Did you know there are some financial metrics that can provide clues of a potential multi-bagger? 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. With that in mind, the ROCE of Cimpress (NASDAQ:CMPR) looks great, so lets see what the trend can tell us.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

Just to clarify if you're unsure, ROCE is a metric for evaluating how much pre-tax income (in percentage terms) a company earns on the capital invested in its business. The formula for this calculation on Cimpress is:

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

0.21 = US$253m ÷ (US$1.9b - US$670m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

Therefore, Cimpress has an ROCE of 21%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Commercial Services industry average of 10%.

In the above chart we have measured Cimpress' 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 Cimpress for free.

What Does the ROCE Trend For Cimpress Tell Us?

Cimpress has not disappointed with their ROCE growth. Looking at the data, we can see that even though capital employed in the business has remained relatively flat, the ROCE generated has risen by 33% over the last five years. So it's likely that the business is now reaping the full benefits of its past investments, since the capital employed hasn't changed considerably. It's worth looking deeper into this though because while it's great that the business is more efficient, it might also mean that going forward the areas to invest internally for the organic growth are lacking.

What We Can Learn From Cimpress' ROCE

To sum it up, Cimpress is collecting higher returns from the same amount of capital, and that's impressive. Given the stock has declined 32% in the last five years, this could be a good investment if the valuation and other metrics are also appealing. So researching this company further and determining whether or not these trends will continue seems justified.

If you want to continue researching Cimpress, you might be interested to know about the 1 warning sign that our analysis has discovered.

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.

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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.