

While earnings and book value ratios are generally more appropriate for large companies with positive earnings, the price-to-sales valuation ratio is often used as a comparative price metric for companies that don’t have positive net income - often young companies or those in trouble. Price-to-Sales or P/S is the stock price divided by sales per share. This can create comparisons that are not apples-to-apples. Varying ways to calculate cash flow measures.
#Factset stock pro and cons for free
While earnings and revenue forecasts can easily be pulled for free from websites like Zacks, cash flow estimates are usually more difficult to acquire and require a Bloomberg or FactSet subscription.

Both sides of the ratio are somewhat easy to find assuming you don’t want to adjust the earnings number. You can also quickly communicate with other investors as everyone has some of their own P/E heuristics in mind. The fact that P/E ratios are so widely used means you can quickly compare and contrast with other stocks. When you want to quickly perform a relative valuation analysis of multiple companies to see what others are seeing.Starting off point for valuing nearly all companies.This is the amount a common stock investor pays for a single dollar of earnings. The price-to-earnings ratio shows the relationship between the price per share and the earnings (also known as the net income or profit, essentially the revenue minus cost of sales, operating expenses, and taxes) per share.

If you don’t have access to a $50k Bloomberg terminal, you can find consensus estimates at Yahoo Finance, Zacks (for revenue and earnings at least), and Koyfin (revenue, earnings, and EBITDA). While your view of earnings potential may differ, it’s good to know what the market expects so you can understand what is built into the price. Valuation metrics are most useful when thinking about the future, and therefore, the metrics we choose for financial valuation should be based on what the consensus expects in terms of earnings, cash flow, etc. I will first mention the five “must-know” ratios that will help you speak the native tongue, and then I’ll touch upon a few esoteric gems in a followup post.Ī quick data note before we dive in. There are also the broader commonplace ratios that help you speak the same language as other investors. Weird ones that subtract all sorts of issues. There are zillions of valuation ratios out there. So generally, investors look at valuation ratios based on estimates of future earnings (or cash flow or revenue or community adjusted magic). the current S&P 500 index of ~18x.Ĭonsiderations like time value of money are important as well - a dollar today is worth more than one 10 years from now. Side note: This is an insanely cheap company and likely has never existed - this would imply a P/E ratio of 0.5x (10/20) vs. So if I pay $10 for a company that expects to earn $20 every year for the next 10 years, that’s empirically a pretty good deal. The point of a valuation analyis is to show the price you are paying for some stream of earnings, revenue, or cash flow (or other financial metric). A valuation ratio formula measures the relationship between the market value of a company or its equity and some fundamental financial metric (e.g., earnings). That’s why valuation ratios are so important in determining a company’s worth. If I offered to sell you my company for $5, would you buy it? Is it worth it? Even though it seems cheap at just $5, if I’m currently a loss-making business, you’re actually paying to lose money.
