Many investors turn to Benjamin Graham's so-called “Graham number” to calculate the fair price of a stock. The Graham number is √(22.5 * 5 year average earnings per share * book value per share), which for Ross Stores gives us a fair price of $31.48. In comparison, the stock’s market price is $109.51 per share. Therefore, Ross Stores’s market price exceeds the upper bound that a prudent investor would pay for its shares by 247.9%.
The Graham number is often used in isolation, but in fact it is only one part of a check list for choosing defensive stocks that he laid out in Chapter 14 of The Intelligent Investor. The analysis requires us to look at the following fundamentals of Ross Stores:
Sales Revenue Should Be No Less Than $500 million
For Ross Stores, average sales revenue over the last 4 years has been $16,545,677,750, so in the context of the Graham analysis the stock has impressive sales revenue. Originally the threshold was $100 million, but since the book was published in the 1970s it's necessary to adjust the figure for inflation.
Current Assets Should Be at Least Twice Current Liabilities
We calculate Ross Stores's current ratio by dividing its total current assets of $6,904,719,000 by its total current liabilities of $3,636,246,000. Current assets refer to company assets that can be transferred into cash within one year, such as accounts receivable, inventory, and liquid financial instruments. Current liabilities, on the other hand, refer to those that will come due within one year. Ross Stores’s current assets outweigh its current liabilities by a factor of 1.9 only.
The Company’s Long-term Debt Should Not Exceed its Net Current Assets
This means that its ratio of debt to net current assets should be 1 or less. Since Ross Stores’s debt ratio is -1.1, the company has negative current asset / liability balance. We calculate Ross Stores’s debt to net current assets ratio by dividing its total long term of debt of $2,456,510,000 by its current assets minus total liabilities of $9,127,880,000.
The Stock Should Have a Positive Level of Retained Earnings Over Several Years
Ross Stores had positive retained earnings from 2010 to 2023 with an average of $1,692,864,286. Retained earnings are the sum of the current and previous reporting periods' net asset amounts, minus all dividend payments. It's a similar metric to free cash flow, with the difference that retained earnings are accounted for on an accrual basis.
There Should Be a Record of Uninterrupted Dividend Payments Over the Last 20 Years
Shareholders of Ross Stores have received regular dividends since 2008. The company has returned an average dividend yield of 0.9% over the last five years.
A Minimum Increase of at Least One-third in Earnings per Share (EPS) Over the Past 10 Years
To determine Ross Stores's EPS growth over time, we will average out its EPS for 2009, 2010, and 2011, which were $0.84, $0.51, and $0.63 respectively. This gives us an average of $0.66 for the period of 2009 to 2011. Next, we compare this value with the average EPS reported in 2021, 2022, and 2023, which were $0.24, $4.87, and $4.38, for an average of $3.16. Now we see that Ross Stores's EPS growth was 378.79% during this period, which satisfies Ben Graham's requirement.
It may be trading far above its fair value and have a negative net current asset value, but Ross Stores actually satisfies some of the criteria Benjamin Graham used for identifying for an undervalued stock because it has:
- impressive sales revenue
- an average current ratio
- positive retained earnings from 2010 to 2023
- a solid record of dividends
- EPS growth in excess of Graham's requirements
