If you're not sure where to start when looking for the next multi-bagger, there are a few key trends you should 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. And in light of that, the trends we're seeing at Sunlands Technology Group's (NYSE:STG) look very promising so lets take a look.

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 Sunlands Technology Group is:

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

0.41 = CN￥502m ÷ (CN￥2.2b - CN￥945m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

Therefore, Sunlands Technology Group has an ROCE of 41%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Consumer Services industry average of 7.6%.

See our latest analysis for Sunlands Technology Group

While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you'd like to look at how Sunlands Technology Group has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of Sunlands Technology Group's past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

We're delighted to see that Sunlands Technology Group is reaping rewards from its investments and has now broken into profitability. Historically the company was generating losses but as we can see from the latest figures referenced above, they're now earning 41% on their capital employed. Additionally, the business is utilizing 35% less capital than it was five years ago, and taken at face value, that can mean the company needs less funds at work to get a return. This could potentially mean that the company is selling some of its assets.

On a related note, the company's ratio of current liabilities to total assets has decreased to 44%, which basically reduces it's funding from the likes of short-term creditors or suppliers. Therefore we can rest assured that the growth in ROCE is a result of the business' fundamental improvements, rather than a cooking class featuring this company's books. However, current liabilities are still at a pretty high level, so just be aware that this can bring with it some risks.