Do You Know What Essent Group Ltd’s (NYSE:ESNT) P/E Ratio Means?
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 Essent Group Ltd’s (NYSE:ESNT) P/E ratio to inform your assessment of the investment opportunity. Essent Group has a price to earnings ratio of 8.48, based on the last twelve months. That is equivalent to an earnings yield of about 12%.
Check out our latest analysis for Essent Group
How Do I Calculate A Price To Earnings Ratio?
The formula for P/E is:
Price to Earnings Ratio = Price per Share ÷ Earnings per Share (EPS)
Or for Essent Group:
P/E of 8.48 = $40.82 ÷ $4.81 (Based on the year to June 2018.)
Is A High P/E 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 necessarily good or bad, but a high P/E implies relatively high expectations of what a company can achieve in the future.
How Growth Rates Impact P/E Ratios
P/E ratios primarily reflect market expectations around earnings growth rates. That’s because companies that grow earnings per share quickly will rapidly increase the ‘E’ in the equation. That means even if the current P/E is high, it will reduce over time if the share price stays flat. A lower P/E should indicate the stock is cheap relative to others — and that may attract buyers.
Notably, Essent Group grew EPS by a whopping 68% in the last year. And earnings per share have improved by 36% annually, over the last five years. I’d therefore be a little surprised if its P/E ratio was not relatively high.
How Does Essent Group’s P/E Ratio Compare To Its Peers?
The P/E ratio essentially measures market expectations of a company. We can see in the image below that the average P/E (17.7) for companies in the mortgage industry is higher than Essent Group’s P/E.
Its relatively low P/E ratio indicates that Essent Group shareholders think it will struggle to do as well as other companies in its industry classification. While current expectations are low, the stock could be undervalued if the situation is better than the market assumes. You should delve deeper. I like to check if company insiders have been buying or selling.
Remember: P/E Ratios Don’t Consider The Balance Sheet
The ‘Price’ in P/E reflects the market capitalization of the company. 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 Essent Group’s Debt Impact Its P/E Ratio?
The extra options and safety that comes with Essent Group’s US$128m net cash position means that it deserves a higher P/E than it would if it had a lot of net debt.
The Verdict On Essent Group’s P/E Ratio
Essent Group’s P/E is 8.5 which is below average (18.6) in the US market. Not only should the net cash position reduce risk, but the recent growth has been impressive. One might conclude that the market is a bit pessimistic, given the low P/E ratio.
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 visual report on analyst forecasts could hold they key to an excellent investment decision.
But note: Essent Group 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.
