How do you know if a stock is too expensive? P/E analysis?

Dear,

I am interning at an investment firm as an ER intern. I want to see how you determine if a stock is more expensive or cheaper than its fair value. How do you use P/E in this process?

Thanks!

20 Comments
 

On a very basic level the P/E ratio will give you a quick glimpse. Compare the ratio to the closest competitors. Furthermore, a big factor when researching a company is understanding their products and how they differentiate from the competition. Do you believe it is a good product? If overall the valuation compared to its peers seems fair and you believe in their product and execution then it might be a good investment.

Now the more complicated, and technical, method starts with yoy growth, ROIC, all the way to building a DCF. However, for starters I would just focus on the financial statements and see if the numbers are convincing.

I hope this makes sense.

 

People are giving you sardonic answers because there's not much more than fundamental analysis (people can't give you over-valued stocks because they can't give you under-valued stocks). Remember that P/E represents earnings divided by (cost of equity - implied perpetual growth rate). What do you think about this implied growth or this cost of capital based on your own fundamental analysis?

 
Most Helpful

P\E is a good starting point but not very useful in isolation. Like the first reply says, compare it to the company's historical P\E and compare it to the P\E of a handful of similar companies. Then if it's relatively higher or lower try to dig in a little bit to find out why. A high P\E relative to peers may be justified if its margins are better/improving or if its revenue/earnings growth is meaningfully higher. Conversely. A low P\E doesn't necessarily mean a company is cheap but could be because of deteriorating margins/earnings/growth or a capital structure that's out of wack. Definitely don't need to get too technical (regression, DCF, etc.) until you're doing deeper valuation work.

 

Look for ntm p/e not p/e and compare that to comparable a is a good proxy if individual securities are overvalued compared to others.

But then again the comparable could always be overvalued as well

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