What trends should we look for it we want to identify stocks that can multiply in value over the long term? Ideally, a business will show two trends; firstly a growing return on capital employed (ROCE) and secondly, an increasing 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. In light of that, when we looked at Utah Medical Products (NASDAQ:UTMD) and its ROCE trend, we weren't exactly thrilled.

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

For those that aren't sure what ROCE is, it measures the amount of pre-tax profits a company can generate from the capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on Utah Medical Products is:

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

0.14 = US$18m ÷ (US$135m - US$5.5m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2024).

So, Utah Medical Products has an ROCE of 14%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 10% generated by the Medical Equipment industry.

Check out our latest analysis for Utah Medical Products

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 want to delve into the historical earnings , check out these free graphs detailing revenue and cash flow performance of Utah Medical Products.

What Does the ROCE Trend For Utah Medical Products Tell Us?

In terms of Utah Medical Products' historical ROCE movements, the trend isn't fantastic. To be more specific, ROCE has fallen from 18% over the last five years. Meanwhile, the business is utilizing more capital but this hasn't moved the needle much in terms of sales in the past 12 months, so this could reflect longer term investments. It may take some time before the company starts to see any change in earnings from these investments.

The Bottom Line On Utah Medical Products' ROCE

To conclude, we've found that Utah Medical Products is reinvesting in the business, but returns have been falling. And in the last five years, the stock has given away 14% so the market doesn't look too hopeful on these trends strengthening any time soon. On the whole, we aren't too inspired by the underlying trends and we think there may be better chances of finding a multi-bagger elsewhere.

Utah Medical Products could be trading at an attractive price in other respects, so you might find our free intrinsic value estimation for UTMD on our platform quite valuable.