Yahoo Finance Should We Be Excited About The Trends Of Returns At Trex Company (NYSE:TREX)?
If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing 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. Looking at Trex Company (NYSE:TREX), it does have a high ROCE right now, but lets see how returns are trending.
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. To calculate this metric for Trex Company, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.36 = US$222m ÷ (US$718m - US$110m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).
So, Trex Company has an ROCE of 36%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Building industry average of 14%.
Check out our latest analysis for Trex Company
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Trex Company 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 report on analyst forecasts for the company.
What Can We Tell From Trex Company's ROCE Trend?
In terms of Trex Company's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. Historically returns on capital were even higher at 51%, but they have dropped over the last five years. However, given capital employed and revenue have both increased it appears that the business is currently pursuing growth, at the consequence of short term returns. And if the increased capital generates additional returns, the business, and thus shareholders, will benefit in the long run.
On a side note, Trex Company has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 15% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Some would claim this reduces the business' efficiency at generating ROCE since it is now funding more of the operations with its own money.
Our Take On Trex Company's ROCE
In summary, despite lower returns in the short term, we're encouraged to see that Trex Company is reinvesting for growth and has higher sales as a result. And long term investors must be optimistic going forward because the stock has returned a huge 830% to shareholders in the last five years. So while the underlying trends could already be accounted for by investors, we still think this stock is worth looking into further.
Trex Company does have some risks, we noticed 2 warning signs (and 1 which is significant) we think you should know about.
If you want to search for more stocks that have been earning high returns, check out this free list of stocks with solid balance sheets that are also earning high returns on equity.
This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.
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