Youdao, Inc. (NYSE:DAO) shares have continued their recent momentum with a 60% gain in the last month alone. The last 30 days bring the annual gain to a very sharp 93%.

Although its price has surged higher, there still wouldn't be many who think Youdao's price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of 1.2x is worth a mention when the median P/S in the United States' Consumer Services industry is similar at about 1.3x. However, investors might be overlooking a clear opportunity or potential setback if there is no rational basis for the P/S.

How Youdao Has Been Performing

With revenue growth that's inferior to most other companies of late, Youdao has been relatively sluggish. Perhaps the market is expecting future revenue performance to lift, which has kept the P/S from declining. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a relatively elevated price for a company with this sort of growth profile.

How Is Youdao's Revenue Growth Trending?

Youdao's P/S ratio would be typical for a company that's only expected to deliver moderate growth, and importantly, perform in line with the industry.

Taking a look back first, we see that the company managed to grow revenues by a handy 7.5% last year. Pleasingly, revenue has also lifted 68% in aggregate from three years ago, partly thanks to the last 12 months of growth. So we can start by confirming that the company has done a great job of growing revenues over that time.

Turning to the outlook, the next year should generate growth of 11% as estimated by the seven analysts watching the company. That's shaping up to be similar to the 13% growth forecast for the broader industry.

With this in mind, it makes sense that Youdao's P/S is closely matching its industry peers. Apparently shareholders are comfortable to simply hold on while the company is keeping a low profile.

The Bottom Line On Youdao's P/S

Youdao appears to be back in favour with a solid price jump bringing its P/S back in line with other companies in the industry It's argued the price-to-sales ratio is an inferior measure of value within certain industries, but it can be a powerful business sentiment indicator.

We've seen that Youdao maintains an adequate P/S seeing as its revenue growth figures match the rest of the industry. Right now shareholders are comfortable with the P/S as they are quite confident future revenue won't throw up any surprises. Unless these conditions change, they will continue to support the share price at these levels.

It is also worth noting that we have found 4 warning signs for Youdao (2 are concerning!) that you need to take into consideration.

Of course, profitable companies with a history of great earnings growth are generally safer bets. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have reasonable P/E ratios and have grown earnings strongly.

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