Are Investors Wary Of Fastenal Company (FAST)?

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Stock of Fastenal Company (FAST) opened at $47.280 and last traded at $47.730 x 400. More than 873,105 shares exchanged hands compared to an average daily volume of 2,521,421 shares. At the current pps, the market capitalization stands at 13.72B.

Fundamentals you simply cannot ignore

Investors try to use stocks with high beta values to quickly recoup their investments after sharp market losses. Fastenal Company (FAST) currently has a Beta value of 1.07 . Beta is a measurement of a stock’s price fluctuations, which is often called volatility and is used by investors to gauge how quickly a stock’s price will rise or fall. A stock with a beta of greater than 1.0 is riskier and has greater price fluctuations, while stocks with beta values of less than 1.0 are steadier and generally larger companies. Beta is often measured against the S&P; 500 index. An S&P; 500 stock with a beta of 2.0 produced a 20 percent increase in returns during a period of time when the S&P; 500 Index grew only 10 percent. This same measurement also means the stock would lose 20 percent when the market dropped by only 10 percent. Next, let’s take a look at Fastenal Company (FAST) current P/E ratio. Fastenal Company (FAST) currently has a PE ratio of 25.45. PE ratio is an important parameter to look at when trading a stock mostly because it is easy to calculate. There are a couple of ways to calculate PE ratio either by dividing share price by earnings per share or dividing the market cap by net income. It is important to note that the earnings are usually taken from the trailing twelve months (TTM). Nevertheless, P/E tells us how much an investor is willing to pay for $1 of a company’s earnings. The long-term average P/E is around 15, so on average, investors are willing to pay $15 for every dollar of earnings. Another useful way to look at this: Turn the P/E ratio around to look at the E/P ratio, which when expressed as a percentage gives us the earnings yield. For instance: 1/15 gives us an earnings yield of 6.67%.

While we have already looked at Fastenal Company (FAST) beta and P/E ratio, the EPS cannot be ignored. Fastenal Company (FAST) EPS for the trailing twelve months was 1.875. Traders and investors often use earnings per share (TTM) to determine a company’s profitability for the past year. So in essence, EPS is the amount of a company’s net income per share of common stock. Earnings per share equal the company’s net income less any dividends paid on preferred stock divided by the weighted average number of common stock shares outstanding during the year. Fastenal Company (FAST) is estimated to release its next earnings report on 12 / 2017 (N/A-Not know at this time). It would be interesting to see how the earnings fair out considering the recent developments.

The Analyst Chirp:

Fastenal Company (FAST) has received an average target price from analysts of $50.69 amounting to a recommendation rating of Overweight. That comes from 19 different analysts. Perhaps, the driver for that assessment comes from the company’s valuations. Right now, we are looking at a median price-to-earnings ratio for this calendar year of 24.66. To give a sense of trend, the same data point on the estimate for next year is currently sitting at 22.46 times earnings. Drilling down a bit further, this quarter, we are looking at an average estimate from analysts for earnings per share level of 15.00. That shift to 11.00 heading into next quarter.

 

 

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