Are the young ones always smaller?

I’m willing to bet that nearly all of you have used a Microsoft product. Probably an equally high proportion have used Google and a reasonably significant number of you will own an Apple product.

What about LinkedIn? Most of you have no doubt heard of it and a number of you will be registered with the website.

But did you know that Microsoft currently has one of 9.40, Apple has one of 13.61, Google has one of 20.30 and LinkedIn has one of well, … well, you’ll just have to wait a moment to hear the figure as it’s rather impressive.

So, what figures am I talking about?

The figures mentioned above refer to the PE ratio or the Price Earnings ratio.

In an attempt to astound you with my knowledge, the Price Earnings ratio measures… (wait for it)… the ratio of Price to Earnings (a round of applause please for that brilliant explanation).

In other words, the share price of Microsoft for example is such that the market is currently prepared to pay 9.40 times the earnings to own it.

The PE ratio is also sometimes known as the “price multiple”, “earnings multiple” or simply “multiple” and whilst share prices can be affected by a number of different things, a high PE ratio generally implies that the market is expecting earnings to rise in the future.

If we round up the PE ratios of the companies above we get:

Microsoft: 9

Apple: 14

Google: 20

That other tech giant on the market, LinkedIn currently has a PE ratio of 1,498 (yes, 1,498).

Wow – that’s not bad is it?

So hang on. A PE ratio this high implies that the market has factored in an expectation of significant growth in earnings for LinkedIn.

This really is an expectation of pretty significant growth as at the moment for every $1 of current earnings an investor gets he or she has to pay $1,498.

So, for the sake of the LinkedIn shareholders let’s hope that in the future more people become linked in.