Yahoo Finance Will the Promising Trends At News (NASDAQ:NWSA) Continue?
Finding a business that has the potential to grow substantially is not easy, but it is possible if we look at a few key financial metrics. Typically, we'll want to notice a trend of growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and alongside that, an expanding base 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. So when we looked at News (NASDAQ:NWSA) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.
Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?
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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for News:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.038 = US$449m ÷ (US$14b - US$2.7b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2020).
Thus, News has an ROCE of 3.8%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Media industry average of 9.8%.
Check out our latest analysis for News
Above you can see how the current ROCE for News 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.
So How Is News' ROCE Trending?
While there are companies with higher returns on capital out there, we still find the trend at News promising. The figures show that over the last five years, ROCE has grown 24% whilst employing roughly the same amount of capital. So our take on this is that the business has increased efficiencies to generate these higher returns, all the while not needing to make any additional investments. It's worth looking deeper into this though because while it's great that the business is more efficient, it might also mean that going forward the areas to invest internally for the organic growth are lacking.
The Bottom Line
To sum it up, News is collecting higher returns from the same amount of capital, and that's impressive. Investors may not be impressed by the favorable underlying trends yet because over the last five years the stock has only returned 3.8% to shareholders. So exploring more about this stock could uncover a good opportunity, if the valuation and other metrics stack up.
One more thing to note, we've identified 2 warning signs with News and understanding these should be part of your investment process.
While News 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.
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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