Returns On Capital At Fabrinet (NYSE:FN) Have Stalled

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. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. So, when we ran our eye over Fabrinet's (NYSE:FN) trend of ROCE, we liked what we saw.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

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 Fabrinet, this is the formula:

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

0.13 = US$151m ÷ (US$1.6b - US$444m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2021).

Therefore, Fabrinet has an ROCE of 13%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 10% generated by the Electronic industry.

Check out our latest analysis for Fabrinet

roce

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Fabrinet 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 Fabrinet's ROCE Trending?

While the current returns on capital are decent, they haven't changed much. The company has consistently earned 13% for the last five years, and the capital employed within the business has risen 95% in that time. Since 13% is a moderate ROCE though, it's good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Over long periods of time, returns like these might not be too exciting, but with consistency they can pay off in terms of share price returns.

In Conclusion...

In the end, Fabrinet has proven its ability to adequately reinvest capital at good rates of return. And the stock has done incredibly well with a 139% return over the last five years, so long term investors are no doubt ecstatic with that result. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.

One more thing to note, we've identified 1 warning sign with Fabrinet and understanding it should be part of your investment process.

While Fabrinet isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. 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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