Bhagyanagar India Limited (NSE:BHAGYANGR) shares have continued their recent momentum with a 28% gain in the last month alone. Looking back a bit further, it's encouraging to see the stock is up 82% in the last year.
In spite of the firm bounce in price, given about half the companies in India have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 26x, you may still consider Bhagyanagar India as an attractive investment with its 19.8x P/E ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the reduced P/E.
Recent times have been quite advantageous for Bhagyanagar India as its earnings have been rising very briskly. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think this strong earnings growth might actually underperform the broader market in the near future. If you like the company, you'd be hoping this isn't the case so that you could potentially pick up some stock while it's out of favour.
Check out our latest analysis for Bhagyanagar India
Bhagyanagar India's P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's only expected to deliver limited growth, and importantly, perform worse than the market.
Taking a look back first, we see that the company grew earnings per share by an impressive 158% last year. The latest three year period has also seen an excellent 275% overall rise in EPS, aided by its short-term performance. So we can start by confirming that the company has done a great job of growing earnings over that time.
This is in contrast to the rest of the market, which is expected to grow by 25% over the next year, materially lower than the company's recent medium-term annualised growth rates.
In light of this, it's peculiar that Bhagyanagar India's P/E sits below the majority of other companies. It looks like most investors are not convinced the company can maintain its recent growth rates.
The latest share price surge wasn't enough to lift Bhagyanagar India's P/E close to the market median. Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-earnings ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.
We've established that Bhagyanagar India currently trades on a much lower than expected P/E since its recent three-year growth is higher than the wider market forecast. There could be some major unobserved threats to earnings preventing the P/E ratio from matching this positive performance. It appears many are indeed anticipating earnings instability, because the persistence of these recent medium-term conditions would normally provide a boost to the share price.
And what about other risks? Every company has them, and we've spotted 4 warning signs for Bhagyanagar India (of which 3 shouldn't be ignored!) you should know about.
It's important to make sure you look for a great company, not just the first idea you come across. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with strong recent earnings growth (and a low P/E).
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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.