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. 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. With that in mind, the ROCE of Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) looks great, so lets see what the trend can tell us.

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

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 Netflix is:

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

0.23 = US$9.6b ÷ (US$52b - US$11b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2024).

Thus, Netflix has an ROCE of 23%. In absolute terms that's a great return and it's even better than the Entertainment industry average of 11%.

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Netflix compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you're interested, you can view the analysts predictions in our free analyst report for Netflix .

The Trend Of ROCE

The trends we've noticed at Netflix are quite reassuring. The numbers show that in the last five years, the returns generated on capital employed have grown considerably to 23%. Basically the business is earning more per dollar of capital invested and in addition to that, 76% more capital is being employed now too. So we're very much inspired by what we're seeing at Netflix thanks to its ability to profitably reinvest capital.

The Key Takeaway

In summary, it's great to see that Netflix 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 159% to shareholders over the last five years, it looks like investors are recognizing these changes. Therefore, we think it would be worth your time to check if these trends are going to continue.

On the other side of ROCE, we have to consider valuation. That's why we have a FREE intrinsic value estimation for NFLX on our platform that is definitely worth checking out.

High returns are a key ingredient to strong performance, so check out our free list ofstocks earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.

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.