YeaShin International Development Co., Ltd. (GTSM:5213) Shares Fly 29% But Investors Aren't Buying For Growth

The YeaShin International Development Co., Ltd. (GTSM:5213) share price has done very well over the last month, posting an excellent gain of 29%. Looking back a bit further, it's encouraging to see the stock is up 65% in the last year.

Even after such a large jump in price, given close to half the companies in Taiwan have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") above 21x, you may still consider YeaShin International Development as an attractive investment with its 12.7x P/E ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the reduced P/E.

YeaShin International Development certainly has been doing a great job lately as it's been growing earnings at a really rapid pace. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think this strong earnings growth might actually underperform the broader market in the near future. If that doesn't eventuate, then existing shareholders have reason to be quite optimistic about the future direction of the share price.

See our latest analysis for YeaShin International Development

Although there are no analyst estimates available for YeaShin International Development, take a look at this free data-rich visualisation to see how the company stacks up on earnings, revenue and cash flow.

Does Growth Match The Low P/E?

YeaShin International Development's P/E ratio would be typical for a company that's only expected to deliver limited growth, and importantly, perform worse than the market.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 409% gain to the company's bottom line. Still, incredibly EPS has fallen 19% in total from three years ago, which is quite disappointing. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of earnings growth.

In contrast to the company, the rest of the market is expected to grow by 24% over the next year, which really puts the company's recent medium-term earnings decline into perspective.

In light of this, it's understandable that YeaShin International Development's P/E would sit below the majority of other companies. However, we think shrinking earnings are unlikely to lead to a stable P/E over the longer term, which could set up shareholders for future disappointment. Even just maintaining these prices could be difficult to achieve as recent earnings trends are already weighing down the shares.

The Key Takeaway

The latest share price surge wasn't enough to lift YeaShin International Development'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.

As we suspected, our examination of YeaShin International Development revealed its shrinking earnings over the medium-term are contributing to its low P/E, given the market is set to grow. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. Unless the recent medium-term conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

Before you take the next step, you should know about the 4 warning signs for YeaShin International Development (3 are a bit concerning!) that we have uncovered.

If P/E ratios interest you, you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have grown earnings strongly and trade on P/E's below 20x.

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