Yahoo Finance What Does Catalent Inc’s (NYSE:CTLT) P/E Ratio Tell You?
This article is written for those who want to get better at using price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). To keep it practical, we’ll show how Catalent Inc’s (NYSE:CTLT) P/E ratio could help you assess the value on offer. Catalent has a price to earnings ratio of 65.05, based on the last twelve months. In other words, at today’s prices, investors are paying $65.05 for every $1 in prior year profit.
View our latest analysis for Catalent
How Do I Calculate A Price To Earnings Ratio?
The formula for price to earnings is:
Price to Earnings Ratio = Share Price ÷ Earnings per Share (EPS)
Or for Catalent:
P/E of 65.05 = $41.44 ÷ $0.64 (Based on the trailing twelve months to June 2018.)
Is A High Price-to-Earnings Ratio Good?
A higher P/E ratio means that buyers have to pay a higher price for each $1 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.
How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios
If earnings fall then in the future the ‘E’ will be lower. That means even if the current P/E is low, it will increase over time if the share price stays flat. Then, a higher P/E might scare off shareholders, pushing the share price down.
Catalent’s earnings per share fell by 28% in the last twelve months. But over the longer term (5 years) earnings per share have increased by 26%. And it has shrunk its earnings per share by 44% per year over the last three years. This growth rate might warrant a low P/E ratio. This might lead to low expectations.
How Does Catalent’s P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?
We can get an indication of market expectations by looking at the P/E ratio. As you can see below, Catalent has a higher P/E than the average company (23.6) in the pharmaceuticals industry.
Its relatively high P/E ratio indicates that Catalent shareholders think it will perform better than other companies in its industry classification. Shareholders are clearly optimistic, but the future is always uncertain. So investors should always consider the P/E ratio alongside other factors, such as whether company directors have been buying shares.
Remember: P/E Ratios Don’t Consider The Balance Sheet
Don’t forget that the P/E ratio considers market capitalization. In other words, it does not consider any debt or cash that the company may have on the balance sheet. 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.
Is Debt Impacting Catalent’s P/E?
Net debt totals 38% of Catalent’s market cap. This is enough debt that you’d have to make some adjustments before using the P/E ratio to compare it to a company with net cash.
The Bottom Line On Catalent’s P/E Ratio
Catalent has a P/E of 65. That’s significantly higher than the average in the US market, which is 18.5. With some debt but no EPS growth last year, the market has high expectations of future profits.
Investors should be looking to buy stocks that the market is wrong about. As value investor Benjamin Graham famously said, ‘In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.’ So this free visual report on analyst forecasts could hold they key to an excellent investment decision.
But note: Catalent may not be the best stock to buy. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with strong recent earnings growth (and a P/E ratio below 20).
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
