If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's amount of capital employed. Put simply, these types of businesses are compounding machines, meaning they are continually reinvesting their earnings at ever-higher rates of return. So when we looked at the ROCE trend of Energiekontor (ETR:EKT) we really 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. The formula for this calculation on Energiekontor is:

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

0.20 = €115m ÷ (€722m - €158m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

Thus, Energiekontor has an ROCE of 20%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Electrical industry average of 13%.

View our latest analysis for Energiekontor

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Energiekontor 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 analyst report for Energiekontor .

How Are Returns Trending?

Investors would be pleased with what's happening at Energiekontor. The numbers show that in the last five years, the returns generated on capital employed have grown considerably to 20%. Basically the business is earning more per dollar of capital invested and in addition to that, 85% more capital is being employed now too. The increasing returns on a growing amount of capital is common amongst multi-baggers and that's why we're impressed.

The Bottom Line On Energiekontor's ROCE

To sum it up, Energiekontor has proven it can reinvest in the business and generate higher returns on that capital employed, which is terrific. Since the stock has returned a staggering 318% to shareholders over the last five years, it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. Therefore, we think it would be worth your time to check if these trends are going to continue.

If you want to know some of the risks facing Energiekontor we've found 3 warning signs (1 shouldn't be ignored!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

If you'd like to see other companies earning high returns, check out our free list of companies earning high returns with solid balance sheets here.