To find a multi-bagger stock, what are the underlying trends we should look for in a business? In a perfect world, we'd like to see a company investing more capital into its business and ideally the returns earned from that capital are also increasing. Ultimately, this demonstrates that it's a business that is reinvesting profits at increasing rates of return. That's why when we briefly looked at LeMaitre Vascular's (NASDAQ:LMAT) ROCE trend, we were pretty happy with what we saw.

If you haven't worked with ROCE before, it measures the 'return' (pre-tax profit) a company generates from capital employed in its business. The formula for this calculation on LeMaitre Vascular is:

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

0.14 = US$46m ÷ (US$363m - US$25m) (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2024).

Thus, LeMaitre Vascular has an ROCE of 14%. On its own, that's a standard return, however it's much better than the 9.3% generated by the Medical Equipment industry.

View our latest analysis for LeMaitre Vascular

Above you can see how the current ROCE for LeMaitre Vascular compares to its prior returns on capital, but there's only so much you can tell from the past. If you'd like, you can check out the forecasts from the analysts covering LeMaitre Vascular for free.

While the returns on capital are good, they haven't moved much. Over the past five years, ROCE has remained relatively flat at around 14% and the business has deployed 132% more capital into its operations. 14% is a pretty standard return, and it provides some comfort knowing that LeMaitre Vascular has consistently earned this amount. 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.

To sum it up, LeMaitre Vascular has simply been reinvesting capital steadily, at those decent rates of return. On top of that, the stock has rewarded shareholders with a remarkable 187% return to those who've held over the last five years. So while the positive underlying trends may be accounted for by investors, we still think this stock is worth looking into further.

LeMaitre Vascular could be trading at an attractive price in other respects, so you might find our free intrinsic value estimation for LMAT on our platform quite valuable.

For those who like to invest in solid companies, check out this free list of companies with solid balance sheets and high returns on equity.