As two of the market’s top performers in 2025, Comfort Systems USA (FIX – Free Report) and Agnico Eagle Mines (AEM – Free Report) stock are both sitting on exhilarating year-to-date gains of over +100% despite a recent pullback from their all-time highs.
Comfort Systems’ dominance as a provider of comprehensive heating, ventilation, and air conditioning systems and services has made its stock an ideal buy-the-dip target. Meanwhile, Agnico has started to create the same narrative as a prominent gold miner and producer that has taken advantage of a historically high commodity price for the precious metal.
Most supportive of the notion that the incredible performances of Comfort Systems and Agnico stock will eventually continue is their capital efficiency, which is crucial to shareholders as it directly impacts profitability, growth, sustainability, and ultimately total shareholder returns.
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Comfort Systems’ Superior Capital Efficiency
With a stellar three-year total return of +670% as shown above, Comfort Systems’ stock has ballooned to over $800 a share and recently traded at an all-time peak of $1,036. Superior capital efficiency has fueled Comfort Systems’ expansion and is the premise for its stock commanding such a lofty price tag.
Comfort Systems is in the rare upper tier of companies that have a moat in terms of high return on invested capital (ROIC), increasing ROIC, strong invested capital growth, and a high free cash flow (FCF) conversion rate.
Very effectively turning its invested capital into profits, which is one of the clearest indicators of long-term shareholder value, Comfort Systems’ ROIC has soared to eye-catching highs of 35.9%. This shatters the ROIC average for its closest industry peers and the broader Zacks Construction sector’s average of 6% and is also well above the often preferred level of 20% or higher.
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Impressively expanding its asset base, which helps drive future earnings, Comfort Systems’ invested capital is at new peaks of $2.75 billion, as depicted below.
Additionally, Comfort Systems has a preferable FCF conversion rate that’s above 80% and illustrates the company is very efficient at turning its accounting profits into actual cash that can be reinvested or used to reward shareholders. Correlating with such, Comfort Systems has returned over $500 million to shareholders this year via stock buybacks and its very modest but increasing annual dividend, which is currently at $2.40 per share and has now grown by 39% in the last five years.
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Agnico Enters the High-Quality Capital Efficiency Conversation
Capitalizing on the historic surge in gold prices, Agnico should be able to sustain its rise to prominence as it has entered the conversation of high-quality companies in terms of capital efficiency. Emerging as a leader among gold miners, Agnico’s stock hit a high of $187 back in October, highlighting its pleasant total returns of more than +200% in the last three years.
Optimistically, Agnico’s ROIC is currently at new peaks of 12%. While this isn’t necessarily eye-catching, the steady increase is compelling, and as you can see, Agnico’s trailing twelve-month ROIC has crushed the basic materials sector’s average of 4.33% and is notably on par with its Zacks Mining-Gold Industry average.
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More reassuring, Agnico’s invested capital has swelled to record highs of $3 billion, which is surprisingly a larger asset base than Comfort Systems. On top of this, Agnico has an FCF conversion rate of 106%, with it worth mentioning that the gold miner has returned nearly $900 million to shareholders in 2025 through its respectable 0.96% dividend yield and stock repurchases.
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Bottom Line
The stocks of these very capital-efficient companies are currently sporting a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). To that point, positive EPS revisions are starting to magnify their expectations of high-double-digit earnings growth in FY25 and FY26. Keeping this in mind, Comfort Systems USA and Agnico Eagle Mines stock have become two of the most appealing buy-the-dip targets to consider at the moment.
