When we're researching a company, it's sometimes hard to find the warning signs, but there are some financial metrics that can help spot trouble early. When we see a declining return on capital employed (ROCE) in conjunction with a declining base of capital employed, that's often how a mature business shows signs of aging. This reveals that the company isn't compounding shareholder wealth because returns are falling and its net asset base is shrinking. On that note, looking into Grand Baoxin Auto Group (HKG:1293), we weren't too upbeat about how things were going.
What Is 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. To calculate this metric for Grand Baoxin Auto Group, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.078 = CN¥908m ÷ (CN¥23b - CN¥11b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).
So, Grand Baoxin Auto Group has an ROCE of 7.8%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Specialty Retail industry average of 10%.
Check out our latest analysis for Grand Baoxin Auto 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're interested in investigating Grand Baoxin Auto Group's past further, check out this free graph covering Grand Baoxin Auto Group's past earnings, revenue and cash flow.
What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us
There is reason to be cautious about Grand Baoxin Auto Group, given the returns are trending downwards. To be more specific, the ROCE was 12% five years ago, but since then it has dropped noticeably. Meanwhile, capital employed in the business has stayed roughly the flat over the period. 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 Grand Baoxin Auto Group to turn into a multi-bagger.
On a side note, Grand Baoxin Auto Group's current liabilities are still rather high at 50% 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. Ideally we'd like to see this reduce as that would mean fewer obligations bearing risks.
The Bottom Line On Grand Baoxin Auto Group's ROCE
All in all, the lower returns from the same amount of capital employed aren't exactly signs of a compounding machine. We expect this has contributed to the stock plummeting 91% during the last five years. That being the case, unless the underlying trends revert to a more positive trajectory, we'd consider looking elsewhere.
On a final note, we found 4 warning signs for Grand Baoxin Auto Group (2 are potentially serious) you should be aware of.
While Grand Baoxin Auto Group may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.
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