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The valuation of early-stage startups is a controversial topic. There is no widely agreed-upon valuation methodology that can be used to correctly value all early-stage start-ups. There are some valuation models which are more widely used as compared to the other models. However, there is no consensus and almost every investor has their own yardstick […]
Objectives of Accounting
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Yield to Call
In the previous articles, we have studied the concept of yield to maturity. We now know how to calculate the yield on a particular bond. We also know why the calculation of this yield is important. However, it is important to realize that not all bonds are held until maturity. There is a large portion […]
Financial Goal – Profit vs Wealth
Every firm has a predefined goal or an objective. Therefore the most important goal of a financial manager is to increase the owner’s economic welfare. Here economics welfare may refer to maximization of profit or maximization of shareholders wealth. Therefore Shareholders wealth maximization (SWM) plays a very crucial role as far as financial goals of […]
The NSE Co-Location Fraud
The National Stock Exchange (NSE) is one of the two leading stock exchanges in India. Ironically, the National Stock Exchange was created as a result of a huge scam which happened in the Bombay Stock Exchange (BSE). The regulators were of the opinion that the broker nexus in the BSE was too strong. Hence, in […]
The price to earnings ratio is the most fundamental of all market related ratios. It has been used for decades by stalwarts in the investment community. However, it is also the ratio that has come under maximum fire from the skeptics. A variety of measurements have been developed to compensate for what skeptics call the lack of correct information provided by the price earnings ratio. Almost all other market related ratios are a variation of the price to earnings ratio.
Price to Earnings Ratio = Current Market Price / Reported Earnings of the Company
The price to earnings ratio tells the investors how many rupees they are paying for every rupee in earnings that the company presently has. If the price to earnings ratio is 5, then investors are paying 5 rupees to get a stream of earnings of 1 rupee per year till perpetuity. This ratio therefore also implicitly tells the payback period which in this case would be 5 years.
There are a lot of assumptions that the price to earnings ratio implicitly makes. This is the reason that this ratio has come under a lot of criticisms from skeptics who think that price to earnings ratio provides a distorted image of what the reality of the company really is. The common assumptions are as follows:
The world is yet to see a company that has been able to generate stable earnings for an extended period of time. This is why the price earnings ratio may present reality to be different than what it really is.
Moreover the investment community may not enough data at hand to adjust these earnings and arrive at a figure which they think are fair earnings of the company. Hence, naive investors who only look at price-earnings ratios without looking at whether the earnings have been manipulated will possibly make wrong decisions based on this number.
The price to earnings ratio must be interpreted in the light of the fundamentals of finance. These fundamentals are the fact that an investment grows over a period of time. This growth pattern usually follows an exponential pattern which makes the phenomenon of compounding so important.
The fact that price to earnings ratio uses simple arithmetic division makes it unacceptable to many skeptics in the investment community.
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