If we want to find a stock that could multiply over the long term, what are the underlying trends we should look for? 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. Although, when we looked at United Internet (ETR:UTDI), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.

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 United Internet is:

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

0.079 = €755m ÷ (€11b - €1.9b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

So, United Internet has an ROCE of 7.9%. In absolute terms, that's a low return but it's around the Telecom industry average of 6.6%.

See our latest analysis for United Internet

Above you can see how the current ROCE for United Internet 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 United Internet .

What Does the ROCE Trend For United Internet Tell Us?

When we looked at the ROCE trend at United Internet, we didn't gain much confidence. Over the last five years, returns on capital have decreased to 7.9% from 12% five years ago. However it looks like United Internet might be reinvesting for long term growth because while capital employed has increased, the company's sales haven't changed much in the last 12 months. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.

The Bottom Line On United Internet's ROCE

In summary, United Internet is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Since the stock has declined 22% over the last five years, investors may not be too optimistic on this trend improving either. On the whole, we aren't too inspired by the underlying trends and we think there may be better chances of finding a multi-bagger elsewhere.

On a separate note, we've found 3 warning signs for United Internet you'll probably want to know about.