With a median price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of close to 1x in the Trade Distributors industry in the United States, you could be forgiven for feeling indifferent about Custom Truck One Source, Inc.'s (NYSE:CTOS) P/S ratio of 0.6x. While this might not raise any eyebrows, if the P/S ratio is not justified investors could be missing out on a potential opportunity or ignoring looming disappointment.

See our latest analysis for Custom Truck One Source

What Does Custom Truck One Source's P/S Mean For Shareholders?

Custom Truck One Source could be doing better as its revenue has been going backwards lately while most other companies have been seeing positive revenue growth. It might be that many expect the dour revenue performance to strengthen positively, which has kept the P/S from falling. You'd really hope so, otherwise you're paying a relatively elevated price for a company with this sort of growth profile.

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

Do Revenue Forecasts Match The P/S Ratio?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should be matching the industry for P/S ratios like Custom Truck One Source's to be considered reasonable.

Taking a look back first, the company's revenue growth last year wasn't something to get excited about as it posted a disappointing decline of 1.5%. Still, the latest three year period has seen an excellent 102% overall rise in revenue, in spite of its unsatisfying short-term performance. So we can start by confirming that the company has generally done a very good job of growing revenue over that time, even though it had some hiccups along the way.

Looking ahead now, revenue is anticipated to climb by 2.7% during the coming year according to the six analysts following the company. That's shaping up to be similar to the 4.5% growth forecast for the broader industry.

With this information, we can see why Custom Truck One Source is trading at a fairly similar P/S to the industry. Apparently shareholders are comfortable to simply hold on while the company is keeping a low profile.

What Does Custom Truck One Source's P/S Mean For Investors?

Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-sales ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.

Our look at Custom Truck One Source's revenue growth estimates show that its P/S is about what we expect, as both metrics follow closely with the industry averages. Right now shareholders are comfortable with the P/S as they are quite confident future revenue won't throw up any surprises. All things considered, if the P/S and revenue estimates contain no major shocks, then it's hard to see the share price moving strongly in either direction in the near future.

Many other vital risk factors can be found on the company's balance sheet. You can assess many of the main risks through our free balance sheet analysis for Custom Truck One Source with six simple checks.

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

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