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Should We Be Excited About The Trends Of Returns At UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH)?

If you’re looking for a multi-bagger, there’s a few things to keep an eye out for. Firstly, we’ll want to see a proven return on capital employed (ROCE) that is increasing, and secondly, an expanding base 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, when we ran our eye over UnitedHealth Group’s (NYSE:UNH) trend of ROCE, we liked what we saw.

Return On Capital Employed (ROCE): What is it?

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. Analysts use this formula to calculate it for UnitedHealth Group:

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

0.19 = US$24b ÷ (US$191b – US$67b) (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2020).

Thus, UnitedHealth Group has an ROCE of 19%. In absolute terms, that’s a satisfactory return, but compared to the Healthcare industry average of 9.8% it’s much better.

Check out our latest analysis for UnitedHealth Group

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Above you can see how the current ROCE for UnitedHealth Group compares to its prior returns on capital, but there’s only so much you can tell from the past. If you’d like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report for UnitedHealth Group.

What The Trend Of ROCE Can Tell Us

While the current returns on capital are decent, they haven’t changed much. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 19% and the business has deployed 82% more capital into its operations. Since 19% is a moderate ROCE though, it’s good to see a business can continue to reinvest at these decent rates of return. Stable returns in this ballpark can be unexciting, but if they can be maintained over the long run, they often provide nice rewards to shareholders.

In Conclusion…

The main thing to remember is that UnitedHealth Group has proven its ability to continually reinvest at respectable rates of return. And the stock has done incredibly well with a 192% return over the last five years, so long term investors are no doubt ecstatic with that result. So while the positive underlying trends may be accounted for by investors, we still think this stock is worth looking into further.

If you want to continue researching UnitedHealth Group, you might be interested to know about the 2 warning signs that our analysis has discovered.

While UnitedHealth Group 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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