When close to half the companies in the United States have price-to-earnings ratios (or "P/E's") below 17x, you may consider Amgen Inc. (NASDAQ:AMGN) as a stock to avoid entirely with its 40.5x P/E ratio. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the highly elevated P/E.

Amgen could be doing better as its earnings have been going backwards lately while most other companies have been seeing positive earnings growth. 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.

Check out our latest analysis for Amgen

If you'd like to see what analysts are forecasting going forward, you should check out our free report on Amgen.

Is There Enough Growth For Amgen?

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

Retrospectively, the last year delivered a frustrating 39% decrease to the company's bottom line. As a result, earnings from three years ago have also fallen 26% overall. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of earnings growth.

Turning to the outlook, the next three years should generate growth of 27% each year as estimated by the analysts watching the company. With the market only predicted to deliver 11% per year, the company is positioned for a stronger earnings result.

In light of this, it's understandable that Amgen's P/E sits above the majority of other companies. It seems most investors are expecting this strong future growth and are willing to pay more for the stock.

What We Can Learn From Amgen's P/E?

While the price-to-earnings ratio shouldn't be the defining factor in whether you buy a stock or not, it's quite a capable barometer of earnings expectations.

We've established that Amgen maintains its high P/E on the strength of its forecast growth being higher than the wider market, as expected. Right now shareholders are comfortable with the P/E as they are quite confident future earnings aren't under threat. Unless these conditions change, they will continue to provide strong support to the share price.

We don't want to rain on the parade too much, but we did also find 5 warning signs for Amgen (1 is significant!) that you need to be mindful of.

Of course, you might also be able to find a better stock than Amgen. So you may wish to see this free collection of other companies that have reasonable P/E ratios and have grown earnings strongly.

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