Transocean Ltd (Switzerland)’s stock price has surged to a price of $3.31 today. Ending the day a 6.2% increase, RIG shares outperformed the S&P 500 and Dow Industrial composite indices by 7.2% and 6.8% respectively, but are still well below their 52 week high of $5.56. Over the last 12 months, Transocean is down 23.9%, and has underperformed the S&P 500 by 5.9%. and has an average analyst rating of None.
Transocean does not publish either its forward or trailing price to earnings (P/E) ratio because their values are negative -- meaning that each share of stock represents a net earnings loss. Investors are sometimes willing to invest in a stock with negative earnings if they believe the company will perform well in the future, especially if the company has an innovative approach to its business. Continued upwards price movements depend on whether future earnings will meet expectations, and how long investors are willing to wait around for this to occur.
Company accountants calculate earnings by subtracting the costs of sales and overhead from its revenues. These metrics focus on the sales side of the company only -- it's important to remember that companies can have many other costs and sources of income that are independent from its core business. For example, a company may have extensive expenses such as rent and debt servicing, and on the other hand it may receive additional income from its investments and intellectual property.
So the earnings picture only shows a slice of the company's financial health. They also don’t represent actual inflows of cash, since revenues are calculated on the basis of product or service deliveries, as opposed to actual payments received. The importance of earnings is that they enable us to analyze the company’s growth and profitability over time.
Here is an overview of Transocean’s operating margins, which are the percentage of net profit compared to total revenues:
- 2021 operating margins: -18.4 %
- 2020 operating margins: -17.2 %
- 2019 operating margins: -38.8 %
- 2018 operating margins: -58.8 %
- Average operating margins: -33.3 %
- Average operating margins growth rate: 27.6 %
- Coefficient of variability (the lower the better): 59.2 %
Let’s contrast the operating margins with an overview of Transocean’s gross margins, which only take into account expenses directly related to producing revenue (i.e. without overhead):
- 2021 gross margins: 34.1 %
- 2020 gross margins: 37.2 %
- 2019 gross margins: 31.0 %
- 2018 gross margins: 40.4 %
- Average gross margins: 35.7 %
- Average gross margins growth rate: -3.9 %
- Coefficient of variability (the lower the better): 11.4 %
An alternative form of measuring a company's valuation is to focus on its Price to Book (P/B) Ratio, which consists in its share price divided by its book value per share. Book value represents the amount of money that would be available to equity holders if the company were to sell all of its assets and pay off all of its debts today. Transocean's P/B ratio of 0.2 indicates that the market value of the company exceeds its book value by a factor of 0.0, indicating the company may be undervalued compared Energy sector’s average P/B ratio of t 1.45
RIG's average free cash flow over the last few years is $206,750,000.00, which represents the sum of inflows and outflows of cash from all sources, including capital expenses.. This is the pool of liquidity that the company can use to reinvest in its business or pay out to its equity investors in the form of a dividend. Despite having cash on hand for this purpose, Transocean has not offered a dividend within the last twelve months.
Owing to its negative P/E ratio, exceptionally low P/B ratio, irregular stream of positive cash flows, and negative operating margins, Transocean presents a mixed value picture at current prices. Make sure to complement this brief quantitative review with a qualitative analysis of your own!
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