Universal Insurance Holdings, Inc. (NYSE:UVE) shareholders would be excited to see that the share price has had a great month, posting a 28% gain and recovering from prior weakness. The last 30 days bring the annual gain to a very sharp 33%.

Even after such a large jump in price, Universal Insurance Holdings may still be sending very bullish signals at the moment with its price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 8.4x, since almost half of all companies in the United States have P/E ratios greater than 20x and even P/E's higher than 36x are not unusual. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the highly reduced P/E.

Universal Insurance Holdings certainly has been doing a good job lately as it's been growing earnings more than most other companies. It might be that many expect the strong earnings performance to degrade substantially, which has repressed the P/E. 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.

Is There Any Growth For Universal Insurance Holdings?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should far underperform the market for P/E ratios like Universal Insurance Holdings' to be considered reasonable.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered a decent 6.5% gain to the company's bottom line. The latest three year period has also seen an excellent 58% overall rise in EPS, aided somewhat by its short-term performance. Therefore, it's fair to say the earnings growth recently has been superb for the company.

Looking ahead now, EPS is anticipated to slump, contracting by 5.4% during the coming year according to the only analyst following the company. That's not great when the rest of the market is expected to grow by 15%.

With this information, we are not surprised that Universal Insurance Holdings is trading at a P/E lower than the market. Nonetheless, there's no guarantee the P/E has reached a floor yet with earnings going in reverse. There's potential for the P/E to fall to even lower levels if the company doesn't improve its profitability.

What We Can Learn From Universal Insurance Holdings' P/E?

Even after such a strong price move, Universal Insurance Holdings' P/E still trails the rest of the market significantly. Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-earnings ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company.

We've established that Universal Insurance Holdings maintains its low P/E on the weakness of its forecast for sliding earnings, as expected. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. It's hard to see the share price rising strongly in the near future under these circumstances.

Before you take the next step, you should know about the 1 warning sign for Universal Insurance Holdings that we have uncovered.

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.