The Guangzhou Fangbang Electronics Co.,Ltd (SHSE:688020) share price has done very well over the last month, posting an excellent gain of 26%. Not all shareholders will be feeling jubilant, since the share price is still down a very disappointing 19% in the last twelve months.
Since its price has surged higher, Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of 8.9x might make it look like a strong sell right now compared to other companies in the Electronic industry in China, where around half of the companies have P/S ratios below 4x and even P/S below 2x are quite common. Although, it's not wise to just take the P/S at face value as there may be an explanation why it's so lofty.
How Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd Has Been Performing
With revenue growth that's inferior to most other companies of late, Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd has been relatively sluggish. Perhaps the market is expecting future revenue performance to undergo a reversal of fortunes, which has elevated the P/S ratio. If not, then existing shareholders may be very nervous about the viability of the share price.
If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report on Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd.
How Is Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's Revenue Growth Trending?
There's an inherent assumption that a company should far outperform the industry for P/S ratios like Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's to be considered reasonable.
Retrospectively, the last year delivered a decent 2.8% gain to the company's revenues. The solid recent performance means it was also able to grow revenue by 21% in total over the last three years. So we can start by confirming that the company has actually done a good job of growing revenue over that time.
Looking ahead now, revenue is anticipated to climb by 58% during the coming year according to the only analyst following the company. That's shaping up to be materially higher than the 26% growth forecast for the broader industry.
With this in mind, it's not hard to understand why Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's P/S is high relative to its industry peers. It seems most investors are expecting this strong future growth and are willing to pay more for the stock.
What We Can Learn From Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's P/S?
Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd's P/S has grown nicely over the last month thanks to a handy boost in the share price. Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-sales ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company.
Our look into Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd shows that its P/S ratio remains high on the merit of its strong future revenues. At this stage investors feel the potential for a deterioration in revenues is quite remote, justifying the elevated P/S ratio. Unless these conditions change, they will continue to provide strong support to the share price.
There are also other vital risk factors to consider before investing and we've discovered 1 warning sign for Guangzhou Fangbang ElectronicsLtd that you should be aware of.
If strong companies turning a profit tickle your fancy, then you'll want to 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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