ROI – calculating return on investment

Business administration offers various profitability indicators that enable a company to measure its success and that of its investments. Ranking among the most important indicators of this type is return on investment (ROI). Below we’ll explain what you need to know about this indicator as well as how you can calculate ROI and interpret your company’s profitability.

Return on investment is one of the most important indicators in accounting and has a long tradition. This value is situated at the top of the DuPont model and is thus at the centre of the world’s oldest business indicator system. This model was introduced in 1919 by the American chemical company E. I. du Pont de Nemours and Company. ROI refers to the return in relation to the invested capital.

Within the DuPont indicator pyramid, ROI is used to measure a company’s success while taking into account the entire capital investment. The value answers the following question: How effective was the capital investment over the course of the accounting period under consideration? In theory, however, ROI is suitable as a measurement parameter for any application case in which success is to be determined by the return on invested capital. Other examples of where it can be applied are:

• The evaluation of investments
• The comparison of investment projects
• The analysis of individual business divisions

Which indicators you apply to calculating your ROI value depends on whether you are determining your entire company’s rate of return for a particular accounting period or whether you simply want to calculate returns from single investments or a specific business division.

Below we use an example to explain the calculation of ROI. For this we begin by assuming that a company has the following figures for the accounting period under consideration.

Return on investment sheds light on the profitability of fixed capital. It can involve a company’s entire capital or the capital expenditure for a single investment.

The ROI is a measurement of this capital’s return. How you evaluate a ROI figure in the long run depends heavily on the sector in which the company is active or makes investments. Many business professionals aim for a return on investment that is more than 10 percent. On average, however, higher ROI values are obtained in commerce than industry. Within a company, determining the ROI value provides an opportunity to compare various investment projects or business divisions in terms of their profitability.

Calculating ROI is considered one of the standard procedures for evaluating investment projects, both in forecasts and in the subsequent performance review. The indicator is quickly determined and also implies reproducibility. When it comes to describing financial implications, however, the ROI itself has limited informative value: when considering individual cases, repercussions within the overall context can fall by the wayside. Flaws emerge both in the analysis of the company’s overall results as well as in the evaluation of single investments.

• ROI is a book-value based indicator that generally only allows conclusions to be drawn about the past. ROI is not suitable for evaluating future investment projects.

• Investment risks and external influence factors aren’t taken into consideration when using ROI. These include economic and market risks, customer satisfaction, and competition.
• As ROI refers to a specific period under consideration, it is difficult to compare investments with varying terms. Furthermore, it isn’t always possible in practice to clearly match a company’s sales and profits to specific investment projects.

Please note the legal disclaimer relating to this article.