Is Eagle Materials (EXP) Offering Value After Recent Share Price Softness?

• Whether Eagle Materials at around US$200.25 is offering value or asking you to overpay is the core question this article will help you think through.
• The stock has been relatively quiet in the very short term, edging up 0.4% over the last week. It is down 2.8% over the past month, 5.3% year to date and 6.3% over the last year, while still showing gains of 23.2% over three years and 41.8% over five years.
• Recent attention on Eagle Materials has centered on how its share price path compares with broader materials stocks and long term infrastructure spending themes. This has kept valuation firmly in focus. This context matters because it helps explain why some investors are reassessing what they are willing to pay for the stock today versus a few years ago.
• Eagle Materials currently has a valuation score of 5/6, which means it screens as undervalued on most of the checks used here. The rest of this article will walk through those methods and will also point to an even more complete way to think about valuation at the end.

Find out why Eagle Materials's -6.3% return over the last year is lagging behind its peers.

Approach 1: Eagle Materials Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) Analysis

A Discounted Cash Flow, or DCF, model estimates what a stock could be worth by projecting the company’s future cash flows and discounting them back to today’s value using a required rate of return.

For Eagle Materials, the latest reported Free Cash Flow is about $352.7 million. Analysts have provided specific Free Cash Flow estimates up to 2029, with Simply Wall St extrapolating further to build a 10 year path. By 2035, the model uses a projected Free Cash Flow of about $916.6 million, all in $ and treated as part of a 2 Stage Free Cash Flow to Equity framework.

When all those projected cash flows are discounted back, the model arrives at an estimated intrinsic value of about $383.25 per share. Compared with the recent share price of about $200.25, this implies the stock screens as around 47.7% undervalued under this DCF approach.

Result: UNDERVALUED

Our Discounted Cash Flow (DCF) analysis suggests Eagle Materials is undervalued by 47.7%. Track this in your watchlist or portfolio, or discover 51 more high quality undervalued stocks.

Head to the Valuation section of our Company Report for more details on how we arrive at this Fair Value for Eagle Materials.

Approach 2: Eagle Materials Price vs Earnings

For a profitable company, the P/E ratio is a useful yardstick because it links what you pay for the stock to the earnings it is currently generating. A higher or lower P/E often reflects how the market views a company’s growth prospects and risk profile, so what counts as a “normal” or “fair” P/E will typically move around depending on those expectations.

Eagle Materials currently trades on a P/E of 14.75x compared with the Basic Materials industry average of about 15.00x and a peer group average of 28.85x. Simply Wall St also calculates a proprietary “Fair Ratio” for Eagle Materials of 17.63x. This Fair Ratio is designed to be a more tailored anchor than simple peer or industry comparisons, because it incorporates factors such as the company’s earnings growth profile, risk, profit margins, industry, and market capitalization.

When the Fair Ratio of 17.63x is set against the current P/E of 14.75x, Eagle Materials screens as trading below this modelled fair level, which indicates that the stock appears undervalued on this P/E framework.

Result: UNDERVALUED

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Upgrade Your Decision Making: Choose your Eagle Materials Narrative

Earlier it was mentioned that there is an even better way to think about valuation. Meet Narratives, a simple tool that lets you connect your view of Eagle Materials business story to your own forecast for its revenue, earnings, margins and fair value. You can then compare that fair value with the current share price to help decide whether the stock looks attractive or expensive. All this is available within the Narratives section of Simply Wall St's Community page. In this section, these views are automatically refreshed as new information like news or earnings arrives. Different investors can hold very different, yet clearly quantified, perspectives. For example, one investor might lean closer to the higher analyst fair value view of about US$246.00, while another might anchor on the lower end near US$193.00.

Do you think there's more to the story for Eagle Materials? Head over to our Community to see what others are saying!

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.

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