PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE:PNC) is a $62 billion company today. Investors that bought shares one year ago are sitting on a 63.54% total return. That's above the S&P 500's return of 18.93%.
PNC stock is beating the market, and it reports earnings next week. But does that make it a good buy today? To answer this question, we've turned to the Investment U Stock Grader. Our Research Team built this system to diagnose the financial health of a company.
Our system looks at six key metrics...
✗ Earnings-per-Share (EPS) Growth: PNC reported a recent EPS growth rate of 17.06%. That's below the banking industry average of 208.14%. That's not a good sign. We like to see companies that have higher earnings growth.
✓ Price-to-Earnings (P/E): The average price-to-earnings ratio of the banking industry is 29.72. And PNC's ratio comes in at 16.7. It's trading at a better value than many of its competitors.
✓ Debt-to-Equity : The debt-to-equity ratio for PNC stock is 119.95%. That's below the banking industry average of 327.02%. The company is less leveraged.
✓ Free Cash Flow per Share Growth : PNC's FCF has been higher than that of its competitors over the last year. That's good for investors. In general, if a company is growing its FCF, it will be able to pay down debt, buy back stock, pay out more in dividends and/or invest money back into the business to help boost growth. It's one of our most important fundamental factors.
✓ Profit Margins : The profit margin of PNC comes in at 27.21% today. And generally, the higher, the better. We also like to see this margin above that of its competitors. PNC's profit margin is above the banking average of 25.48%. So that's a positive indicator for investors.
✗ Return on Equity : Return on equity gives us a look at the amount of net income returned to shareholders. The ROE for PNC is 8.7%, and that's below its industry average ROE of 11.77%.
PNC stock passes four of our six key metrics today. That's why our Investment U Stock Grader rates it as a Buy With Caution.