Tapestry, Inc. (NYSE:TPR) shares have continued their recent momentum with a 26% gain in the last month alone. The last 30 days bring the annual gain to a very sharp 88%.

Although its price has surged higher, given about half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 19x, you may still consider Tapestry as an attractive investment with its 16.5x P/E ratio. Although, it's not wise to just take the P/E at face value as there may be an explanation why it's limited.

Tapestry hasn't been tracking well recently as its declining earnings compare poorly to other companies, which have seen some growth on average. The P/E is probably low because investors think this poor earnings performance isn't going to get any better. If this is the case, then existing shareholders will probably struggle to get excited about the future direction of the share price.

Is There Any Growth For Tapestry?

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

Retrospectively, the last year delivered a frustrating 13% decrease to the company's bottom line. This has soured the latest three-year period, which nevertheless managed to deliver a decent 16% overall rise in EPS. Accordingly, while they would have preferred to keep the run going, shareholders would be roughly satisfied with the medium-term rates of earnings growth.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the analysts covering the company suggest earnings should grow by 13% each year over the next three years. Meanwhile, the rest of the market is forecast to only expand by 11% each year, which is noticeably less attractive.

With this information, we find it odd that Tapestry is trading at a P/E lower than the market. It looks like most investors are not convinced at all that the company can achieve future growth expectations.

The Bottom Line On Tapestry's P/E

The latest share price surge wasn't enough to lift Tapestry's P/E close to the market median. While the price-to-earnings ratio shouldn't be the defining factor in whether you buy a stock or not, it's quite a capable barometer of earnings expectations.

We've established that Tapestry currently trades on a much lower than expected P/E since its forecast growth is higher than the wider market. There could be some major unobserved threats to earnings preventing the P/E ratio from matching the positive outlook. At least price risks look to be very low, but investors seem to think future earnings could see a lot of volatility.

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

If P/E ratios interest you, you may wish to see this free collection of other companies with strong earnings growth and low P/E ratios.

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