Valuation Metrics
Valuation metrics attempt to answer one question: is this stock cheap or expensive relative to something concrete — earnings, assets, sales, or cash flow? None of them work well in isolation; see the "combine with" note on each one, and how to analyze a company from multiple angles for the bigger picture.
Price-to-Earnings Ratio, PER — forecast & trailing
Share price ÷ Earnings per share (EPS)
Shows how many times annual earnings investors are paying for a share. Trailing PER uses the most recent reported EPS; forward PER uses a projected future EPS.
Strengths: Simple, widely used, and makes it easy to compare companies within the same industry.
Watch out for: Meaningless for companies with negative earnings. Can be distorted by accounting choices or one-off gains/losses, and it ignores differences in growth rates between companies.
Combine with: PEG ratio (to account for growth), the industry-average PER, and ROE (to check the quality behind the earnings).
Price-to-Book Ratio, PBR
Share price ÷ Book value per share (BPS)
Shows how many times a company's net assets (book value) the market is paying for the shares. A PBR below 1.0x means the stock trades below its theoretical liquidation value.
Strengths: Can be calculated even for loss-making companies, and is especially useful in asset-heavy industries like banking and real estate.
Watch out for: Tends to understate the value of businesses with large intangible assets (brand, technology). A low PBR can also reflect a stock the market has permanently written off, not a bargain.
Combine with: ROE (ROE × PBR ≈ PER) and PER.
Price-to-Sales Ratio, PSR
Market capitalization ÷ Revenue
Because it only requires revenue, not profit, PSR is commonly used to value early-stage or currently unprofitable growth companies.
Strengths: Works for loss-making or pre-profit growth companies where PER and PBR don't apply well.
Watch out for: Completely ignores profitability — a company with large revenue but no path to profit can still look 'cheap' on this measure alone.
Combine with: Operating margin and revenue growth rate.
Price-to-Cash-Flow Ratio, PCFR
Market capitalization ÷ Operating cash flow
A valuation multiple based on cash flow rather than accounting earnings, which is harder to manipulate through non-cash items like depreciation.
Strengths: Less distorted by depreciation and other non-cash accounting items than PER, so it can be closer to economic reality.
Watch out for: For capital-intensive industries, it can overstate how much cash is genuinely 'free' once necessary reinvestment is taken into account.
Combine with: Free cash flow yield and PER.
EV/EBITDA
Enterprise Value (market cap + interest-bearing debt − cash) ÷ EBITDA
Compares companies regardless of how much debt they carry or how they depreciate assets, which makes it a common tool for M&A valuation and cross-border comparisons.
Strengths: Allows a fairer comparison between highly leveraged and lightly leveraged companies, and works well across countries with different tax regimes.
Watch out for: Ignores the real cash cost of capital expenditure (depreciation), so it can make capital-intensive businesses look cheaper than they really are.
Combine with: EV/EBIT and free cash flow.
EV/EBIT
Enterprise Value ÷ EBIT (earnings before interest and tax)
Similar to EV/EBITDA, but subtracts depreciation, so it also reflects the burden of ongoing capital investment.
Strengths: Better suited than EV/EBITDA for evaluating capital-intensive businesses, since it doesn't ignore depreciation.
Watch out for: Differences in depreciation policy between companies can still distort comparisons.
Combine with: EV/EBITDA (comparing both shows how large the capex/depreciation burden actually is).
EV/Sales
Enterprise Value ÷ Revenue
The enterprise-value equivalent of PSR — a revenue multiple that also accounts for debt.
Strengths: Usable even for companies with negative EBITDA or net income.
Watch out for: Says nothing about profitability on its own.
Combine with: EBITDA margin and operating margin.
Dividend Yield
Dividend per share (DPS) ÷ Share price
Shows how much annual dividend income an investment generates relative to its price.
Strengths: Simple and intuitive for income-focused investors.
Watch out for: An unusually high yield is often a warning sign — it can reflect a falling share price or an expected dividend cut, not genuine value (a 'yield trap').
Combine with: Payout ratio and free cash flow (to judge whether the dividend is actually sustainable).
Earnings Yield (the inverse of PER)
EPS ÷ Share price (= 1 ÷ PER)
Restates PER as a yield, which makes it directly comparable to bond yields and other income-generating assets.
Strengths: Makes it straightforward to compare equities against government bonds or other fixed-income yields.
Watch out for: Shares the same limitations as PER — meaningless for loss-making companies, and blind to growth differences.
Combine with: Long-term interest rates and the yield spread.
PEG Ratio
PER ÷ Expected earnings growth rate (%)
Adjusts PER for growth, addressing PER's biggest blind spot. A PEG ratio below 1.0 is often treated as a rough signal of being cheap relative to growth.
Strengths: Useful for comparing growth stocks — a high-PER stock can turn out to be 'cheap' once its growth rate is taken into account.
Watch out for: Highly sensitive to the accuracy of the growth forecast used; if the growth estimate is wrong, the ratio becomes meaningless.
Combine with: Trailing PER and a sanity check on how realistic the analyst growth consensus actually is.
Intrinsic Value / Theoretical Share Price
DCF method: sum of future free cash flows discounted to present value. Dividend Discount Model (DDM): theoretical price = next year's expected dividend ÷ (discount rate − dividend growth rate).
Estimates what a share 'should' be worth by projecting future cash flows or dividends and converting them to present value.
Strengths: The most theoretically rigorous approach, since it explicitly incorporates future growth expectations.
Watch out for: Extremely sensitive to the assumptions used (growth rate, discount rate) — a classic case of 'garbage in, garbage out.'
Combine with: Multiple scenarios (optimistic/pessimistic) for sensitivity analysis, alongside relative valuation methods like PER and PBR.