# Return on capital

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Return on capital (ROC), or return on invested capital (ROIC), is a ratio used in finance, valuation and accounting, as a measure of the profitability and value-creating potential of companies relative to the amount of capital invested by shareholders and other debtholders. [1] It indicates how effective a company is at turning capital into profits.

Finance is a field that is concerned with the allocation (investment) of assets and liabilities over space and time, often under conditions of risk or uncertainty. Finance can also be defined as the art of money management. Participants in the market aim to price assets based on their risk level, fundamental value, and their expected rate of return. Finance can be split into three sub-categories: public finance, corporate finance and personal finance.

In finance, valuation is the process of determining the present value (PV) of an asset. Valuations can be done on assets or on liabilities. Valuations are needed for many reasons such as investment analysis, capital budgeting, merger and acquisition transactions, financial reporting, taxable events to determine the proper tax liability, and in litigation.

Accounting or accountancy is the measurement, processing, and communication of financial and non financial information about economic entities such as businesses and corporations. The modern field was established by the Benedikt Kotruljevic in 1458, merchant, economist, scientist, diplomat and humanist from Dubrovnik (Croatia), and Italian mathematician Luca Pacioli in 1494. Accounting, which has been called the "language of business", measures the results of an organization's economic activities and conveys this information to a variety of users, including investors, creditors, management, and regulators. Practitioners of accounting are known as accountants. The terms "accounting" and "financial reporting" are often used as synonyms.

## Contents

The ratio is calculated by dividing the after tax operating income (NOPAT) by the average book-value of the invested capital (IC).

In corporate finance, net operating profit after tax (NOPAT) is a company's after-tax operating profit for all investors, including shareholders and debt holders. NOPAT is used by analysts and investors as a precise and accurate measurement of profitability to compare a company's financial results across its history and against competitors.

When calculating NOPAT, one removes Interest Expense and the effects of other non-operating activities from Net Income to arrive at a value that approximates the value of a firm's annual earnings. NOPAT is precisely calculated as:

## Return on invested capital formula

${\displaystyle ROIC={\frac {\textrm {NOPAT}}{\textrm {AverageInvestedCapital}}}}$

There are three main components of this measurement that are worth noting: [2]

• While ratios such as return on equity and return on assets use net income as the numerator, ROIC uses net operating income after tax (NOPAT), which means that income from financing activities and taxes are deducted from the net income.
• While many financial computations use market value instead of book value (for instance, calculating debt-to-equity ratios or calculating the weights for the weighted average cost of capital (WACC)), ROIC uses book values of the invested capital as the denominator. This procedure is done because, unlike market values which reflect future expectations in efficient markets, book values more closely reflect the amount of initial capital invested to generate a return.
• The denominator represents the average value of the invested capital rather than the value of the end of the year. This is because the NOPAT represents a sum of money flows, while the value of the invested capital changes every day (e.g., the invested capital on the 31 December could be 30% lower than the invested capital on the 30 December). Because the exact average is difficult to calculate, it is often estimated by taking the average between the IC at the beginning of the year and the IC at the end of the year.

In corporate finance, the return on equity (ROE) is a measure of the profitability of a business in relation to the equity, also known as net assets or assets minus liabilities. ROE is a measure of how well a company uses investments to generate earnings growth.

The return on assets (ROA) shows the percentage of how profitable a company's assets are in generating revenue.

The debt-to-equity ratio (D/E) is a financial ratio indicating the relative proportion of shareholders' equity and debt used to finance a company's assets. Closely related to leveraging, the ratio is also known as risk, gearing or leverage. The two components are often taken from the firm's balance sheet or statement of financial position, but the ratio may also be calculated using market values for both, if the company's debt and equity are publicly traded, or using a combination of book value for debt and market value for equity financially.

Some practitioners make an additional adjustment to the formula to add depreciation, amortization, and depletion charges back to the numerator. Since these charges are considered "non-cash expenses" which are often included as part of operating expenses, the practice of adding these back is said to more closely reflect the cash return of a firm over a given period of time. However, others may argue that these non-cash charges should remain left out of the formula as they reflect the decline in the useful life of certain assets in the denominator.

## Relationship with WACC

Because financial theory states that the value of an investment is determined by both the amount of and risk of its expected cash flows to an investor, it is worth noting ROIC and its relationship to the weighted average cost of capital (WACC).

The weighted average cost of capital (WACC) is the rate that a company is expected to pay on average to all its security holders to finance its assets. The WACC is commonly referred to as the firm's cost of capital. Importantly, it is dictated by the external market and not by management. The WACC represents the minimum return that a company must earn on an existing asset base to satisfy its creditors, owners, and other providers of capital, or they will invest elsewhere.

The cost of capital is the return expected from investors for bearing the risk that the projected cash flows of an investment deviate from expectations. It is said that for investments in which future cash flows are incrementally less certain, rational investors require incrementally higher rates of return as compensation for bearing higher degrees of risk. In corporate finance, WACC is a common measurement of the minimum expected weighted average return of all investors in a company given the riskiness of its future cash flows.

Since return on invested capital is said to measure the ability of a firm to generate a return on its capital, and since WACC is said to measure the minimum expected return demanded by the firm's capital providers, the difference between ROIC and WACC is sometimes referred to as a firm's "excess return", or "economic profit".

## Related Research Articles

In finance, the net present value (NPV) or net present worth (NPW) applies to a series of cash flows occurring at different times. The present value of a cash flow depends on the interval of time between now and the cash flow. It also depends on the discount rate. NPV accounts for the time value of money. It provides a method for evaluating and comparing capital projects or financial products with cash flows spread over time, as in loans, investments, payouts from insurance contracts plus many other applications.

To invest is to allocate money in the expectation of some benefit in the future.

In corporate finance, as part of fundamental analysis, economic value added (EVA) is an estimate of a firm's economic profit, or the value created in excess of the required return of the company's shareholders. EVA is the net profit less the capital charge (\$) for raising the firm's capital. The idea is that value is created when the return on the firm's economic capital employed exceeds the cost of that capital. This amount can be determined by making adjustments to GAAP accounting. There are potentially over 160 adjustments but in practice only several key ones are made, depending on the company and its industry. EVA is a service mark of Stern Value Management.

Adjusted present value (APV) is a valuation method introduced in 1974 by Stewart Myers.

In Economics and Accounting, the cost of capital is the cost of a company's funds, or, from an investor's point of view "the required rate of return on a portfolio company's existing securities". It is used to evaluate new projects of a company. It is the minimum return that investors expect for providing capital to the company, thus setting a benchmark that a new project has to meet.

In corporate finance, free cash flow (FCF) or free cash flow to firm (FCFF) is a way of looking at a business's cash flow to see what is available for distribution among all the securities holders of a corporate entity. This may be useful to parties such as equity holders, debt holders, preferred stock holders, and convertible security holders when they want to see how much cash can be extracted from a company without causing issues to its operations.

Enterprise value (EV), total enterprise value (TEV), or firm value (FV) is an economic measure reflecting the market value of a business. It is a sum of claims by all claimants: creditors and shareholders. Enterprise value is one of the fundamental metrics used in business valuation, financial modeling, accounting, portfolio analysis, and risk analysis.

Return on capital employed is an accounting ratio used in finance, valuation, and accounting. It is a useful measure for comparing the relative profitability of companies after taking into account the amount of capital used.

Valuation using discounted cash flows is a method of estimating the current value of a company based on projected future cash flows adjusted for time value of money. The cash flows are made up of the cash flows within the forecast period together with a continuing value that represents the cash flow stream after the forecast period.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to finance:

Net operating assets (NOA) are a business's operating assets minus its operating liabilities. NOA is calculated by reformatting the balance sheet so that operating activities are separated from financing activities. This is done so that the operating performance of the business can be isolated and valued independently of the financing performance. Management is usually not responsible for creating value through financing activities unless the company is in the finance industry, therefore reformatting the balance sheet allows investors to value just the operating activities and hence get a more accurate valuation of the company.

Strategic financial management is the study of finance with a long term view considering the strategic goals of the enterprise. Financial management is nowadays increasingly referred to as "Strategic Financial Management" so as to give it an increased frame of reference.

A financial ratio or accounting ratio is a relative magnitude of two selected numerical values taken from an enterprise's financial statements. Often used in accounting, there are many standard ratios used to try to evaluate the overall financial condition of a corporation or other organization. Financial ratios may be used by managers within a firm, by current and potential shareholders (owners) of a firm, and by a firm's creditors. Financial analysts use financial ratios to compare the strengths and weaknesses in various companies. If shares in a company are traded in a financial market, the market price of the shares is used in certain financial ratios.

Cash return on capital invested (CROCI) is an advanced measure of corporate profitability, originally developed by Deutsche Bank's equity research department in 1996 .This measure compares a post-tax, pre-interest cash flow to the gross level of capital invested and is a useful measure of a company’s ability to generate cash returns on its investments.

Dividend policy is concerned with financial policies regarding paying cash dividend in the present or paying an increased dividend at a later stage. Whether to issue dividends, and what amount, is determined mainly on the basis of the company's unappropriated profit and influenced by the company's long-term earning power. When cash surplus exists and is not needed by the firm, then management is expected to pay out some or all of those surplus earnings in the form of cash dividends or to repurchase the company's stock through a share buyback program.

Corporate finance is an area of finance that deals with sources of funding, the capital structure of corporations, the actions that managers take to increase the value of the firm to the shareholders, and the tools and analysis used to allocate financial resources. The primary goal of corporate finance is to maximize or increase shareholder value. Although it is in principle different from managerial finance which studies the financial management of all firms, rather than corporations alone, the main concepts in the study of corporate finance are applicable to the financial problems of all kinds of firms.

Residual income valuation is an approach to equity valuation that formally accounts for the cost of equity capital. Here, "residual" means in excess of any opportunity costs measured relative to the book value of shareholders' equity; residual income (RI) is then the income generated by a firm after accounting for the true cost of capital. The approach is largely analogous to the EVA/MVA based approach, with similar logic and advantages. Residual Income valuation has its origins in Edwards & Bell (1961), Peasnell (1982), and Ohlson (1995).

In corporate finance, free cash flow to equity (FCFE) is a metric of how much cash can be distributed to the equity shareholders of the company as dividends or stock buybacks—after all expenses, reinvestments, and debt repayments are taken care of. Whereas dividends are the cash flows actually paid to shareholders, the FCFE is the cash flow simply available to shareholders. The FCFE is usually calculated as a part of DCF or LBO modelling and valuation. The FCFE is also called the levered free cash flow.

## References

1. Fernandes, Nuno. Finance for Executives: A Practical Guide for Managers. NPV Publishing, 2014, p. 36.
2. Damodaran, Aswath. "Return on Capital (ROC), Return on Invested Capital (ROIC), and Return on Equity (ROE): Measurement and Implications" (PDF). New York University Stern School of Business. Retrieved 2015-10-20.