Return on capital employed (ROCE)
Operating profit divided by capital employed — total assets minus current liabilities. It measures what the business earns on the money tied up in it, before the effects of how that money was raised. Cash is left inside capital employed, and mezzanine capital is left out.
How it is computed here
| Formula | operating income ÷ average capital employed (total assets − current liabilities) |
|---|---|
| Unit | Ratio (shown as %) |
| Period | One fiscal year, as reported |
| Source | Extracted from SEC filings; every value on an asset page carries the accounting tag and the filing it came from |
| Identifier | roce |
What goes into the formula
| Operating income | Profit from the business itself, before interest and tax — the same operating income used in operating margin. A cleaner numerator than net income for this ratio, since it is not moved by how the company is financed or what tax rate it paid. |
|---|---|
| Capital employed, this year and last | Total assets minus current liabilities, at both year-ends — everything invested in the business for longer than a year, whether it came from lenders or shareholders. The average of the two is used, for the same reason as return on equity: a year's profit against one day's balance is a mismatch. |
A formula without its inputs explained is decoration. Where an input is missing from a filing, the metric is left empty here rather than completed with a zero or an estimate.
How to calculate return on capital employed (roce), step by step
A company with heavy long-term investment and short-term supplier financing.
| Operating income | $420M |
|---|---|
| Total assets at the start | $5,600M |
| Current liabilities at the start | $1,200M |
| Total assets at the end | $6,000M |
| Current liabilities at the end | $1,300M |
- Capital employed at the start = 5,600 − 1,200 = $4,400M.
- Capital employed at the end = 6,000 − 1,300 = $4,700M.
- Average capital employed = (4,400 + 4,700) ÷ 2 = $4,550M.
- ROCE = 420 ÷ 4,550 = 0.092 = 9.2%.
Result: 9.2%
Every dollar tied up in the business, whoever supplied it, earned nine point two cents of operating profit this year.
The figures in this example are illustrative and rounded — they are not a real company. The real figures on this site are the live ones below and on every asset page, each carrying the filing it came from.
What return on capital employed (roce) is good for
ROCE keeps working when equity does not: a company financed mostly by debt, or one with negative equity from years of buybacks, still has capital employed — assets minus current liabilities is never undefined the way equity can be. It puts businesses with different capital structures on the same footing, because the denominator does not care whether the money came from a bond or a share sale.
What this number does not tell you
ROCE says nothing about who owns the return: lenders and shareholders are both inside the denominator. It is not a substitute for return on equity — it answers a different question, and it is the one that still has an answer when equity turns negative.
Every metric on this site is published with its blind spot stated. A figure without its limit is half a fact.
See it in a published filing
These pages show the figure across up to nineteen fiscal years, with the accounting tag and the filing behind every value.