In This Article:
If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to keep an eye out for. Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's 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. However, after investigating Griffin Mining (LON:GFM), we don't think it's current trends fit the mold of a multi-bagger.
Understanding 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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Griffin Mining:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.097 = US$27m ÷ (US$307m - US$30m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).
So, Griffin Mining has an ROCE of 9.7%. In absolute terms, that's a low return but it's around the Metals and Mining industry average of 11%.
Check out our latest analysis for Griffin Mining
In the above chart we have measured Griffin Mining's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free report on analyst forecasts for the company.
How Are Returns Trending?
In terms of Griffin Mining's historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. To be more specific, ROCE has fallen from 24% over the last five years. Meanwhile, the business is utilizing more capital but this hasn't moved the needle much in terms of sales in the past 12 months, so this could reflect longer term investments. It's worth keeping an eye on the company's earnings from here on to see if these investments do end up contributing to the bottom line.
On a related note, Griffin Mining has decreased its current liabilities to 9.7% of total assets. That could partly explain why the ROCE has dropped. What's more, this can reduce some aspects of risk to the business because now the company's suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of its operations. Some would claim this reduces the business' efficiency at generating ROCE since it is now funding more of the operations with its own money.
The Key Takeaway
To conclude, we've found that Griffin Mining is reinvesting in the business, but returns have been falling. And investors appear hesitant that the trends will pick up because the stock has fallen 30% in the last five years. All in all, the inherent trends aren't typical of multi-baggers, so if that's what you're after, we think you might have more luck elsewhere.