What are the early trends we should look for to identify a stock that could multiply in value over the long term? Firstly, we'd want to identify a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and then alongside that, an ever-increasing base of capital employed. 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 ran our eye over China Chunlai Education Group's (HKG:1969) trend of ROCE, we really liked what we saw.

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 China Chunlai Education Group is:

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

0.20 = CN¥570m ÷ (CN¥5.3b - CN¥2.4b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to February 2022).

Thus, China Chunlai Education Group has an ROCE of 20%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Consumer Services industry average of 9.3%.

View our latest analysis for China Chunlai Education Group

While the past is not representative of the future, it can be helpful to know how a company has performed historically, which is why we have this chart above. If you'd like to look at how China Chunlai Education Group has performed in the past in other metrics, you can view this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

The Trend Of ROCE

China Chunlai Education Group deserves to be commended in regards to it's returns. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 20% and the business has deployed 170% more capital into its operations. With returns that high, it's great that the business can continually reinvest its money at such appealing rates of return. If China Chunlai Education Group can keep this up, we'd be very optimistic about its future.

Another thing to note, China Chunlai Education Group has a high ratio of current liabilities to total assets of 46%. This can bring about some risks because the company is basically operating with a rather large reliance on its suppliers or other sorts of short-term creditors. While it's not necessarily a bad thing, it can be beneficial if this ratio is lower.

The Key Takeaway

In summary, we're delighted to see that China Chunlai Education Group has been compounding returns by reinvesting at consistently high rates of return, as these are common traits of a multi-bagger. And the stock has done incredibly well with a 147% return over the last three years, so long term investors are no doubt ecstatic with that result. So while investors seem to be recognizing these promising trends, we still believe the stock deserves further research.

Like most companies, China Chunlai Education Group does come with some risks, and we've found 3 warning signs that you should be aware of.

China Chunlai Education Group is not the only stock earning high returns. If you'd like to see more, check out our free list of companies earning high returns on equity with solid fundamentals.

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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.