Yahoo Finance Returns On Capital At Gildan Activewear (TSE:GIL) 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. Basically this means that a company has profitable initiatives that it can continue to reinvest in, which is a trait of a compounding machine. Although, when we looked at Gildan Activewear (TSE:GIL), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.
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. To calculate this metric for Gildan Activewear, this is the formula:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.12 = US$294m ÷ (US$2.9b - US$413m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to July 2021).
Therefore, Gildan Activewear has an ROCE of 12%. By itself that's a normal return on capital and it's in line with the industry's average returns of 12%.
Check out our latest analysis for Gildan Activewear
In the above chart we have measured Gildan Activewear's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for Gildan Activewear.
The Trend Of ROCE
Things have been pretty stable at Gildan Activewear, with its capital employed and returns on that capital staying somewhat the same for the last five years. It's not uncommon to see this when looking at a mature and stable business that isn't re-investing its earnings because it has likely passed that phase of the business cycle. So unless we see a substantial change at Gildan Activewear 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 Gildan Activewear has been paying out a decent 32% of its earnings to shareholders. Unless businesses have highly compelling growth opportunities, they'll typically return some money to shareholders.
The Key Takeaway
In summary, Gildan Activewear isn't compounding its earnings but is generating stable returns on the same amount of capital employed. And investors may be recognizing these trends since the stock has only returned a total of 36% to shareholders over the last five years. As a result, if you're hunting for a multi-bagger, we think you'd have more luck elsewhere.
Gildan Activewear does have some risks though, and we've spotted 3 warning signs for Gildan Activewear that you might be interested in.
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. 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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