Return on Capital Employed (ROCE) is a profitability ratio that measures how efficient a company is at using its capital to generate profits and use its capital efficiently.
ROCE is calculated by taking into account the total capital that the company has at disposal and the returns that the company generates over the specify time frame. For returns we usually use EBIT that is representative of the company’s profit, including all expenses except interest and tax expenses. For the capital employed we use the company Total Assets minus the current liabilities which can also be seen as shareholders’ equity plus long-term debt.
ROCE = EBIT / Capital Employed
where:
Capital Employed = Total assets − Current liabilities
ROCE is an efficiency ratio and therefore the higher the ratio the more efficient the company at using its capital. The ROCE indicates how much operating profits is generated for each dollar of capital invested in the company.
| Name | Return on capital employed | Marketcap | Industry |
|---|---|---|---|
| DBX Dropbox Inc | 49.7% | $8.67B | Software - Infrastructure |
| SGRP Spar Group, Inc. | 49% | $51.82M | Specialty Business Services |
| LII Lennox International Inc | 48.7% | $23.43B | Specialty Industrial Machinery |
| MRVI Maravai Lifesciences Holdings Inc | 48.7% | $1.32B | Biotechnology |
| MTD Mettler Toledo International Inc | 48.3% | $25.7B | Diagnostics & Research |
| IDXX Idexx Laboratories Inc | 48.1% | $34.17B | Diagnostics & Research |
| ESOA Energy Services of America Corp | 47.3% | $253.53M | Engineering & Construction |
ROIC is important metric that a lot of investors and analysts use to assess the quality and efficiency of a business. ROCE is especially useful to investors when analysing the performance of companies in capital-intensive sectors (like utilities, mining, telecoms etc). It’s important to notice that since ROCE uses book value of assets there might be some distortions in the way ROCE is affected over time. For example deprecation assets on the balance sheet will increase the ROCE even though the profitability stays the same. Conversely in higher inflation environments, inflation will affect the earnings but will not have an effect on the book value of assets so it might have similar effect on ROCE.