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Investors are often guided by the idea of discovering 'the next big thing', even if that means buying 'story stocks' without any revenue, let alone profit. But the reality is that when a company loses money each year, for long enough, its investors will usually take their share of those losses. Loss-making companies are always racing against time to reach financial sustainability, so investors in these companies may be taking on more risk than they should.
So if this idea of high risk and high reward doesn't suit, you might be more interested in profitable, growing companies, like PepsiCo (NASDAQ:PEP). While this doesn't necessarily speak to whether it's undervalued, the profitability of the business is enough to warrant some appreciation - especially if its growing.
View our latest analysis for PepsiCo
How Fast Is PepsiCo Growing?
Generally, companies experiencing growth in earnings per share (EPS) should see similar trends in share price. Therefore, there are plenty of investors who like to buy shares in companies that are growing EPS. We can see that in the last three years PepsiCo grew its EPS by 7.4% per year. That might not be particularly high growth, but it does show that per-share earnings are moving steadily in the right direction.
It's often helpful to take a look at earnings before interest and tax (EBIT) margins, as well as revenue growth, to get another take on the quality of the company's growth. PepsiCo maintained stable EBIT margins over the last year, all while growing revenue 8.6% to US$86b. That's a real positive.
In the chart below, you can see how the company has grown earnings and revenue, over time. Click on the chart to see the exact numbers.
Of course the knack is to find stocks that have their best days in the future, not in the past. You could base your opinion on past performance, of course, but you may also want to check this interactive graph of professional analyst EPS forecasts for PepsiCo.
Are PepsiCo Insiders Aligned With All Shareholders?
Since PepsiCo has a market capitalisation of US$241b, we wouldn't expect insiders to hold a large percentage of shares. But thanks to their investment in the company, it's pleasing to see that there are still incentives to align their actions with the shareholders. Indeed, they have a considerable amount of wealth invested in it, currently valued at US$411m. We note that this amounts to 0.2% of the company, which may be small owing to the sheer size of PepsiCo but it's still worth mentioning. This should still be a great incentive for management to maximise shareholder value.