Multiple question

Q: What’s a stock’s “multiple”?

D.W., Naples, Fla. A: It’s a ratio of two measures of a company. One of the most common multiples is the price-toearnings (P/E) ratio, which is the stock’s current price divided by its earnings per share. Imagine Scruffy’s Chicken Shack (ticker: BUKBUK), trading at $80 per share. If it earned $4 per share over the past year, its P/E is 20 (80 divided by 4). It’s trading at a P/E ratio of 20. There are also price-to-sales multiples, book-value multiples, cash-flow multiples and more. It can be helpful to compare a company’s multiples with those of its peers, to see whether its stock appears to be undervalued or overvalued. Nike, for example, recently sported a P/E ratio that was over 82, while Adidas’ was not quite 41. That suggests that Adidas is more attractively priced.