Yahoo Finance Should We Worry About Intact Financial Corporation’s (TSE:IFC) P/E Ratio?
The goal of this article is to teach you how to use price to earnings ratios (P/E ratios). To keep it practical, we’ll show how Intact Financial Corporation’s (TSE:IFC) P/E ratio could help you assess the value on offer. Intact Financial has a P/E ratio of 21.95, based on the last twelve months. That means that at current prices, buyers pay CA$21.95 for every CA$1 in trailing yearly profits.
View our latest analysis for Intact Financial
How Do I Calculate Intact Financial’s Price To Earnings Ratio?
The formula for P/E is:
Price to Earnings Ratio = Price per Share ÷ Earnings per Share (EPS)
Or for Intact Financial:
P/E of 21.95 = CA$103.44 ÷ CA$4.71 (Based on the trailing twelve months to September 2018.)
Is A High P/E Ratio Good?
A higher P/E ratio means that buyers have to pay a higher price for each CA$1 the company has earned over the last year. All else being equal, it’s better to pay a low price — but as Warren Buffett said, ‘It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price.’
How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios
Earnings growth rates have a big influence on P/E ratios. 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. A lower P/E should indicate the stock is cheap relative to others — and that may attract buyers.
Intact Financial shrunk earnings per share by 13% over the last year. But it has grown its earnings per share by 4.2% per year over the last five years.
How Does Intact Financial’s P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?
The P/E ratio essentially measures market expectations of a company. The image below shows that Intact Financial has a higher P/E than the average (12.7) P/E for companies in the insurance industry.
Intact Financial’s P/E tells us that market participants think the company will perform better than its industry peers, going forward. Shareholders are clearly optimistic, but the future is always uncertain. So further research is always essential. I often monitor director buying and selling.
A Limitation: P/E Ratios Ignore Debt and Cash In The Bank
Don’t forget that the P/E ratio considers market capitalization. Thus, the metric does not reflect cash or debt held by the company. In theory, a company can lower its future P/E ratio by using cash or debt to invest in growth.
Spending on growth might be good or bad a few years later, but the point is that the P/E ratio does not account for the option (or lack thereof).
How Does Intact Financial’s Debt Impact Its P/E Ratio?
Intact Financial’s net debt is 12% of its market cap. It would probably deserve a higher P/E ratio if it was net cash, since it would have more options for growth.
The Bottom Line On Intact Financial’s P/E Ratio
Intact Financial trades on a P/E ratio of 21.9, which is above the CA market average of 13.7. With some debt but no EPS growth last year, the market has high expectations of future profits.
When the market is wrong about a stock, it gives savvy investors an opportunity. 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 visualization of the analyst consensus on future earnings could help you make the right decision about whether to buy, sell, or hold.
Of course you might be able to find a better stock than Intact Financial. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have grown earnings strongly.
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.
