Topic: How To Invest

Could you please give some explanation of the price/sales ratio that you now show. I recognize that price to sales is only one indicator used to evaluate a stock, but I don’t understand it. I hope that you can clarify this.

Article Excerpt

The price-to-sales or p/s ratio is a useful tool, although it is not a precise one. Sales is the raw material of profit; that is, sales minus expenses equals profit, so profit is always less than sales. The basic rule is that a high p/s tends to mean that a stock is expensive, and a low p/s tends to mean that a stock is cheap. However, many individual stocks seem to run counter to the basic rule. Stocks with deservedly high p/s ratios can rise for lengthy periods and stocks with deservedly low p/s ratios can fall. If a company has a high price to sales or p/s ratio — 30-to-1, say — then its p/e ratio has to exceed 30-to-1, since “e” has to be less than “s”. In that case, it needs extraordinarily high sales growth rates if it is ever to earn enough profit to justify its current stock price, let alone go higher. On the other hand,…