PRICE-EARNINGS RATIO Many investors are interested in how the earnings are valued by the mar-
PRICE-EARNINGS RATIO Many investors are interested in how the earnings are valued by the mar-
ket. A measure of how these earnings are valued is the price-earnings ratio (P/E). This ratio compares the price per common share with earn- ings per common share:
Market price per share
Price-earnings ratio = -----------------------------------------------------------
Earnings per share The result is a multiple—the value of a share of stock expressed as a
multiple of earnings per share. The inverse of this measure is referred to as the earnings yield, or E/P: 24
20 Edwin Elton and Martin Gruber, “Earnings Estimates and the Accuracy of Expec- tational Data,” Management Science (April 1972), p. B-423.
21 Coggin, “The Analysts and the Investment Process: An Overview.” 22 Jeffrey S. Abarbanell and Victor Bernard, “Tests of Analysts’ Overreaction/Under-
reaction to Earnings Information as an Explanation for Anomalous Stock Price Be- havior,” Journal of Finance (July 1992), pp. 1181–1208.
23 Robert Conroy and Robert Harris, “Consensus Forecasts of Corporate Earnings: Analysts Forecasts and Time Series Methods,” Management Science (June 1987), pp.
724–738. 24 Though the earnings yield provides the same information as the price-earnings ra-
tio, it is often used to avoid the problem of dividing by zero in the cases in which earnings are zero.
Earnings Analysis
Earnings per share
Earnings yield = -----------------------------------------------------------
Market price per share Because investors are forward-looking in their valuation, earnings
per share in this ratio represents the expected normal earnings per share for the stock. If a company has a share price of $17 and earnings per share of 80 cents, the price-earnings ratio is:
Price-earnings ratio = ------------------ =
21.25 times
and the earnings yield is:
$0.80 Earnings yield = ------------------ = 4.71% $17.00
If the market value of the stock represents today’s forecast of future earnings to common shareholders and if current earnings are an indica- tion of future earnings, this ratio tells us that each dollar of earnings represents $21.25 of value today.
P/E ratios vary over time for the S&P 500, typically ranging from 8 to
20 times, averaging around 14.2 times as illustrated in Exhibit 23.6. In recent years the P/E ratio has gone out of these bounds, reaching record- breaking highs toward 30 times. 25
An interesting issue arises in deciding the appropriate inputs to the P/
E ratio. The numerator is rather straightforward: Use a recent market price per share. The denominator presents a number of issues. Aside from the issue of whether the denominator is the basic or diluted earnings per share, an important issue is over what period to measure earnings per share. At any point in time, the most recently ending annual period or quarter’s earnings may not be available. Further muddying the waters is whether the P/E ratio should be measured over a historical period (back- ward-looking) or measured using forecasted earnings (forward-looking). So what is the analyst to do? There are several approaches that are used:
■ The sum of the latest available four reported quarters.
25 See John Y. Campbell and Robert J. Shiller, “Valuation Ratios and the Long-Run Stock Market Outlook,” Journal of Portfolio Management (Winter 1998), p. 11,
and E. S. Browning, “Bulls Use Convoluted Measures to Justify View,” Wall Street Journal (April 20, 1998), p. C1.
FINANCIAL STATEMENT ANALYSIS
EXHIBIT 23.6 Average Annual P/E for the S&P 500, 1958–2001
Source: Standard & Poor’s Stock Market Encyclopedia and www.standardandpoors.com. ■ Estimated earnings for the next fiscal year.
■ Earnings per share averaged over several historical, annual periods. The last approach is suggested by Graham and Dodd and uses an EPS
that is the average of EPS for “not less than five years, preferably seven or ten years.” 26
Taking a closer look at the determinant of P/E ratios, we see that this ratio is related to a number of fundamental factors:
Factor
Relationship with P/E
EPS growth
Stability of earnings growth
Earnings quality
Dividend payout
Financial leverage
Market capitalization
P/E ratio of similar stocks
P/E ratio of the market
Level of interest rates
Inflation
26 Benjamin Graham and David L. Dodd. Security Analysis (New York: McGraw- Hill, 1934), p. 452.
Earnings Analysis
As pointed out by Eugene Fama and Kenneth French in their study of the relation between stock returns and fundamental factors, E/P (or its inverse P/E) includes the stock price in its construction and hence should
be correlated with stock returns. 27 This has been supported in research that finds that E/P explains stock returns. 28 Additional evidence of this is found in Chapter 9 where we discuss fundamental factor models.
Parts
» Financial Management and Analysis
» SECURITIES MARKETS The primary function of a securities market—whether or not it has a
» Stock Exchanges Stock exchanges are formal organizations, approved and regulated by
» Stock Market Indicators Stock market indicators have come to perform a variety of functions,
» Efficient Markets Investors do not like risk and they must be compensated for taking on
» THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM The United States has a central monetary authority known as the Fed-
» The Fed and the Money Supply Financial managers and investors are interested in the supply and
» Deposit Institutions Traditionally, the United States has had several types of deposit institu-
» Investment Banking The primary market involves the distribution to investors of newly
» Interest Rates and Yields Because bonds are traded in the secondary market, the price of the bond
» The Risk Premium Market participants talk of interest rates on non-Treasury securities as
» OPTIONS An option is a contract in which the writer of the option grants the
» Buying Call Options The purchase of a call option creates a position referred to as a long call
» Buying Put Options The buying of a put option creates a financial position referred to as a
» CAP AND FLOOR AGREEMENTS There are agreements available in the financial market whereby one
» I n assessing a company’s current and future cash flows, the financial
» Depreciation for Tax Purposes For accounting purposes, a firm can select a method of depreciation
» Capital Gains We tend to use the term “capital gain” loosely to mean an increase in the
» Current assets (also referred to as circulating capital and working
» Noncurrent Assets Noncurrent assets are assets that are not current assets; that is, it is not
» Deferred Taxes Along with long-term liabilities, the analyst may encounter another
» THE INCOME STATEMENT An income statement is a summary of the revenues and expenses of a
» THE STATEMENT OF CASH FLOWS The statement of cash flows is a summary over a period of time of a
» T he notion that money has a time value is one of the most basic con-
» DETERMINING THE PRESENT VALUE Now that we understand how to compute future values, let’s work the
» Shortcuts: Annuities There are valuation problems that require us to evaluate a series of level
» THE CALCULATION OF INTEREST RATES
» T here are a number of factors that affect a stock’s price and its value to
» Dividend Valuation Model If dividends are constant forever, the value of a share of stock is the
» Returns on Common Stock As we saw in the preceding section, the value of a stock is the present
» Straight Coupon Bond Suppose you are considering investing in a straight coupon bond that:
» Returns on Bonds If you invest in a bond, you realize a return from the interest it pays (if
» Coupon Bonds The present value of a bond is its current market price, which is the dis-
» Callable Bonds Some bonds have a feature, referred to as a call feature, that allows the
» RISK Whenever you make a financing or investment decision, there is some
» Financial Risk When we refer to the cash flow risk of a security, we expand our con-
» Reinvestment Rate Risk Another type of risk is the uncertainty associated with reinvesting cash
» Interest Rate Risk Interest rate risk is the sensitivity of the change in an asset’s value to
» Currency Risk In assessing the attractiveness of an investment, we estimated future cash
» 5 (Continued) Portfolio of Investment C and Investment D
» Portfolio Size and Risk What we have seen for a portfolio with two assets can be extended to
» I n Chapters 8 through 10, we discussed and practiced techniques for
» The Cost of Debt Because Congress allows you to deduct from your taxable income the
» The Cost of Common Stock The cost of common stock is the cost of raising one more dollar of com-
» INTEGRATIVE EXAMPLE: ESTIMATING THE COST OF CAPITAL FOR DUPONT
» CAPITAL BUDGETING Because a firm must continually evaluate possible investments, capital
» Investment Cash Flows When we consider the cash flows of an investment we must also consider
» Asset Disposition At the end of the useful life of an asset, the firm may be able to sell it or
» Change in Expenses When a firm takes on a new project, the costs associated with it will
» Putting It All Together Here’s what we need to put together to calculate the change in the firm’s
» The Analysis To determine the relevant cash flows to evaluate this expansion, let’s
» The Problem The new equipment costs $300,000 and is expected to have a useful life of
» T he value of a firm today is the present value of all its future cash
» Payback Period The payback period for a project is the length of time it takes to get your
» Discounted Payback Period The discounted payback period is the time needed to pay back the origi-
» Net Present Value If offered an investment that costs $5,000 today and promises to pay
» Net Present Value Decision Rule
» Profitability Index The profitability index (PI) is the ratio of the present value of change in
» Stand-Alone versus Market Risk If we have some idea of the uncertainty associated with a project’s
» Sensitivity Analysis Estimates of cash flows are based on assumptions about the economy,
» Simulation Analysis Sensitivity analysis becomes unmanageable if we change several factors
» Options on Real Assets The valuation of stock options is rather complex, but with the assis-
» OVERVIEW OF DEBT OBLIGATIONS In a debt obligation, the borrower receives money in exchange for a
» Repayment Schedule Term loans are usually repaid in installments either monthly, quarterly,
» Interest In the United States, interest is typically paid twice a year at six month
» Debt Retirement By the maturity date of the bond, the issuer must pay off the entire par
» Rating Systems In all systems the term high grade means low default risk, or conversely,
» S uppose you buy a new car that costs $20,000 and you pay cash for it.
» Limited Liability The corporate form of doing business is attractive to owners of a busi-
» Stock Ownership We can classify a corporation according to whether its shares of stock
» Voting Rights Common shareholders are generally granted rights to
» Corporate Democracy Corporate democracy gives owners of the corporation a say in how to
» Methods of Repurchasing Stock
» Dividends Although a firm’s board of directors declares a dividend on its preferred
» Sinking Funds Because there is no legal obligation to pay the preferred dividend and
» DEBT VERSUS EQUITY The combination of debt and equity used to finance a firm’s projects is
» CAPITAL STRUCTURE AND TAXES We’ve seen how the use of debt financing increases the risk to owners;
» Interest Tax Shield An interesting element introduced into the capital structure decision is
» Unused Tax Shields The value of a tax shield depends on whether the firm can use an interest
» PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER As a firm increases the relative use of debt in the capital structure, its
» A s we saw in Part Three, managers base decisions about investing in
» CASH MANAGEMENT Cash flows out of a firm as it pays for the goods and services it pur-
» The Baumol Model The Baumol Model is based on the Economic Order Quantity (EOQ)
» The Miller-Orr Model The Baumol Model assumes that cash is used uniformly throughout the
» The Check Clearing Process The process of receiving cash from customers involves several time-
» RECEIVABLES MANAGEMENT When a firm allows customers to pay for goods and services at a later
» Captive Finance Subsidiaries Some firms choose to form a wholly-owned subsidiary—a corporation
» The Economic Order Quantity Model The Economic Order Quantity (EOQ) model helps us determine what
» Just-in-Time Inventory The goal of the just-in-time (JIT) inventory model is to cut down on the
» Monitoring Inventory Management We can monitor inventory by looking at financial ratios in much the
» Add-on-interest Another way of stating interest is with add-on interest, where the total
» Trade Credit Trade credit is granted by a supplier to a customer purchasing goods or
» Commercial Paper Commercial paper is an unsecured promissory note with a fixed matu-
» Types of Inventory Financing There are several different types of loan arrangements that involve
» SPECIALIZED COLLATERALIZED BORROWING ARRANGEMENT FOR FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS
» RATIOS AND THEIR CLASSIFICATION
» RETURN-ON-INVESTMENT RATIOS Return-on-investment ratios compare measures of benefits, such as earn-
» The Du Pont System The returns on investment ratios give us a “bottom line” on the perfor-
» LIQUIDITY Liquidity reflects the ability of a firm to meet its short-term obligations
» PROFITABILITY RATIOS We have seen that liquidity ratios tell us about a firm’s ability to meet its
» Using a Benchmark To interpret a firm’s financial ratios we need to compare them with the
» INTEGRATIVE EXAMPLE: FINANCIAL ANALYSIS OF WAL-MART STORES 6
» Dilutive Securities For a company having securities that are dilutive—meaning they could
» ANALYSTS’ FORECASTS There are many financial services firms offering projections on different
» PRICE-EARNINGS RATIO Many investors are interested in how the earnings are valued by the mar-
» FREE CASH FLOW Cash flows without any adjustment may be misleading because they do
» NET FREE CASH FLOW There are many variations in the calculation of cash flows that are used
» Using Cash Flow Information The analysis of cash flows provides information that can be used along
» THE GLOBAL ECONOMY Many countries export a substantial portion of the goods and services
» FOREIGN CURRENCY Doing business outside of one’s own country requires dealing with the cur-
» The Euro The European Union consists of 15 European member countries that
» Global Equity Market In 1985, Euromoney surveyed several firms that either listed stock on a
» Currency Swaps When issuing bonds in another country where the bonds are not denom-
» Currency Option Contracts In contrast to a forward or futures contract, an option gives the option
» A s an alternative to the issuance of a corporate bond, a corporation
» WHAT RATING AGENCIES LOOK AT IN RATING ASSET-BACKED SECURITIES
» Third-Party Guarantees Perhaps the easiest form of credit enhancement to understand is insur-
» EXAMPLE OF AN ACTUAL STRUCTURED FINANCE TRANSACTION
» Accounting for Capital Leases
» FEDERAL INCOME TAX REQUIREMENTS FOR TRUE LEASE TRANSACTIONS
» Direct Cash Flow from Leasing When a firm elects to lease an asset rather than borrow money to pur-
» S tructured financing is a debt obligation that is backed by the value of
» CREDIT IMPACT OBJECTIVE While the sponsor or sponsors of a project financing ideally would pre-
» A business that maximizes its owners’ wealth allocates its resources
» Budgeting In budgeting, we bring together analyses of cash flows, projected income
» Taxes and Transaction Costs The Black-Scholes option pricing model ignores taxes and transaction
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