Yahoo Finance Should You Be Tempted To Buy Las Vegas Sands Corp (NYSE:LVS) Because Of Its PE Ratio?
Las Vegas Sands Corp (NYSE:LVS) trades with a trailing P/E of 16.8x, which is lower than the industry average of 23.2x. Although some investors may jump to the conclusion that this is a great buying opportunity, understanding the assumptions behind the P/E ratio might change your mind. In this article, I will explain what the P/E ratio is as well as what you should look out for when using it. View our latest analysis for Las Vegas Sands
What you need to know about the P/E ratio
A common ratio used for relative valuation is the P/E ratio. It compares a stock’s price per share to the stock’s earnings per share. A more intuitive way of understanding the P/E ratio is to think of it as how much investors are paying for each dollar of the company’s earnings.
P/E Calculation for LVS
Price-Earnings Ratio = Price per share ÷ Earnings per share
LVS Price-Earnings Ratio = $80.29 ÷ $4.782 = 16.8x
On its own, the P/E ratio doesn’t tell you much; however, it becomes extremely useful when you compare it with other similar companies. We want to compare the stock’s P/E ratio to the average of companies that have similar characteristics as LVS, such as size and country of operation. One way of gathering a peer group is to use firms in the same industry, which is what I’ll do. Since LVS’s P/E of 16.8x is lower than its industry peers (23.2x), it means that investors are paying less than they should for each dollar of LVS’s earnings. As such, our analysis shows that LVS represents an under-priced stock.
Assumptions to be aware of
However, before you rush out to buy LVS, it is important to note that this conclusion is based on two key assumptions. Firstly, our peer group contains companies that are similar to LVS. If this isn’t the case, the difference in P/E could be due to other factors. For example, if you compared higher growth firms with LVS, then its P/E would naturally be lower since investors would reward its peers’ higher growth with a higher price. The second assumption that must hold true is that the stocks we are comparing LVS to are fairly valued by the market. If this does not hold true, LVS’s lower P/E ratio may be because firms in our peer group are overvalued by the market.
What this means for you:
You may have already conducted fundamental analysis on the stock as a shareholder, so its current undervaluation could signal a good buying opportunity to increase your exposure to LVS. Now that you understand the ins and outs of the PE metric, you should know to bear in mind its limitations before you make an investment decision. Remember that basing your investment decision off one metric alone is certainly not sufficient. There are many things I have not taken into account in this article and the PE ratio is very one-dimensional. If you have not done so already, I highly recommend you to complete your research by taking a look at the following:
Future Outlook: What are well-informed industry analysts predicting for LVS’s future growth? Take a look at our free research report of analyst consensus for LVS’s outlook.
Past Track Record: Has LVS been consistently performing well irrespective of the ups and downs in the market? Go into more detail in the past performance analysis and take a look at the free visual representations of LVS’s historicals for more clarity.
Other High-Performing Stocks: Are there other stocks that provide better prospects with proven track records? Explore our free list of these great stocks here.
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.
