IPH Limited's (ASX:IPH) price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 23.1x might make it look like a sell right now compared to the market in Australia, where around half of the companies have P/E ratios below 20x and even P/E's below 11x are quite common. However, the P/E might be high for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

IPH hasn't been tracking well recently as its declining earnings compare poorly to other companies, which have seen some growth on average. It might be that many expect the dour earnings performance to recover substantially, which has kept the P/E from collapsing. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a pretty hefty price for no particular reason.

View our latest analysis for IPH

Keen to find out how analysts think IPH's future stacks up against the industry? In that case, our free report is a great place to start.

What Are Growth Metrics Telling Us About The High P/E?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should outperform the market for P/E ratios like IPH's to be considered reasonable.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered a frustrating 12% decrease to the company's bottom line. The last three years don't look nice either as the company has shrunk EPS by 11% in aggregate. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of earnings growth.

Looking ahead now, EPS is anticipated to climb by 17% per year during the coming three years according to the eleven analysts following the company. Meanwhile, the rest of the market is forecast to expand by 19% per year, which is noticeably more attractive.

With this information, we find it concerning that IPH is trading at a P/E higher than the market. It seems most investors are hoping for a turnaround in the company's business prospects, but the analyst cohort is not so confident this will happen. Only the boldest would assume these prices are sustainable as this level of earnings growth is likely to weigh heavily on the share price eventually.

The Final Word

Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-earnings ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company.

We've established that IPH currently trades on a much higher than expected P/E since its forecast growth is lower than the wider market. Right now we are increasingly uncomfortable with the high P/E as the predicted future earnings aren't likely to support such positive sentiment for long. Unless these conditions improve markedly, it's very challenging to accept these prices as being reasonable.

Before you take the next step, you should know about the 4 warning signs for IPH that we have uncovered.

It's important to make sure you look for a great company, not just the first idea you come across. So take a peek at this free list of interesting companies with strong recent earnings growth (and a low P/E).

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