If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look for? One common approach is to try and find a company with returns on capital employed (ROCE) that are increasing, in conjunction with a growing amount of capital employed. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. So on that note, MakeMyTrip (NASDAQ:MMYT) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital.

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

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 MakeMyTrip is:

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

0.058 = US$56m ÷ (US$1.5b - US$547m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

Thus, MakeMyTrip has an ROCE of 5.8%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Hospitality industry average of 9.4%.

View our latest analysis for MakeMyTrip

Above you can see how the current ROCE for MakeMyTrip compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering MakeMyTrip here for free.

So How Is MakeMyTrip's ROCE Trending?

It's great to see that MakeMyTrip has started to generate some pre-tax earnings from prior investments. While the business is profitable now, it used to be incurring losses on invested capital five years ago. At first glance, it seems the business is getting more proficient at generating returns, because over the same period, the amount of capital employed has reduced by 30%. This could potentially mean that the company is selling some of its assets.

For the record though, there was a noticeable increase in the company's current liabilities over the period, so we would attribute some of the ROCE growth to that. Essentially the business now has suppliers or short-term creditors funding about 36% of its operations, which isn't ideal. It's worth keeping an eye on this because as the percentage of current liabilities to total assets increases, some aspects of risk also increase.

In Conclusion...

In the end, MakeMyTrip has proven it's capital allocation skills are good with those higher returns from less amount of capital. Since the stock has returned a solid 94% to shareholders over the last five years, it's fair to say investors are beginning to recognize these changes. In light of that, we think it's worth looking further into this stock because if MakeMyTrip can keep these trends up, it could have a bright future ahead.

Before jumping to any conclusions though, we need to know what value we're getting for the current share price. That's where you can check out our FREE intrinsic value estimation that compares the share price and estimated value.

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.