To find a multi-bagger stock, what are the underlying trends we should look for in a business? 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. So, when we ran our eye over Computacenter's (LON:CCC) trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

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 Computacenter is:

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

0.25 = UK￡262m ÷ (UK￡2.8b - UK￡1.7b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2023).

Therefore, Computacenter has an ROCE of 25%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the IT industry average of 11%.

View our latest analysis for Computacenter

In the above chart we have measured Computacenter's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Computacenter here for free.

What Does the ROCE Trend For Computacenter Tell Us?

We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like Computacenter. The company has consistently earned 25% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 143% in that time. Returns like this are the envy of most businesses and given it has repeatedly reinvested at these rates, that's even better. You'll see this when looking at well operated businesses or favorable business models.

On a side note, Computacenter's current liabilities are still rather high at 62% of total assets. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

The Bottom Line On Computacenter's ROCE

In short, we'd argue Computacenter has the makings of a multi-bagger since its been able to compound its capital at very profitable rates of return. On top of that, the stock has rewarded shareholders with a remarkable 159% return to those who've held over the last five years. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.