Slowing Rates Of Return At SEEK (ASX:SEK) Leave Little Room For Excitement

Simply Wall St
·3 min read

If you're looking for a multi-bagger, there's a few things to 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. Although, when we looked at SEEK (ASX:SEK), it didn't seem to tick all of these boxes.

What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

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 SEEK is:

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

0.11 = AU$387m ÷ (AU$4.7b - AU$1.2b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2022).

So, SEEK has an ROCE of 11%. That's a relatively normal return on capital, and it's around the 13% generated by the Interactive Media and Services industry.

See our latest analysis for SEEK

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In the above chart we have measured SEEK'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 SEEK.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

Over the past five years, SEEK's ROCE and capital employed have both remained mostly flat. This tells us the company isn't reinvesting in itself, so it's plausible that it's past the growth phase. So unless we see a substantial change at SEEK in terms of ROCE and additional investments being made, we wouldn't hold our breath on it being a multi-bagger. That probably explains why SEEK has been paying out 69% of its earnings as dividends to shareholders. If the company is in fact lacking growth opportunities, that's one of the viable alternatives for the money.

The Bottom Line On SEEK's ROCE

In summary, SEEK isn't compounding its earnings but is generating stable returns on the same amount of capital employed. And with the stock having returned a mere 29% in the last five years to shareholders, you could argue that they're aware of these lackluster trends. As a result, if you're hunting for a multi-bagger, we think you'd have more luck elsewhere.

SEEK does have some risks though, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for SEEK that you might be interested in.

While SEEK 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.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

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.

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