Is It Too Late To Buy Enerplus Corporation (TSE:ERF)?
Enerplus Corporation (TSX:ERF), an energy company based in Canada, led the TSX gainers with a relatively large price hike in the past couple of weeks. With many analysts covering the mid-cap stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stock’s share price. However, what if the stock is still a bargain? Let’s examine Enerplus’s valuation and outlook in more detail to determine if there’s still a bargain opportunity. Check out our latest analysis for Enerplus
What is Enerplus worth?
According to my relative valuation model, the stock seems to be currently fairly priced. I’ve used the price-to-equity ratio in this instance because there’s not enough visibility to forecast its cash flows. The stock’s ratio of 15.01x is currently trading slightly above its industry peers’ ratio of 14.93x, which means if you buy Enerplus today, you’d be paying a relatively fair price for it. And if you believe that Enerplus should be trading at this level in the long run, there’s only an insignificant downside when the price falls to its real value. Is there another opportunity to buy low in the future? Since Enerplus’s share price is quite volatile, we could potentially see it sink lower (or rise higher) in the future, giving us another chance to buy. This is based on its high beta, which is a good indicator for how much the stock moves relative to the rest of the market.
What does the future of Enerplus look like?
Future outlook is an important aspect when you’re looking at buying a stock, especially if you are an investor looking for growth in your portfolio. Although value investors would argue that it’s the intrinsic value relative to the price that matter the most, a more compelling investment thesis would be high growth potential at a cheap price. With profit expected to grow by 29.96% over the next couple of years, the future seems bright for Enerplus. It looks like higher cash flows is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.
What this means for you:
Are you a shareholder? ERF’s optimistic future growth appears to have been factored into the current share price, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at ERF? Will you have enough conviction to buy should the price fluctuates below the true value?
Are you a potential investor? If you’ve been keeping tabs on ERF, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the optimistic prospect is encouraging for ERF, which means it’s worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.
Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on Enerplus. You can find everything you need to know about Enerplus in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Enerplus, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.
To help readers see pass 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.
