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. This shows us that it's a compounding machine, able to continually reinvest its earnings back into the business and generate higher returns. Speaking of which, we noticed some great changes in Atkore's (NYSE:ATKR) returns on capital, so let's have a look.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What Is It?

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Atkore:

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

0.25 = US$624m ÷ (US$3.0b - US$511m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

Therefore, Atkore has an ROCE of 25%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Electrical industry average of 11%.

See our latest analysis for Atkore

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Atkore compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Atkore for free.

How Are Returns Trending?

Atkore is displaying some positive trends. The numbers show that in the last five years, the returns generated on capital employed have grown considerably to 25%. Basically the business is earning more per dollar of capital invested and in addition to that, 118% more capital is being employed now too. So we're very much inspired by what we're seeing at Atkore thanks to its ability to profitably reinvest capital.

Our Take On Atkore's ROCE

In summary, it's great to see that Atkore can compound returns by consistently reinvesting capital at increasing rates of return, because these are some of the key ingredients of those highly sought after multi-baggers. Since the stock has returned a staggering 112% to shareholders over the last five years, it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. In light of that, we think it's worth looking further into this stock because if Atkore can keep these trends up, it could have a bright future ahead.

Atkore does have some risks, we noticed 2 warning signs (and 1 which doesn't sit too well with us) we think you should know about.

If you'd like to see other companies earning high returns, check out our free list of companies earning high returns with solid balance sheets 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.