Ignoring the stock price of a company, what are the underlying trends that tell us a business is past the growth phase? A business that's potentially in decline often shows two trends, a return on capital employed (ROCE) that's declining, and a base of capital employed that's also declining. Basically the company is earning less on its investments and it is also reducing its total assets. So after we looked into Venture (SGX:V03), the trends above didn't look too great.

Understanding Return On Capital Employed (ROCE)

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. To calculate this metric for Venture, this is the formula:

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

0.089 = S$258m ÷ (S$3.7b - S$785m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to December 2024).

Therefore, Venture has an ROCE of 8.9%. On its own that's a low return on capital but it's in line with the industry's average returns of 8.7%.

See our latest analysis for Venture

SGX:V03 Return on Capital Employed March 21st 2025

Above you can see how the current ROCE for Venture 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 analyst report for Venture .

What Can We Tell From Venture's ROCE Trend?

In terms of Venture's historical ROCE movements, the trend doesn't inspire confidence. To be more specific, the ROCE was 16% five years ago, but since then it has dropped noticeably. On top of that, it's worth noting that the amount of capital employed within the business has remained relatively steady. This combination can be indicative of a mature business that still has areas to deploy capital, but the returns received aren't as high due potentially to new competition or smaller margins. If these trends continue, we wouldn't expect Venture to turn into a multi-bagger.

In Conclusion...

In the end, the trend of lower returns on the same amount of capital isn't typically an indication that we're looking at a growth stock. Despite the concerning underlying trends, the stock has actually gained 14% over the last five years, so it might be that the investors are expecting the trends to reverse. Either way, we aren't huge fans of the current trends and so with that we think you might find better investments elsewhere.

Venture does have some risks though, and we've spotted 1 warning sign for Venture that you might be interested in.

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