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. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at ESAB (NYSE:ESAB) so let's look a bit deeper.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. To calculate this metric for ESAB, this is the formula:

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

0.13 = US$397m ÷ (US$3.8b - US$610m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Thus, ESAB has an ROCE of 13%. That's a relatively normal return on capital, and it's around the 12% generated by the Machinery industry.

Check out our latest analysis for ESAB

Above you can see how the current ROCE for ESAB compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for ESAB.

The Trend Of ROCE

ESAB's ROCE growth is quite impressive. Looking at the data, we can see that even though capital employed in the business has remained relatively flat, the ROCE generated has risen by 57% over the last three years. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. On that front, things are looking good so it's worth exploring what management has said about growth plans going forward.

Our Take On ESAB's ROCE

To bring it all together, ESAB has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. And investors seem to expect more of this going forward, since the stock has rewarded shareholders with a 83% return over the last year. Therefore, we think it would be worth your time to check if these trends are going to continue.

One more thing, we've spotted 2 warning signs facing ESAB that you might find interesting.

While ESAB isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are 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.