With a price-to-sales (or "P/S") ratio of 0.6x Lumen Technologies, Inc. (NYSE:LUMN) may be sending bullish signals at the moment, given that almost half of all the Telecom companies in the United States have P/S ratios greater than 1.3x and even P/S higher than 5x are not unusual. Nonetheless, we'd need to dig a little deeper to determine if there is a rational basis for the reduced P/S.

How Has Lumen Technologies Performed Recently?

Lumen Technologies has been struggling lately as its revenue has declined faster than most other companies. It seems that many are expecting the dismal revenue performance to persist, which has repressed the P/S. If you still like the company, you'd want its revenue trajectory to turn around before making any decisions. Or at the very least, you'd be hoping the revenue slide doesn't get any worse if your plan is to pick up some stock while it's out of favour.

Is There Any Revenue Growth Forecasted For Lumen Technologies?

Lumen Technologies' P/S ratio would be typical for a company that's only expected to deliver limited growth, and importantly, perform worse than the industry.

In reviewing the last year of financials, we were disheartened to see the company's revenues fell to the tune of 12%. This means it has also seen a slide in revenue over the longer-term as revenue is down 32% in total over the last three years. Accordingly, shareholders would have felt downbeat about the medium-term rates of revenue growth.

Shifting to the future, estimates from the twelve analysts covering the company suggest revenue growth is heading into negative territory, declining 3.9% per year over the next three years. That's not great when the rest of the industry is expected to grow by 193% per year.

In light of this, it's understandable that Lumen Technologies' P/S would sit below the majority of other companies. However, shrinking revenues are unlikely to lead to a stable P/S over the longer term. Even just maintaining these prices could be difficult to achieve as the weak outlook is weighing down the shares.

The Key Takeaway

Generally, our preference is to limit the use of the price-to-sales ratio to establishing what the market thinks about the overall health of a company.

It's clear to see that Lumen Technologies maintains its low P/S on the weakness of its forecast for sliding revenue, as expected. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in revenue isn't great enough to justify a higher P/S ratio. Unless these conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

Having said that, be aware Lumen Technologies is showing 2 warning signs in our investment analysis, and 1 of those is potentially serious.

If these risks are making you reconsider your opinion on Lumen Technologies, explore our interactive list of high quality stocks to get an idea of what else is out there.

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This article by Simply Wall St is general in nature. We provide commentary based on historical data and analyst forecasts only using an unbiased methodology and our articles are not intended to be financial advice. It does not constitute a recommendation to buy or sell any stock, and does not take account of your objectives, or your financial situation. We aim to bring you long-term focused analysis driven by fundamental data. Note that our analysis may not factor in the latest price-sensitive company announcements or qualitative material. Simply Wall St has no position in any stocks mentioned.