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. With that in mind, we've noticed some promising trends at LiveRamp Holdings (NYSE:RAMP) so let's look a bit deeper.

Understanding 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. To calculate this metric for LiveRamp Holdings, this is the formula:

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

0.0052 = US$5.2m ÷ (US$1.2b - US$209m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2023).

So, LiveRamp Holdings has an ROCE of 0.5%. In absolute terms, that's a low return and it also under-performs the Software industry average of 7.5%.

In the above chart we have measured LiveRamp Holdings' prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free analyst report for LiveRamp Holdings .

What Does the ROCE Trend For LiveRamp Holdings Tell Us?

It's great to see that LiveRamp Holdings has started to generate some pre-tax earnings from prior investments. The company was generating losses five years ago, but now it's turned around, earning 0.5% which is no doubt a relief for some early shareholders. Additionally, the business is utilizing 27% less capital than it was five years ago, and taken at face value, that can mean the company needs less funds at work to get a return. LiveRamp Holdings could be selling under-performing assets since the ROCE is improving.

One more thing to note, LiveRamp Holdings has decreased current liabilities to 17% of total assets over this period, which effectively reduces the amount of funding from suppliers or short-term creditors. Therefore we can rest assured that the growth in ROCE is a result of the business' fundamental improvements, rather than a cooking class featuring this company's books.

What We Can Learn From LiveRamp Holdings' ROCE

In a nutshell, we're pleased to see that LiveRamp Holdings has been able to generate higher returns from less capital. And since the stock has fallen 44% over the last five years, there might be an opportunity here. With that in mind, we believe the promising trends warrant this stock for further investigation.

If you want to continue researching LiveRamp Holdings, you might be interested to know about the 2 warning signs that our analysis has discovered.

While LiveRamp Holdings may not currently earn the highest returns, we've compiled a list of companies that currently earn more than 25% return on equity. Check out this free list here.

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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.