To Serve You better: Price-to-Sales Ratio

Article Excerpt

We are always happy to expand the information we provide to you, but only if it improves the ease and value of using our service. For instance, some investors base buy and sell decisions in part on p/e ratios (the ratio of a stock’s price to its per-share earnings). When we provide a p/e, we try to eliminate all one-time items from earnings. These include writedowns, investment gains or restructuring charges. This gives you a clearer, truer view of a company’s profitability. For decades, investors have used p/e’s to spot undervalued stocks. But a low p/e can signal danger rather than a bargain. Or it may point to investor uncertainty, as is the case right now with Transcontinental (see page 16). That’s why you need to look at p/e ratios in context. In addition to p/e’s, we look at a variety of measures that identify value and risk. One of our favourites is the price-to-sales (p/s) ratio: the share price divided by sales…