Pr2FrCashFlQ average (newbie question)

Research
1

Hi,

Newbie here… Trying to understand how I can get an average of P/FCF for the last 5 years (or 20 quarters). I wonder if anyone would be kind enough to help me with this. Thanks!

2

I don’t know how to to it and be accurate (align to FCF quarterly or annual data points on a per company basis (each company has its own reporting period calendar)). I have tried.
The LoopAvg function should be ideal for this but the issue is the MktCap point-in-time data alignment. You can use LoopAvg with FCF since it supports the FCF(offset,type[,NAHandling]) format that LoopAvg requires. The issue is calculating the price data using market cap. There is no support for (offset,type[,NAHandling]) for MktCap. People have asked for something like this from P123 in the past but it is not available (that I know of).
There might be other ways to accurately calculate this but I don’t know of it. If you figure it out, please post it.

3

Thank you very much for your reply. If it’s not possible for the last quarters, maybe it should be possible to calculate it yearly? And what about P/E or other ratios. Is it possible to get a 5 yr average for them too?

4

Well, maybe you could do it using just certain points throughout the year (I am not sure how to do that. Try the FHist function, though.). But market caps move around so much throughout the year that I think it would give you a false indication.
You use mktcap because it automatically adjusts for stock splits.
For all factors and functions available, go to:
Help->Library->Reference->Dictionary then click on either of the two tabs on the top (Factors-Functions or Constants-IDs).
It will give you a listing of everything you can use.
There is a PEHigh, PELow and PERelative. You need to look through all of them.

5

I think that this should do it:

LoopAvg("(FCFPS(CTR,ANN)>=0)*(Close(CTR*#year)/FCFPS(CTR,ANN))",5)

It should spit out zero if free cash flow per share is less than or equal to zero and the average five-year Price/FCF otherwise.

Also, the whole five-year average PE thing is kind of an approximation anyway. Ask yourself if you’d have trusted the number in 2011. I believe that spot checks are the most practical way of getting at it.

6

it would be great to have something like MktCap(offset,type[,NAHandling]) then people could easily figure this out for themselves.

7

Thanks!

8

Would it be possible to do this with Price to sales?

9

Yes, try this:

LoopAvg("Close(CTR*(#year/4))/Sales(CTR,TTM)",20)

That’s a 20-quarter average of spot-checked price to sales.