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Investors Aren't Buying Frontline Ltd.'s (NYSE:FRO) Earnings

When close to half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 23x, you may consider Frontline Ltd. (NYSE:FRO) as a highly attractive investment with its 3.5x P/E ratio. However, the P/E might be quite low for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

Recent times have been advantageous for Frontline as its earnings have been rising faster than most other companies. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think this strong earnings performance might be less impressive moving forward. If you like the company, you'd be hoping this isn't the case so that you could potentially pick up some stock while it's out of favour.

Check out our latest analysis for Frontline

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If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report on Frontline.

How Is Frontline's Growth Trending?

Frontline's P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's expected to deliver very poor growth or even falling earnings, and importantly, perform much worse than the market.

Taking a look back first, we see that the company grew earnings per share by an impressive 159% last year. Although, its longer-term performance hasn't been as strong with three-year EPS growth being relatively non-existent overall. Therefore, it's fair to say that earnings growth has been inconsistent recently for the company.

Turning to the outlook, the next year should bring diminished returns, with earnings decreasing 96% as estimated by the six analysts watching the company. With the market predicted to deliver 20% growth , that's a disappointing outcome.

In light of this, it's understandable that Frontline's P/E would sit below the majority of other companies. However, shrinking earnings are unlikely to lead to a stable P/E over the longer term. Even just maintaining these prices could be difficult to achieve as the weak outlook is weighing down the shares.

What We Can Learn From Frontline's P/E?

Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-earnings ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.

We've established that Frontline maintains its low P/E on the weakness of its forecast for sliding earnings, as expected. Right now shareholders are accepting the low P/E as they concede future earnings probably won't provide any pleasant surprises. It's hard to see the share price rising strongly in the near future under these circumstances.

And what about other risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 2 warning signs for Frontline (of which 1 makes us a bit uncomfortable!) you should know about.

You might be able to find a better investment than Frontline. If you want a selection of possible candidates, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a P/E below 20x (but have proven they can grow earnings).

This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team (at) simplywallst.com.

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