Yahoo Finance Should You Be Impressed By Ingredion's (NYSE:INGR) Returns on Capital?
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. 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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. In light of that, when we looked at Ingredion (NYSE:INGR) and its ROCE trend, we weren't exactly thrilled.
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 Ingredion is:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.11 = US$629m ÷ (US$6.5b - US$955m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).
So, Ingredion has an ROCE of 11%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 8.0% generated by the Food industry.
View our latest analysis for Ingredion
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Ingredion 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 Ingredion's ROCE Trend?
Over the past five years, Ingredion's ROCE and capital employed have both remained mostly flat. This tells us the company isn't reinvesting in itself, so it's plausible that it's past the growth phase. So unless we see a substantial change at Ingredion in terms of ROCE and additional investments being made, we wouldn't hold our breath on it being a multi-bagger. With fewer investment opportunities, it makes sense that Ingredion has been paying out a decent 37% of its earnings to shareholders. Unless businesses have highly compelling growth opportunities, they'll typically return some money to shareholders.
What We Can Learn From Ingredion's ROCE
In summary, Ingredion isn't compounding its earnings but is generating stable returns on the same amount of capital employed. And investors appear hesitant that the trends will pick up because the stock has fallen 18% in the last five years. Therefore based on the analysis done in this article, we don't think Ingredion has the makings of a multi-bagger.
If you'd like to know about the risks facing Ingredion, we've discovered 1 warning sign that you should be aware of.
If you want to search for solid companies with great earnings, check out this free list of companies with good balance sheets and impressive 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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