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This blog is a startup guide for those who want to invest in stocks but don't know where to start. That is why this Blog has been named as “Dummies Guide to invest in Indian Bourse". There is no prerequisite of the subject on your part. You need not be a Economist, CA, or mathematician to invest in shares. All you need is some commonsense, eagerness to learn and willingness to spend some time.
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"Everyone has the brainpower to follow the stock market. If you made it through fifth-grade math, you can do it." -Peter Lynch(1995)

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Rajat Verma

Sunday, October 22, 2006

Evaluating a Company for Investment - II

P/E Ratio: Introduction
Chances are you've heard the term price/earnings ratio (P/E ratio) used before. When it comes to valuing stocks, the price/earnings ratio is one of the oldest and most frequently used metrics.
Although a simple indicator to calculate, the P/E is actually quite difficult to interpret. It can be extremely informative in some situations, while at other times it is next to meaningless. As a result, investors often misuse this term and place more value in the P/E than is warranted.

P/E Ratio: What Is It? P/E is short for the ratio of a company's share price to its per-share earnings. As the name implies, to calculate the P/E, you simply take the current stock price of a company and divide by its earnings per share (EPS):
P/E Ratio = ( Market Value per Share / Earnings per Share (EPS) )
Most of the time, the P/E is calculated using EPS from the last four quarters. This is also known as the trailing P/E. However, occasionally the EPS figure comes from estimated earnings expected over the next four quarters. This is known as the leading or projected P/E. A third variation that is also sometimes seen uses the EPS of the past two quarters and estimates of the next two quarters.
Companies that aren't profitable, and consequently have a negative EPS, pose a challenge when it comes to calculating their P/E. Opinions vary on how to deal with this. Some say there is a negative P/E, others give a P/E of 0, while most just say the P/E doesn't exist.

Historically, the average P/E ratio in the market has been around 15-25. This fluctuates significantly depending on economic conditions. The P/E can also vary widely between different companies and industries.

P/E Ratio: Using The P/E Ratio

Theoretically, a stock's P/E tells us how much investors are willing to pay per dollar of earnings. For this reason it's also called the "multiple" of a stock. In other words, a P/E ratio of 20 suggests that investors in the stock are willing to pay $20 for every $1 of earnings that the company generates. However, this is a far too simplistic way of viewing the P/E because it fails to take into account the company's growth prospects.
  • Growth of Earnings

    Although the EPS figure in the P/E is usually based on earnings from the last four quarters, the P/E is more than a measure of a company's past performance. It also takes into account market expectations for a company's growth. Remember, stock prices reflect what investors think a company will be worth. Future growth is already accounted for in the stock price. As a result, a better way of interpreting the P/E ratio is as a reflection of the market's optimism concerning a company's growth prospects.

  • Cheap or Expensive?

    The P/E ratio is a much better indicator of the value of a stock than the market price alone. For example, all things being equal, a $10 stock with a P/E of 75 is much more "expensive" than a $100 stock with a P/E of 20. That being said, there are limits to this form of analysis - you can't just compare the P/Es of two different companies to determine which is a better values
P/E Ratio: It's Not A Crystal Ball

What goes up ... well, sometimes it stays up for an awfully long time.

A common mistake among beginning investors is the short selling of stocks because they have a high P/E ratio. If you aren't familiar with short selling, it's an investing technique by which an investor can make money when a shorted security falls in value. (For more on this, check out the Short Selling tutorial.)

First of all, we believe that novice investors shouldn't be shorting. Secondly, you can get into a lot of trouble by valuing stocks using only simple indicators such as the P/E ratio. Although a high P/E ratio could mean that a stock is overvalued, there is no guarantee that it will come back down anytime soon. On the flip side, even if a stock is undervalued, it could take years for the market to value it in the proper way.

Security analysis requires a great deal more than understanding a few ratios. While the P/E is one part of the puzzle, it's definitely not a crystal ball.