Yahoo Finance Is Poste Italiane SpA (BIT:PST) Potentially Undervalued?
Poste Italiane SpA (BIT:PST), which is in the insurance business, and is based in Italy, saw a decent share price growth in the teens level on the BIT over the last few months. With many analysts covering the mid-cap stock, we may expect any price-sensitive announcements have already been factored into the stock’s share price. But what if there is still an opportunity to buy? Let’s take a look at Poste Italiane’s outlook and value based on the most recent financial data to see if the opportunity still exists.
See our latest analysis for Poste Italiane
Is Poste Italiane still cheap?
The stock seems fairly valued at the moment according to my relative valuation model. In this instance, I’ve used the price-to-earnings (PE) ratio given that there is not enough information to reliably forecast the stock’s cash flows. I find that Poste Italiane’s ratio of 8.73x is trading in-line with its industry peers’ ratio, which means if you buy Poste Italiane today, you’d be paying a relatively reasonable price for it. Furthermore, Poste Italiane’s share price also seems relatively stable compared to the rest of the market, as indicated by its low beta. This may mean it is less likely for the stock to fall lower from natural market volatility, which suggests less opportunities to buy moving forward.
What does the future of Poste Italiane look like?
Investors looking for growth in their portfolio may want to consider the prospects of a company before buying its shares. Buying a great company with a robust outlook at a cheap price is always a good investment, so let’s also take a look at the company’s future expectations. With profit expected to grow by a double-digit 11% over the next couple of years, the outlook is positive for Poste Italiane. It looks like higher cash flow is on the cards for the stock, which should feed into a higher share valuation.
What this means for you:
Are you a shareholder? It seems like the market has already priced in PST’s positive outlook, with shares trading around its fair value. However, there are also other important factors which we haven’t considered today, such as the financial strength of the company. Have these factors changed since the last time you looked at PST? Will you have enough confidence to invest in the company should the price drop below its fair value?
Are you a potential investor? If you’ve been keeping an eye on PST, now may not be the most advantageous time to buy, given it is trading around its fair value. However, the optimistic forecast is encouraging for PST, which means it’s worth diving deeper into other factors such as the strength of its balance sheet, in order to take advantage of the next price drop.
Price is just the tip of the iceberg. Dig deeper into what truly matters – the fundamentals – before you make a decision on Poste Italiane. You can find everything you need to know about Poste Italiane in the latest infographic research report. If you are no longer interested in Poste Italiane, you can use our free platform to see my list of over 50 other stocks with a high growth potential.
To help readers see past the short term volatility of the financial market, we aim to bring you a long-term focused research analysis purely driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis does not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements.
The author is an independent contributor and at the time of publication had no position in the stocks mentioned. For errors that warrant correction please contact the editor at editorial-team@simplywallst.com.
