The goal of this article is to teach you how to use price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). We'll show how you can use Datacolor AG's (VTX:DCN) P/E ratio to inform your assessment of the investment opportunity. Datacolor has a P/E ratio of 32.30, based on the last twelve months. In other words, at today's prices, investors are paying CHF32.30 for every CHF1 in prior year profit.
Check out our latest analysis for Datacolor
How Do You Calculate A P/E Ratio?
The formula for P/E is:
Price to Earnings Ratio = Share Price (in reporting currency) ÷ Earnings per Share (EPS)
Or for Datacolor:
P/E of 32.30 = CHF705.47 (Note: this is the share price in the reporting currency, namely, USD ) ÷ CHF21.84 (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2019.)
Is A High Price-to-Earnings Ratio Good?
A higher P/E ratio means that buyers have to pay a higher price for each CHF1 the company has earned over the last year. That isn't a good or a bad thing on its own, but a high P/E means that buyers have a higher opinion of the business's prospects, relative to stocks with a lower P/E.
Does Datacolor Have A Relatively High Or Low P/E For Its Industry?
The P/E ratio indicates whether the market has higher or lower expectations of a company. The image below shows that Datacolor has a higher P/E than the average (22.2) P/E for companies in the electronic industry.
Datacolor's P/E tells us that market participants think the company will perform better than its industry peers, going forward. Shareholders are clearly optimistic, but the future is always uncertain. So further research is always essential. I often monitor director buying and selling.
How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios
If earnings fall then in the future the 'E' will be lower. Therefore, even if you pay a low multiple of earnings now, that multiple will become higher in the future. A higher P/E should indicate the stock is expensive relative to others -- and that may encourage shareholders to sell.
Datacolor shrunk earnings per share by 14% over the last year. And over the longer term (5 years) earnings per share have decreased 3.6% annually. This could justify a pessimistic P/E.
Don't Forget: The P/E Does Not Account For Debt or Bank Deposits
One drawback of using a P/E ratio is that it considers market capitalization, but not the balance sheet. That means it doesn't take debt or cash into account. The exact same company would hypothetically deserve a higher P/E ratio if it had a strong balance sheet, than if it had a weak one with lots of debt, because a cashed up company can spend on growth.