What underlying fundamental trends can indicate that a company might be in decline? A business that's potentially in decline often shows two trends, a return on capital employed (ROCE) that's declining, and a base of capital employed that's also declining. Basically the company is earning less on its investments and it is also reducing its total assets. And from a first read, things don't look too good at Vital (NZSE:VTL), so let's see why.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for Vital, this is the formula:

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

0.028 = NZ$1.5m ÷ (NZ$65m - NZ$12m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

Thus, Vital has an ROCE of 2.8%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Wireless Telecom industry average of 11%.

View our latest analysis for Vital

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 Vital has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of Vital's past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

So How Is Vital's ROCE Trending?

We are a bit worried about the trend of returns on capital at Vital. Unfortunately the returns on capital have diminished from the 13% that they were earning five years ago. And on the capital employed front, the business is utilizing roughly the same amount of capital as it was back then. Since returns are falling and the business has the same amount of assets employed, this can suggest it's a mature business that hasn't had much growth in the last five years. If these trends continue, we wouldn't expect Vital to turn into a multi-bagger.

What We Can Learn From Vital's ROCE

All in all, the lower returns from the same amount of capital employed aren't exactly signs of a compounding machine. Investors haven't taken kindly to these developments, since the stock has declined 67% from where it was five years ago. That being the case, unless the underlying trends revert to a more positive trajectory, we'd consider looking elsewhere.

Like most companies, Vital does come with some risks, and we've found 2 warning signs that you should be aware of.

While Vital isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.