Invested capital equals the sum of all cash that has been invested in a company over its life without regard to financing form or accounting name. It is the total of investments in the business from which operating revenue is derived. It can be calculated two mathematically equivalent ways as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Formulae for Invested Capital
* NIBCLs – stands for Non-Interest-Bearing Current Liabilities
* * Includes leased assets
Source: New Constructs, LLC
Below are the primary accounting distortions in reported financial statements that require economic translation and adjustment for the Invested Capital calculation.
- Capitalized Expenses
- Excess Cash
- LIFO Reserve
- Other Non-cash Reserves
- Deferred Revenue
- Deferred taxes
- Deferred Compensation
- Charges to Other Accounts
- Operating Lease
- Accumulated Goodwill Amortization
- Unrecorded Goodwill derived from acquisitions recorded under the Pooling Method of Accounting
- After-tax Portion of Asset Write-downs
- Investments in Unconsolidated Subs/Minority Interests
- Unrealized (Gains)/Losses on Investments
- Mid-year acquisitions – adjusting for the mismatch of GAAP’s recording of cash flows and capital posted to the balance sheet
Average Invested Capital is the average of beginning and ending invested capital. If the company discloses the purchase price and closing date of an acquisition, we weight the acquired invested capital by the percent of the fiscal year the acquisition was held.
Invested Capital Turns = Total Operating Revenue/Invested Capital
7 Comments
I saw your discussion on CNBC and went to your web site.
The figure 1 on both the NOPAT definition and the invested capital definition will not display.
Am I doing something wrong?
Tom McConnell
When David on CNBC asked you about detailing your calculations of ROIC, your answer was “it’s all transparent and detailed very clearly on my website blog [above?].
I find this anything BUT transparent. The details of your calculation are totally worthless. Evey your general description is, in itself, very vague. Can you perhaps show your calculations to arrive at Apple’s ROIC of 340%?
See the model in my prior reply comment.
Hi David,
You said see the model in my prior reply comment. I didn’t see a response to Tom McConnell’s comment above. I verified that for both NOPAT and Investing images browsers cannot open http://www.newconstructs.llc
If you can help clarify these definitions and provide an example of how you came up with your ROIC values for Apple that would be greatly appreciated. I notice that sites like Microsoft’s investing site have completely different ROIC values than yours(http://investing.money.msn.com/investments/key-ratios?symbol=aapl&page=InvestmentReturns) provides a ROIC for last year for Apple to be 28.5.
Steve Caple:
Thank you for your comment.
My ROICs tend to be different than everyone’s because my models incorporate more data, especially from the financial footnotes. New Constructs specializes in providing the cleanest and most accurate ROICs on US stock in the market.
Some of our biggest clients are highly sophisticated quant funds that are super-snobs when it comes to data. More info on importance of footnotes is here: http://blog.newconstructs.com/2010/05/13/rule-1-for-finance/
Here is definition of NOPAT: http://blog.newconstructs.com/2012/11/08/nopat-definition-and-formulae-for-net-operating-profit-after-tax-and-nopat-margin/
Here is definition of ROIC: http://blog.newconstructs.com/2012/11/08/roic-definition-and-formulae-for-return-on-invested-capital/
Here is my response to Tim McConnell’s comment:
The link below shows my calculations and data values behind $283 share price implied by he 70% ROIC and behind the $240 share price implied by 50% ROIC.
The link is to a file showing my model, which I think is the most transparent way to explain my calculations.
http://blog.newconstructs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NewConstructs_Model_AAPL_valuationBasedOnROIC.pdf
Once you see how my model works, you can perform your own scenarios on valuation based on whatever margins, ROIC, or revenues levels you want.
Here is definition of NOPAT: http://blog.newconstructs.com/2012/11/08/nopat-definition-and-formulae-for-net-operating-profit-after-tax-and-nopat-margin/
Here is definition of ROIC: http://blog.newconstructs.com/2012/11/08/roic-definition-and-formulae-for-return-on-invested-capital/
You can also find my definitions here:
http://www.newconstructs.com/nc/help/glossary.htm#nopat
Pls let me know if you have any more issues.
Here is the invested capital model for AAPL.
http://blog.newconstructs.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/NewConstructs_AAPL_Model_InvestedCapitalPage.pdf
I am happy to share any other pages from the model that you wish.