Price/projected earnings for a stock is the ratio of the company’s most recent month-end share price to the company’s estimated earnings per share (EPS) for the current fiscal year. If a third-party estimate for the current year EPS is not available, Morningstar will calculate an internal estimate based on the most recently reported EPS and average historical earnings growth rates.
For portfolios, this data point is calculated by taking an asset-weighted average of the earnings yields (E/P) of all the stocks in the portfolio and then taking the reciprocal of the result.
Note: This is one of the five value factors used to calculate the Morningstar Investment Style Box.
Benefits
The P/E ratio relates the price of the stock to the per-share earnings of the company. A high P/E generally indicates that the market will pay more to obtain the company because it has confidence in the company’s ability to increase its earnings. Conversely, a low P/E indicates that the market has less confidence that the company’s earnings will increase, and therefore will not pay as much for its stock. In most cases high average P/E ratio indicates a manager has paid a premium for stocks that have a high potential for increased earnings. If the average P/E ratio is low, the manager may believe that the stocks have an overlooked or undervalued potential for appreciation.
Origin
Morningstar generates this figure in-house based on stock statistics from our internal equities databases. For stocks, this figure is calculated monthly. For funds and portfolios, Morningstar updates this figure upon receipt of the most-recent portfolio holdings from the asset manager.