Summary: A P/E multiple looks like a simple shortcut, but it quietly contains the same assumptions that drive a DCF valuation. The real question is not whether a stock trades at 15x or 55x, but whether the growth, capital returns and risk hidden inside that number justify the price.
Summary: A P/E multiple looks like a simple shortcut, but it quietly contains the same assumptions that drive a DCF valuation. The real question is not whether a stock trades at 15x or 55x, but whether the growth, capital returns and risk hidden inside that number justify the price.
You see a company trading at 55x earnings, and you flinch. Another company is at 15x earnings, and you feel at ease. Both reactions can be in the completely wrong direction and the reason is a number you never see.
When you buy a stake in a cash-generating company, you’re running a DCF analysis. It may feel like you’re not, when you say you use a P/E or EV/EBITDA multiple, but the multiple never allowed you to escape the DCF. It merely veiled the DCF’s underlying assumptions from sight. Oftentimes, it masked them even from you.
It’s hardly a niche practice. When analysts were asked about some 2,000 financial professionals, they reported using the P/E ratio by a landslide (88 per cent, by their accounts), followed closely by EV/EBITDA, while outright Discounted Cash Flow models rounded out a list that fell far short. Much of the market values companies on multiples, and thus models its cash flow that is never expressed in a spreadsheet.
Two questions reveal this behaviour: If multiples really bypassed the need for forecasting cash flows, why would they embed any assumptions? And why do the same analysts touting multiples reach for one when estimating terminal value for their DCF models, the one input often determining 70 to 80 per cent of the final answer? No, multiples don’t bypass cash flows; they smuggle themselves into the valuation.
Comparison complicates the fallacy further: line up a stock against its comparables, declare it cheaply valued and buy it. That decision is relative, however. A company might look cheap in comparison to an expensive peer group while being expensive relative to its own cashflows. Relative value says nothing about whether an entire group has mispriced itself.
Three bets in one number
A P/E is not a fact about a company. It is an opinion built on three forecasts. The first is the cost of
This article was originally published on August 31, 2026.
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