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It's great to see ICICI Securities (NSE:ISEC) shareholders have their patience rewarded with a 32% share price pop in the last month. While recent buyers might be laughing, long term holders might not be so pleased, since the recent gain only brings the full year return to evens.
All else being equal, a sharp share price increase should make a stock less attractive to potential investors. In the long term, share prices tend to follow earnings per share, but in the short term prices bounce around in response to short term factors (which are not always obvious). So some would prefer to hold off buying when there is a lot of optimism towards a stock. One way to gauge market expectations of a stock is to look at its Price to Earnings Ratio (PE Ratio). A high P/E ratio means that investors have a high expectation about future growth, while a low P/E ratio means they have low expectations about future growth.
View our latest analysis for ICICI Securities
How Does ICICI Securities's P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?
ICICI Securities's P/E of 19.48 indicates some degree of optimism towards the stock. The image below shows that ICICI Securities has a higher P/E than the average (14.7) P/E for companies in the capital markets industry.
ICICI Securities's P/E tells us that market participants think the company will perform better than its industry peers, going forward. The market is optimistic about the future, but that doesn't guarantee future growth. So investors should delve deeper. I like to check if company insiders have been buying or selling.
How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios
Probably the most important factor in determining what P/E a company trades on is the earnings growth. That's because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the 'E' in the equation. That means even if the current P/E is high, it will reduce over time if the share price stays flat. And as that P/E ratio drops, the company will look cheap, unless its share price increases.
ICICI Securities saw earnings per share decrease by 18% last year. But over the longer term (5 years) earnings per share have increased by 41%.
A Limitation: P/E Ratios Ignore Debt and Cash In The Bank
The 'Price' in P/E reflects the market capitalization of the company. Thus, the metric does not reflect cash or debt held by the company. Hypothetically, a company could reduce its future P/E ratio by spending its cash (or taking on debt) to achieve higher earnings.
Such spending might be good or bad, overall, but the key point here is that you need to look at debt to understand the P/E ratio in context.