If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. 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. That's why when we briefly looked at Morgan Sindall Group's (LON:MGNS) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with 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. The formula for this calculation on Morgan Sindall Group is:

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

0.19 = UK£119m ÷ (UK£1.8b - UK£1.2b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

Thus, Morgan Sindall Group has an ROCE of 19%.  On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 12% generated by the Construction industry.

View our latest analysis for Morgan Sindall Group  roce

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Morgan Sindall Group 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 freereport on analyst forecasts for the company.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

While the returns on capital are good, they haven't moved much. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 19% and the business has deployed 58% more capital into its operations. 19% is a pretty standard return, and it provides some comfort knowing that Morgan Sindall Group has consistently earned this amount. Over long periods of time, returns like these might not be too exciting, but with consistency they can pay off in terms of share price returns.



On a separate but related note, it's important to know that Morgan Sindall Group has a current liabilities to total assets ratio of 66%, which we'd consider pretty high. This effectively means that suppliers (or short-term creditors) are funding a large portion of the business, so just be aware that this can introduce some elements of risk. Ideally we'd like to see this reduce as that would mean fewer obligations bearing risks.

What We Can Learn From Morgan Sindall Group's ROCE

In the end, Morgan Sindall Group has proven its ability to adequately reinvest capital at good rates of return. And the stock has followed suit returning a meaningful 99% to shareholders over the last five years. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.

One more thing, we've spotted  3 warning signs  facing Morgan Sindall Group that you might find interesting.

If you want to search for solid companies with great earnings, check out this freelist 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.