Guoguang Electric Company Limited (SZSE:002045) shareholders are no doubt pleased to see that the share price has bounced 43% in the last month, although it is still struggling to make up recently lost ground. The bad news is that even after the stocks recovery in the last 30 days, shareholders are still underwater by about 6.7% over the last year.

In spite of the firm bounce in price, Guoguang Electric's price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 23.7x might still make it look like a buy right now compared to the market in China, where around half of the companies have P/E ratios above 30x and even P/E's above 55x are quite common. However, the P/E might be low for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

Recent times have been pleasing for Guoguang Electric as its earnings have risen in spite of the market's earnings going into reverse. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think the company's earnings are going to fall away like everyone else's soon. 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.

How Is Guoguang Electric's Growth Trending?

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

If we review the last year of earnings growth, the company posted a terrific increase of 83%. Pleasingly, EPS has also lifted 52% in aggregate from three years ago, thanks to the last 12 months of growth. So we can start by confirming that the company has done a great job of growing earnings over that time.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the two analysts covering the company suggest earnings growth is heading into negative territory, declining 14% over the next year. With the market predicted to deliver 41% growth , that's a disappointing outcome.

With this information, we are not surprised that Guoguang Electric is trading at a P/E lower than the market. However, shrinking earnings are unlikely to lead to a stable P/E over the longer term. Even just maintaining these prices could be difficult to achieve as the weak outlook is weighing down the shares.

The Key Takeaway

Guoguang Electric's stock might have been given a solid boost, but its P/E certainly hasn't reached any great heights. 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.

As we suspected, our examination of Guoguang Electric's analyst forecasts revealed that its outlook for shrinking earnings is contributing to its low P/E. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. Unless these conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

Before you settle on your opinion, we've discovered 1 warning sign for Guoguang Electric that you should be aware of.

You might be able to find a better investment than Guoguang Electric. If you want a selection of possible candidates, check out this free list of interesting companies that trade on a low P/E (but have proven they can grow earnings).

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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.