Looking Into Avery Dennison's Return On Capital Employed

In Q2, Avery Dennison AVY saw a decline in both earnings and sales. Earnings decreased by 82.02% to $134.20 million, and sales dropped by 11.26% to $1.53 billion. Avery Dennison reached earnings of $746.50 million and sales of $1.72 billion in Q1.

What Is ROCE?

Return on Capital Employed is a measure of yearly pre-tax profit relative to capital employed in a business. Changes in earnings and sales indicate shifts in a company's ROCE. A higher ROCE is generally representative of successful growth in a company and is a sign of higher earnings per share for shareholders in the future. A low or negative ROCE suggests the opposite. In Q2, Avery Dennison posted an ROCE of 2.87%.

Keep in mind, while ROCE is a good measure of a company's recent performance, it is not a highly reliable predictor of a company's earnings or sales in the near future.

ROCE is an important metric for the comparison of similar companies. A relatively high ROCE shows Avery Dennison is potentially operating at a higher level of efficiency than other companies in its industry. If the company is generating high profits with its current level of capital, some of that money can be reinvested in more capital which will lead to higher returns and earnings per share growth. For Avery Dennison, the return on capital employed ratio shows the number of assets can actually help the company achieve higher returns, an important note investors will take into account when gauging the payoff from long-term financing strategies.

Q2 Earnings

Avery Dennison reported Q2 earnings per share at $1.27/share against analyst predictions of $1.1/share.