Yahoo Finance Does Home Bancorp, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:HBCP) P/E Ratio Signal A Buying Opportunity?
This article is written for those who want to get better at using price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). We’ll show how you can use Home Bancorp, Inc.’s (NASDAQ:HBCP) P/E ratio to inform your assessment of the investment opportunity. Home Bancorp has a P/E ratio of 11.64, based on the last twelve months. In other words, at today’s prices, investors are paying $11.64 for every $1 in prior year profit.
See our latest analysis for Home Bancorp
How Do You Calculate A P/E Ratio?
The formula for P/E is:
Price to Earnings Ratio = Price per Share ÷ Earnings per Share (EPS)
Or for Home Bancorp:
P/E of 11.64 = $35.87 ÷ $3.08 (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2018.)
Is A High P/E Ratio Good?
A higher P/E ratio means that investors are paying a higher price for each $1 of company earnings. That is not a good or a bad thing per se, but a high P/E does imply buyers are optimistic about the future.
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. Therefore, even if you pay a high multiple of earnings now, that multiple will become lower in the future. So while a stock may look expensive based on past earnings, it could be cheap based on future earnings.
Most would be impressed by Home Bancorp earnings growth of 20% in the last year. And its annual EPS growth rate over 5 years is 19%. So one might expect an above average P/E ratio.
How Does Home Bancorp’s P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?
We can get an indication of market expectations by looking at the P/E ratio. If you look at the image below, you can see Home Bancorp has a lower P/E than the average (17.3) in the mortgage industry classification.
Its relatively low P/E ratio indicates that Home Bancorp shareholders think it will struggle to do as well as other companies in its industry classification. Many investors like to buy stocks when the market is pessimistic about their prospects. It is arguably worth checking if insiders are buying shares, because that might imply they believe the stock is undervalued.
Don’t Forget: The P/E Does Not Account For Debt or Bank Deposits
Don’t forget that the P/E ratio considers market capitalization. That means it doesn’t take debt or cash into account. In theory, a company can lower its future P/E ratio by using cash or debt to invest in growth.
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 Home Bancorp’s P/E?
Since Home Bancorp holds net cash of US$3.3m, it can spend on growth, justifying a higher P/E ratio than otherwise.
The Verdict On Home Bancorp’s P/E Ratio
Home Bancorp’s P/E is 11.6 which is below average (17.1) in the US market. Not only should the net cash position reduce risk, but the recent growth has been impressive. The below average P/E ratio suggests that market participants don’t believe the strong growth will continue. Because analysts are predicting more growth in the future, one might have expected to see a higher P/E ratio. You can taker closer look at the fundamentals, here.
Investors have an opportunity when market expectations about a stock are wrong. 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 report on the analyst consensus forecasts could help you make a master move on this stock.
But note: Home Bancorp 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.
