Fastenal (NASDAQ:FAST) Is Aiming To Keep Up Its Impressive Returns

Simply Wall St · 11/13/2023 10:42

Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. So, when we ran our eye over Fastenal's (NASDAQ:FAST) trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

What Is 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. The formula for this calculation on Fastenal is:

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

0.38 = US$1.5b ÷ (US$4.6b - US$668m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

So, Fastenal has an ROCE of 38%. That's a fantastic return and not only that, it outpaces the average of 13% earned by companies in a similar industry.

See our latest analysis for Fastenal

roce
NasdaqGS:FAST Return on Capital Employed November 13th 2023

In the above chart we have measured Fastenal's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Fastenal here for free.

So How Is Fastenal's ROCE Trending?

We'd be pretty happy with returns on capital like Fastenal. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 38% and the business has deployed 41% more capital into its operations. Now considering ROCE is an attractive 38%, this combination is actually pretty appealing because it means the business can consistently put money to work and generate these high returns. If these trends can continue, it wouldn't surprise us if the company became a multi-bagger.

In Conclusion...

In the end, the company has proven it can reinvest it's capital at high rates of returns, which you'll remember is a trait of a multi-bagger. And long term investors would be thrilled with the 138% return they've received over the last five years. So even though the stock might be more "expensive" than it was before, we think the strong fundamentals warrant this stock for further research.

Before jumping to any conclusions though, we need to know what value we're getting for the current share price. That's where you can check out our FREE intrinsic value estimation that compares the share price and estimated value.

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.