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. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. So on that note, Cheniere Energy (NYSE:LNG) looks quite promising in regards to its trends of return on capital.

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What Is Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)?

For those who don't know, ROCE is a measure of a company's yearly pre-tax profit (its return), relative to the capital employed in the business. The formula for this calculation on Cheniere Energy is:

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

0.15 = US$6.1b ÷ (US$44b - US$4.4b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024).

Thus, Cheniere Energy has an ROCE of 15%. In absolute terms, that's a satisfactory return, but compared to the Oil and Gas industry average of 10% it's much better.

See our latest analysis for Cheniere Energy

In the above chart we have measured Cheniere Energy's prior ROCE against its prior performance, but the future is arguably more important. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering Cheniere Energy for free.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

Cheniere Energy is showing promise given that its ROCE is trending up and to the right. The figures show that over the last five years, ROCE has grown 120% whilst employing roughly the same amount of capital. So it's likely that the business is now reaping the full benefits of its past investments, since the capital employed hasn't changed considerably. It's worth looking deeper into this though because while it's great that the business is more efficient, it might also mean that going forward the areas to invest internally for the organic growth are lacking.

The Bottom Line

As discussed above, Cheniere Energy appears to be getting more proficient at generating returns since capital employed has remained flat but earnings (before interest and tax) are up. Since the stock has returned a staggering 610% 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.

Cheniere Energy does come with some risks though, we found 4 warning signs in our investment analysis, and 1 of those is concerning...

While Cheniere Energy 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.

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