If we want to find a potential multi-bagger, often there are underlying trends that can provide clues. 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. So while Dollarama (TSE:DOL) has a high ROCE right now, lets see what we can decipher from how returns are changing.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. The formula for this calculation on Dollarama is:

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

0.25 = CA$861m ÷ (CA$3.9b - CA$474m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to August 2021).

Thus, Dollarama has an ROCE of 25%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 14% earned by companies in a similar industry.

View our latest analysis for Dollarama

In the above chart we have measured Dollarama'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.

What Can We Tell From Dollarama's ROCE Trend?

Unfortunately, the trend isn't great with ROCE falling from 44% five years ago, while capital employed has grown 156%. That being said, Dollarama raised some capital prior to their latest results being released, so that could partly explain the increase in capital employed. It's unlikely that all of the funds raised have been put to work yet, so as a consequence Dollarama might not have received a full period of earnings contribution from it. Additionally, we found that Dollarama's most recent EBIT figure is around the same as the prior year, so we'd attribute the drop in ROCE mostly to the capital raise.

On a side note, Dollarama has done well to pay down its current liabilities to 12% of total assets. So we could link some of this to the decrease in ROCE. Effectively this means their suppliers or short-term creditors are funding less of the business, which reduces some elements of risk. Since the business is basically funding more of its operations with it's own money, you could argue this has made the business less efficient at generating ROCE.

The Bottom Line

In summary, Dollarama is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Since the stock has gained an impressive 69% over the last five years, investors must think there's better things to come. However, unless these underlying trends turn more positive, we wouldn't get our hopes up too high.

On a separate note, we've found 2 warning signs for Dollarama you'll probably want to know about.

High returns are a key ingredient to strong performance, so check out our free list ofstocks 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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