Reuters Apple had the best five-year average return on corporate capital among companies in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.Ever since stocks were first bought and sold, investors have sought to find company metrics that would separate the winners from the losers. Sales growth, earnings growth, earnings per share — even CEO pay. Now it turns out that companies that are good at deploying capital to produce quality goods and services represent lower risk and a higher likelihood of long-term stock gains. We examined this phenomenon two years ago, tying high returns on invested capital (ROIC) to excellent stock performance over very long periods. The data were provided by FactSet, which defines ROIC as a company’s net income divided by total invested capital (total shareholders’ equity and long-term debt). The idea of ROIC is to measure how efficiently a company’s managers use the money they have raised.via