When researching a stock for investment, what can tell us that the company is in decline? When we see a declining return on capital employed (ROCE) in conjunction with a declining base of capital employed, that's often how a mature business shows signs of aging. This indicates the company is producing less profit from its investments and its total assets are decreasing. On that note, looking into Astronics (NASDAQ:ATRO), we weren't too upbeat about how things were going.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for Astronics, this is the formula:

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

0.045 = US$23m ÷ (US$652m - US$150m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

So, Astronics has an ROCE of 4.5%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Aerospace & Defense industry average of 9.6%.

View our latest analysis for Astronics

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Astronics compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for Astronics .

The Trend Of ROCE

The trend of returns that Astronics is generating are raising some concerns. Unfortunately, returns have declined substantially over the last five years to the 4.5% we see today. What's equally concerning is that the amount of capital deployed in the business has shrunk by 24% over that same period. The fact that both are shrinking is an indication that the business is going through some tough times. Typically businesses that exhibit these characteristics aren't the ones that tend to multiply over the long term, because statistically speaking, they've already gone through the growth phase of their life cycle.

In Conclusion...

In short, lower returns and decreasing amounts capital employed in the business doesn't fill us with confidence. Long term shareholders who've owned the stock over the last five years have experienced a 41% depreciation in their investment, so it appears the market might not like these trends either. That being the case, unless the underlying trends revert to a more positive trajectory, we'd consider looking elsewhere.

Astronics does have some risks, we noticed 2 warning signs (and 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) we think you should know about.