If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to 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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. So when we looked at Azbil (TSE:6845) and its trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.
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 Azbil:
Return on Capital Employed = Earnings Before Interest and Tax (EBIT) ÷ (Total Assets - Current Liabilities)
0.18 = JP¥45b ÷ (JP¥300b - JP¥53b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2025).
Thus, Azbil has an ROCE of 18%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 9.2% generated by the Electronic industry.
Check out our latest analysis for Azbil
Above you can see how the current ROCE for Azbil compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Azbil for free.
We like the trends that we're seeing from Azbil. Over the last five years, returns on capital employed have risen substantially to 18%. The company is effectively making more money per dollar of capital used, and it's worth noting that the amount of capital has increased too, by 25%. So we're very much inspired by what we're seeing at Azbil thanks to its ability to profitably reinvest capital.
In summary, it's great to see that Azbil can compound returns by consistently reinvesting capital at increasing rates of return, because these are some of the key ingredients of those highly sought after multi-baggers. Since the stock has only returned 20% to shareholders over the last five years, the promising fundamentals may not be recognized yet by investors. Given that, we'd look further into this stock in case it has more traits that could make it multiply in the long term.
Azbil does come with some risks though, we found 3 warning signs in our investment analysis, and 1 of those shouldn't be ignored...
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.
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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.