If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing 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, when we ran our eye over Republic Services' (NYSE:RSG) trend of ROCE, we liked what we saw.

Understanding 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 Republic Services, this is the formula:

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

0.10 = US$2.7b ÷ (US$30b - US$4.1b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Therefore, Republic Services has an ROCE of 10%. In absolute terms, that's a pretty normal return, and it's somewhat close to the Commercial Services industry average of 9.1%.

See our latest analysis for Republic Services

In the above chart we have measured Republic Services' 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 report for Republic Services.

So How Is Republic Services' ROCE Trending?

The trend of ROCE doesn't stand out much, but returns on a whole are decent. The company has consistently earned 10% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 39% in that time. Since 10% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Stable returns in this ballpark can be unexciting, but if they can be maintained over the long run, they often provide nice rewards to shareholders.

In Conclusion...

In the end, Republic Services has proven its ability to adequately reinvest capital at good rates of return. And long term investors would be thrilled with the 136% return they've received over the last five years. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

One more thing to note, we've identified 1 warning sign with Republic Services and understanding it should be part of your investment process.

While Republic Services may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

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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.