Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Shares Are Climbing Today - Are They Overvalued?

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Limited’s stock price has surged to a price of $10.66 today. Ending the day with a 3.6% increase, TEVA shares outperformed the S&P500 and Dow Industrial composite indices by 5.0% and 4.0% respectively, closing in on their 52 week high of $11.45 Over the last 12 months, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is up 30.0%, and has outperformed the S&P 500 by 12.0%. Now, the large-cap Health Care company is nearing its average target price of $10.22 and has an average analyst rating of hold.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries does not release its trailing 12 month price to earnings (P/E) ratio since its earnings per share of $-2.0 are negative over the last year. Based on the company's positive earnings guidance of $2.46, the stock has a forward P/E ratio of 4.3. The P/E ratio tells us how much investors are willing to pay for each dollar of the company's net earnings from its sales operations. By way of comparison, the average P/E ratio of the Health Care sector is 24.45, but a company's price can remain stable for a long time even if it is over or undervalued.

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 Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’s operating margins, which are the percentage of net profit compared to total revenues:

Date Reported Total Revenue ($ k) Operating Expenses ($ k) Operating Margins (%) YoY Growth (%)
2023-02-10 14,925,000 -4,283,000 18 -10.0
2022-02-09 15,878,000 -4,495,000 20 11.11
2021-02-10 16,659,000 -4,668,000 18 12.5
2020-02-21 16,887,000 -4,816,000 16 0.0
2019-02-19 18,271,000 -5,427,000 16 -11.11
2018-02-01 22,385,000 -6,624,000 18
  • Average operating margins: 17.7 %
  • Average operating margins growth rate: 0.0 %
  • Coefficient of variability (the lower the better): 8.5 %

Let’s contrast the operating margins with an overview of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries’s gross margins, which only take into account expenses directly related to producing revenue (i.e. without overhead):

Date Reported Revenue ($ k) Cost of Revenue ($ k) Gross Margins (%) YoY Growth (%)
2023-02-10 14,925,000 -7,952,000 47 -2.08
2022-02-09 15,878,000 -8,284,000 48 4.35
2021-02-10 16,659,000 -8,933,000 46 2.22
2020-02-21 16,887,000 -9,351,000 45 0.0
2019-02-19 18,271,000 -9,975,000 45 -4.26
2018-02-01 22,385,000 -11,770,000 47
  • Average gross margins: 46.3 %
  • Average gross margins growth rate: -0.1 %
  • Coefficient of variability (the lower the better): 2.6 %

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. Teva pharmaceutical industries's P/B ratio indicates that the market value of the company exceeds its book value by a factor of 2.0, indicating the company may be undervalued compared Health Care sector’s average P/B ratio of 4.16.

TEVA's average free cash flow over the last few years is $1.71 Billion, 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, Teva pharmaceutical industries has not offered a dividend within the last twelve months.
Since it has a a negative P/E ratio, a lower P/B ratio than its sector average, irregular cash flows, and strong margins, Teva Pharmaceutical Industries is probably overvalued at current prices. Make sure to complement this brief quantitative review with a qualitative analysis of your own!

The above analysis is intended for educational purposes only and was performed on the basis of publicly available data. It is not to be construed as a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Any buy, sell, or other recommendations mentioned in the article are direct quotations of consensus recommendations from the analysts covering the stock, and do not represent the opinions of Market Inference or its writers. Past performance, accounting data, and inferences about market position and corporate valuation are not reliable indicators of future price movements. Market Inference does not provide financial advice. Investors should conduct their own review and analysis of any company of interest before making an investment decision.

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