INVESTING 101
Today I am going to explain what I mean by "valuation". Valuation is expressed by the PE ratio. Simply stated, the PE is the price of a share of stock divided by the annual earnings of the stock. Lets say a stock was trading at $20 per share and its last years earnings was $2 per share, that would look like this as a ratio, 20/2 for a PE of 10. This is also called the multiple, because the 10 would have an X behind it. To understand this you have to consider just what the PE is telling you. Basically, the PE is saying how much you are willing to pay (price of the stock) for a dollar's worth of earnings. So in the example I gave, a multiple of 10X is saying that you would pay $10 for the right to earn $1. If that sounds silly, then consider that the average multiple of all stocks historically is around 12-15 times earnings. So a multiple of 10 is well within reason if the company has a viable business model.One such company is Whirlpool, the maker of washing machine, dryers, refrigerators and other appliances. It was recently trading at less that 10 times earnings. Why? It has been punished for reducing its earnings guidance for the year to $12 from about $13. The stock is down 18% this year mostly due to a strong dollar vrs overseas currencies,mostly the Brazilian real (their currency). Bringing back overseas earnings to a strong dollar can diminish the earnings in dollar terms. I have my eye on Whirlpool but have not bought any yet because the pain may not be over. It is a good company suffering from its global exposure.
In summary, the PE ratio is a valuable tool for comparing how expensive a stock is vrs other companies in the same business (sector). It can also be exploited in many ways to make investment decisions which I will discuss in later posts.
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