, the ROCE of Teekay Tankers (NYSE:TNK) looks great, so lets see what the trend can tell us.

Understanding 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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Teekay Tankers:

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

0.35 = US$580m ÷ (US$1.8b - US$130m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Therefore, Teekay Tankers has an ROCE of 35%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Oil and Gas industry average of 18%.

View our latest analysis for Teekay Tankers

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Teekay Tankers 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.

So How Is Teekay Tankers' ROCE Trending?

We're delighted to see that Teekay Tankers is reaping rewards from its investments and has now broken into profitability. The company was generating losses five years ago, but has managed to turn it around and as we saw earlier is now earning 35%, which is always encouraging. Interestingly, the capital employed by the business has remained relatively flat, so these higher returns are either from prior investments paying off or increased efficiencies. So while we're happy that the business is more efficient, just keep in mind that could mean that going forward the business is lacking areas to invest internally for growth. So if you're looking for high growth, you'll want to see a business's capital employed also increasing.

The Key Takeaway

To bring it all together, Teekay Tankers has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. And a remarkable 503% total return over the last five years tells us that investors are expecting more good things to come in the future. With that being said, we still think the promising fundamentals mean the company deserves some further due diligence.

One final note, you should learn about the 2 warning signs we've spotted with Teekay Tankers (including 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) .

High returns are a key ingredient to strong performance, so check out our free list ofstocks earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.

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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.