Historic P/E range

**sonyericsson** Sat Dec 31, 2005 12:03 pm

Historic P/E range
Hi Blast,

Could you please give your opinion about following?

I am trying to find historic P/E range for a company. I have info about EPS on 31 Dec of last five years.

1. Shall I take prices on 31 Dec of last five years to get P/Es and consider that as a historic range of P/Es?

2. Is 5-year-period sufficient to evaluate P/E range?

3. When I see historic monthly prices for company on yahoo, I get one price per month. Is that price, the average of whole month or just the price on the last day of the month?

Thanks,

SE

**blast_investor** Wed Jan 04, 2006 12:46 am

Hi sonyericsson,

That will depend on what you want to do with Historical PE range.

Most value investors want to see the history of earning and PE to get sense of historical earning power and historical valuation, then the longer you can have, the better.

Value investing works best if you have historical data tracing back more than 10 years.

**RT Wolf** Mon May 01, 2006 12:55 pm

1. You can do that. It's certainly easier. You might also try to find the average of prices of that year (using monthly or weekly closing prices)

2. It depends on what you're trying to value. If it's a relatively stable and large company that's been around for a long time, you might try a longer time line. Between 5-10 years seems reasonable, though.

3. It's the closing price.

HTH. :)