Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings Company Limited's (HKG:874) price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 7.8x might make it look like a buy right now compared to the market in Hong Kong, where around half of the companies have P/E ratios above 11x and even P/E's above 21x are quite common. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the reduced P/E.

Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings could be doing better as its earnings have been going backwards lately while most other companies have been seeing positive earnings growth. It seems that many are expecting the dour earnings performance to persist, which has repressed the P/E. If you still like the company, you'd be hoping this isn't the case so that you could potentially pick up some stock while it's out of favour.

View our latest analysis for Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings

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

Does Growth Match The Low P/E?

There's an inherent assumption that a company should underperform the market for P/E ratios like Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings' to be considered reasonable.

If we review the last year of earnings, dishearteningly the company's profits fell to the tune of 20%. As a result, earnings from three years ago have also fallen 4.0% overall. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of earnings growth.

Turning to the outlook, the next year should generate growth of 2.9% as estimated by the five analysts watching the company. With the market predicted to deliver 21% growth , the company is positioned for a weaker earnings result.

In light of this, it's understandable that Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings' P/E sits below the majority of other companies. It seems most investors are expecting to see limited future growth and are only willing to pay a reduced amount for the stock.

What We Can Learn From Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings' P/E?

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

As we suspected, our examination of Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings' analyst forecasts revealed that its inferior earnings outlook is contributing to its low P/E. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. It's hard to see the share price rising strongly in the near future under these circumstances.

We don't want to rain on the parade too much, but we did also find 1 warning sign for Guangzhou Baiyunshan Pharmaceutical Holdings that you need to be mindful of.

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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