If you're not sure where to start when looking for the next multi-bagger, there are a few key trends you should keep an eye out for. Amongst other things, we'll want to see two things; firstly, a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an expansion in the company's amount of capital employed. 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 TimkenSteel's (NYSE:TMST) returns on capital, so let's have a look.

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for TimkenSteel:

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

0.049 = US$46m ÷ (US$1.2b - US$207m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2023).

Therefore, TimkenSteel has an ROCE of 4.9%. Ultimately, that's a low return and it under-performs the Metals and Mining industry average of 9.7%.

View our latest analysis for TimkenSteel

In the above chart we have measured TimkenSteel's 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 report for TimkenSteel.

So How Is TimkenSteel's ROCE Trending?

TimkenSteel has broken into the black (profitability) and we're sure it's a sight for sore eyes. The company now earns 4.9% on its capital, because five years ago it was incurring losses. On top of that, what's interesting is that the amount of capital being employed has remained steady, so the business hasn't needed to put any additional money to work to generate these higher returns. That being said, while an increase in efficiency is no doubt appealing, it'd be helpful to know if the company does have any investment plans going forward. Because in the end, a business can only get so efficient.

The Bottom Line

To bring it all together, TimkenSteel has done well to increase the returns it's generating from its capital employed. Since the stock has returned a solid 78% to shareholders over the last five years, it's fair to say investors are beginning to recognize these changes. So given the stock has proven it has promising trends, it's worth researching the company further to see if these trends are likely to persist.

TimkenSteel does have some risks though, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for TimkenSteel that you might be interested in.