HP (NYSE:HPQ is a $33 billion company today. Investors that bought shares one year ago are sitting on a 35.39% total return. That's above the S&P 500's return of 15.26%.
HP 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: HP reported a recent EPS growth rate of -13.16%. That's below the technology hardware industry average of 82.46%. 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 technology hardware industry is 27.75. And HP's ratio comes in at 13.33. It's trading at a better value than many of its competitors.
✗ Debt-to-Equity : The debt-to-equity ratio for HP stock cannot be calculated. That’s not good.
✓ Free Cash Flow per Share Growth : HP'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 HP comes in at 4.51% today. And generally, the higher, the better. We also like to see this margin above that of its competitors. HP's profit margin is below the technology hardware average of 9.86%. So that's a negative 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 HP is -58.54%, and that's below its industry average ROE of 7.94%.
HP stock passes two of our six key metrics today. That's why our Investment U Stock Grader rates it as a Hold With Caution.