Here's What To Make Of Ark Restaurants' (NASDAQ:ARKR) Returns On Capital

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. In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. If you see this, it typically means it's a company with a great business model and plenty of profitable reinvestment opportunities. In light of that, when we looked at Ark Restaurants (NASDAQ:ARKR) and its ROCE trend, we weren't exactly thrilled.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for Ark Restaurants:

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

0.056 = US$6.7m ÷ (US$143m - US$24m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to March 2020).

Therefore, Ark Restaurants has an ROCE of 5.6%. On its own, that's a low figure but it's around the 6.9% average generated by the Hospitality industry.

Check out our latest analysis for Ark Restaurants

Historical performance is a great place to start when researching a stock so above you can see the gauge for Ark Restaurants' ROCE against it's prior returns. If you're interested in investigating Ark Restaurants' past further, check out this free graph of past earnings, revenue and cash flow.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

When we looked at the ROCE trend at Ark Restaurants, we didn't gain much confidence. Over the last five years, returns on capital have decreased to 5.6% from 15% five years ago. However it looks like Ark Restaurants might be reinvesting for long term growth because while capital employed has increased, the company's sales haven't changed much in the last 12 months. It may take some time before the company starts to see any change in earnings from these investments.

What We Can Learn From Ark Restaurants' ROCE

In summary, Ark Restaurants is reinvesting funds back into the business for growth but unfortunately it looks like sales haven't increased much just yet. Since the stock has declined 52% over the last five years, investors may not be too optimistic on this trend improving either. Therefore based on the analysis done in this article, we don't think Ark Restaurants has the makings of a multi-bagger.

If you want to know some of the risks facing Ark Restaurants we've found 5 warning signs (1 is potentially serious!) that you should be aware of before investing here.

While Ark Restaurants isn't earning the highest return, check out this free list of companies that are earning high returns on equity with solid balance sheets.

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. 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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