The Wesfarmers Ltd (ASX: WES) share price has been a solid compounder over the last several years and its performance in the past half-decade has been very satisfactory, in my view.
As we can see on the chart above, the business has seen plenty of volatility in the years following COVID-19.
Despite that, the company has registered a capital gain of 44% over the prior five years, at the time of writing.
The owner of Kmart and Bunnings has done well for shareholders and I believe that it has the potential to continue rising.
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How many Wesfarmers shares you could buy with $10,000
Five years ago, if an investor decided to put $10,000 into the ASX retail share, they could buy 181 Wesfarmers shares.
But, thanks to the pleasing gain of the business, an investor can now only buy 125 shares, at the time of writing.
Clearly, it would have been better to buy a few years ago then today with $10,000. But, we can also see that the business is cheaper now than it was between August to October 2025.
Is this the right time to invest in the ASX retail share?
The business has certainly seen plenty of economic changes in the last five years, with the end of the COVID-era consumer spending, the jump in inflation and interest rates, a few rate cuts last year and now more inflation and rate rises.
Through all of that, the business has served customers well and given them great value products through Kmart and Bunnings. At the same time, their scale and efficient spending have allowed those businesses to achieve a high return on capital (ROC), which in turn has led Wesfarmers to achieve a return on equity (ROE) of more than 30%.
The company has managed to regularly find a compelling place to put money to earn a good return.
For example, with its Anko product business, it has opened a number of stores in the Philippines, which gives it a useful growth avenue considering how large the population is there. I'm also excited by Wesfarmers expansion into lithium mining with how much the lithium price has risen in the last year.
According to CMC Invest, there have been eight ratings on the Wesfarmers share price in the last three months, with only two of those being a buy, five being a hold and one being a sell.
However, the average price target is $76.81, implying not much of a gain from here in the year ahead.
Therefore, there could be better ideas out there.
