ROCE — return on capital employed
What it measures¶
ROCE divides EBIT — earnings before interest and taxes, the operating profit — by capital employed: total assets minus current liabilities (the bills due within a year). Capital employed is the long-term money the business runs on, from both lenders and owners. The Fundamentals page computes EBIT ÷ (total assets − current liabilities).
Why it is on the page¶
It answers the same question as ROIC — what does the business earn on the money it uses? — over a slightly different base and before tax, which makes it easy to compute from any balance sheet. The moat panel uses it as one of its two named tests: a return on capital employed above 20%.
Thresholds, their source and the population they were fitted on¶
| Reference | Line | Source |
|---|---|---|
| moat panel gate | ROCE above 20% | the product's research archive on durable advantages |
- Fitted on: no statistical sample — a practitioner's line for a business with a lasting advantage.
- Evidence grade: practitioner convention.
The ratio-tree row itself draws no zones; the 20% gate is shown on the moat evidence panel.
A worked example¶
Celestica, as the Fundamentals page showed it on 9 August 2026 (fiscal year 2025): ROCE 31.64% — above the moat panel's 20% gate, which it passed.
What “No verdict” means here¶
The row carries no verdict of its own. It reads insufficient data when EBIT, total assets or current liabilities is not stored, and not applicable when capital employed is zero or negative.
What the verdict is and is not¶
The figure describes one year's operating return on the long-term capital in use. It is not a ranking, not a forecast, and not an instruction to trade the shares.