With a price-to-earnings (or "P/E") ratio of 8.7x Tower Semiconductor Ltd. (NASDAQ:TSEM) may be sending bullish signals at the moment, given that almost half of all companies in the United States have P/E ratios greater than 17x and even P/E's higher than 31x are not unusual. However, the P/E might be low for a reason and it requires further investigation to determine if it's justified.

Tower Semiconductor certainly has been doing a good job lately as its earnings growth has been positive while most other companies have been seeing their earnings go backwards. One possibility is that the P/E is low because investors think the company's earnings are going to fall away like everyone else's soon. If you like the company, you'd be hoping this isn't the case so that you could potentially pick up some stock while it's out of favour.

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Is There Any Growth For Tower Semiconductor?

In order to justify its P/E ratio, Tower Semiconductor would need to produce sluggish growth that's trailing the market.

Retrospectively, the last year delivered an exceptional 73% gain to the company's bottom line. The latest three year period has also seen an excellent 409% overall rise in EPS, aided by its short-term performance. Accordingly, shareholders would have probably welcomed those medium-term rates of earnings growth.

Turning to the outlook, the next three years should bring diminished returns, with earnings decreasing 21% per annum as estimated by the four analysts watching the company. Meanwhile, the broader market is forecast to expand by 10% per year, which paints a poor picture.

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

The Bottom Line On Tower Semiconductor's P/E

Typically, we'd caution against reading too much into price-to-earnings ratios when settling on investment decisions, though it can reveal plenty about what other market participants think about the company.

As we suspected, our examination of Tower Semiconductor's analyst forecasts revealed that its outlook for shrinking earnings is contributing to its low P/E. At this stage investors feel the potential for an improvement in earnings isn't great enough to justify a higher P/E ratio. Unless these conditions improve, they will continue to form a barrier for the share price around these levels.

Before you take the next step, you should know about the 2 warning signs for Tower Semiconductor (1 is significant!) that we have uncovered.

If you're unsure about the strength of Tower Semiconductor's business, why not explore our interactive list of stocks with solid business fundamentals for some other companies you may have missed.

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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.

Have feedback on this article? Concerned about the content? Get in touch with us directly. Alternatively, email editorial-team@simplywallst.com